CLERICAL OPPRESSORS

John Greenleaf Whitter

This Document is on The Quaker Writings Home Page.


    Just God! and these are they
Who minister at thine alter, God of
      Right!
Men who their hands with prayer and
      blessing lay
    On Israel's Ark of light!

    What! preach, and kidnap men?
Give thanks, and rob thy own
      afflicted poor?
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
    Bold hard the captive's door?

    What! servants of thy own
Merciful Son, who came to seek and
      save
The homeless and the outcast, fettering
      down
    The tasked and plundered slave!

    Pilate and Herod, friends!
Chief priests and rulers, as of old,
      combine!
Just God and holy! is that church,
      which lends
    Strength to the spoiler, thine?

    Paid hypocrites, who turn
Judgment aside, and rob the Holy
      Book
Of those high words of truth which
      search and burn
    In warning and rebuke;

    Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!
And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank
      the Lord
That, from the toiling bondman's
      utter need,
  Ye pile your own full board.

    How long, O Lord! how long
Shall such a priesthood barter truth
      away,
And in Thy name, for robbery and
      wrong
    At Thy own altars pray?

    Is not Thy hand stretched forth
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and
      smite?
Shall not the living God of all the 
      earth,
    And heaven above, do right?

    Woe, them, to all who grind
Their brethren of a common Father
      down!
To all who plunder from the immortal
      mind
    Its bright and glorious crown!

    Woe to the priesthood! woe
To those whose hire is with the price
      of blood;
Perverting, darkening, changing, as
      they go,
    The searching truths of God!

    Their power and their might
Shall perish; and their very names
      shall be
Vile before all the people, in the light
    Of a world's liberty.

    Oh, speed the moment on
When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty
      and Love
And Truth and Right throughout the
      earth be known
    As in their home above.