I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. % Chap. TSll^^ she/r H-fJl^ ■ H 8 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. $!' ^0 THE DIVINE MALIGNITY AS OPPOSED TO The Divine Paternity ^ BY ,/ S.'SIILLER HAGE:\UN PKIh'CETOf',' N. J. NEW YORK TROWS PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING CO. 301-213 East Twelfth Stkeet 1880 COPTKIGHT, 18S5. BY S. MILLER HAGEMAN [All ri'jMn reserml] ScDlcatcCi TO CALVES' BURNING SERVETUS EXASPEKATED BY AUGUSTINE, TURTULLIAN, EDWARDS, THE SUPERIORS OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE MALIGNITY, OR, VINDICATORY JUSTICE, A PRIMOKDIAL TRAIT OF GOD lPrc0entcC> to THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY CLUB OP NEW YORK THROUGH Mes. COUETLAJfD PALMER CONTEXTUAL EXCEEPTS. For this does not consume what it biimeth, but repaireth what it preys tzpon, so that the mountains which always burn remain, and this may be a Testimony of that Eternal Fire, which continually nourishcth and pre- Berveth those that are punished by it. — TertuUian. Many more are left under the vengeance of God than are made objects of His saving grace. — Amjustine. The whole world does not beloug to the Creator. Grace delivers a few ■who would otherwise perish, but leaves the world in the destruction to which it has been destined. — Calvin. The two worlds of happiness and misery will be in full view of each other. The saints in glory will see how the damned are tormented. A sense of the opposite misery greatly increases the relish of any joy or pleasure. Every time they look upon the damned it will give them a more lively relish of their own happiness ; it will be an occasion of rejoicing as it will be a glorious manifestation of the glory of God; therefore the damned and their misery, their sufferings and the wrath of Gori poured out upon them, vnW be an occasion of joy to them. They will be hated with a perfect hatred. God never loved them and never will love them. — Edwards. From age to age the elect have been very few. They make only a little flock, which almost escapes our notice. — Afassillo?}. Little children and young infants, though they live but a minute, are in as great danger as men that live a hundred years. It is not for your time that God will judge you, but for the odious nature of sin. — Christopher Loi'i: Little child if you go to Hell there will be a devil at your side to strike you. Neither father, nor mother, nor brother, nor sister, nor friend will ever come to cry with you. Tlie same law which is for others is also for children. See a terrible sight. The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. Yon can see on tlie face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in Hell — despair, desperate and horrible ! At this moment a child is going into Hell. To-morrow evening go and knock at the gates of Hell and ask what the child is doing ; the devils will go and look. Then they will come back and say : " The child is burning." Go forever, and forever you will always get the same answer, " it is burning. '* Children will be frightened there. Do you know what is meant uy being frightened out of one's senses? A boy wanted to frighten two other little boys. In the day time he took phosphorus and marked the form of a skeleton on the wall of the room where the little boys always slept. In the daj' time the mark of phosphorus was not seen, in the dark it shines like fire. The two little boys went to bed kTiowing nothing about it. Next morning they found one boy sitting on his bed Btaring at the wall, out of his senses. The other little boy was dead. That was fright. — Father Furnis^'' Tracts for Little Children for the year 18S1, jtuOlished 2:)en7iissu superlorum, represfi/ting the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and acknowledged as such by the authorita- tive allowal of its 2)nblicatio7i. Nay one could go farther, and could hold that contrast may be a necessary factor in the Divine economy, and that for aught we know the Eternity of Evil finds some explanation here.* — Professor Patton in Princeton Uevieiv for 1878. Human punishment umite the Divine is variable ai. J inexact, because it is to a considerable extent reformatory and protective. The Divine Tribunal in the last great day is invariably and exactly just, because it is neither reformatory nor protective. And this work is to satisfy justice. The human penalty that approaches nearest to the Divine is capital punishment. The reformatory element is wanting. — Dr, Shedd^ North America^i linnev} for 1885, pp. 160-0. The goodness, yea the exceeding mercy of God in creating human beings who he fore-knew from all eternity to be eternally damned. — Lynuin Ashland. Sermons for 1885. I started suddenly, there was a voice beside me, a young woman with a babe on her arm. — Letters from Hell, 18S5. * In other words if we define the fatalistic chiaroscuro of Necessary Contrast with which this ^vriter sums up this whole theological diabolism it stands squarely thus : ** What were Heaven in all its splendor without Hell to set it o£E." — The Authob. He who rids tlie world forever of a sui:)erstitioii ])tise, Is the greatest lieiief actor, dead or living, of his race. 8. Miller Hage.max. In its sleep, bent o'er a City, weejis a figure carved to Pity, Through whose eyes and lips and fingei-s runs an old heart-broken rhyme : And the throngs that lean and listen as those trickling tear-drops glisten, Little think themselves are jnetui'ed and the thoughtless Lapse of Time, Sounding do-wn its way snl)lime, With its many-f(:)untaineoats go skimming, Down the deep perspective dimming, slowly down its marble hall ; And faint i)eals of song and laughter, "Vale," " Vale," sound long after, Do^vn that dini JEolian river they have van- ished at our call. As the echoes float and fall. Echoes of departing souls, as Night and Silence wraps them all. Echo's, echo's, echo's flying. Up and down the river dying. Still repeating, still replying, Flying, dying on. 14 Deep througli tlai-kentMl oaverii gliding, deeper still witLiu it. hiding, Save tlie small white fishes sliding eyelessly all to and fro ; Loud and louder sounds the splashing of the Avaters, dashing, dashing, As some blundering roek goes erashing down- ^w'lrd "with the torrent's flow, With I'everlierating Idow, Down, ilown, down, the echoing chasm, down a hundred feet Ijelow. Echo's, echo's, echo's meeting, Uj) and down tlie river fleeting, Still replying, still I'epeatiug, Souudiug, sounding on. 15 Ou it flows by dt-ll ami dingle, whei'e tlie drowsy flock-bells jingle, Tink a tank a tingle, lingle, as the sheep wind sloAvly home : On Ijy day M'ith flowers a-winkle, on Ijy night ^vitll stars a-twinkle. Drowsing, dreaming, I'ielily creaming all its banks with flowery foam, As its waters onwai'd roam, On -with baa-aa and noo-oo — and tinkle, as the herds clang slowly home, Throngli the corn and through the clover, Through the rock-l)eds, under, over. So Time goes, a restless rover, Roamins:, roaming^ on. 10 Tlirougli the palms the goldeu pheasaut glitters like a yellow crescent, T(.) the crocodile's low chuckle all along its leafy cliiuks : As from out the stiffling rushes some tall il)is loudly l)rushes, Wliips tlie l)lue air with his Avhite wings, flies off — till at last it sinks, Down upon some sun-red sphinx. Tired of standing — doubled up — on one leg by the reedy brinks. And a cangia down the river, On whose oars the moonbeams shiver, Swift as arrow fi'om a quiver Shoots and flashes on. (!)ii tliat undulating river, luirrying phantoms sway and shiver, Never lifted veils of Isis, Ijut Time lulls them witli its lay : Knocks at hut and throne and castle, calls alike to king and vassal, Calls, as age and youth and childhood with its willowy waters plaj^, Calls, and as they turn to stay. Whispers to them, " Come " and washes, w^ashes all their feet away. Idling, basking, loitering, purling, Eddying, cpiirking, darting, whirling, Sporting, chasing, rushing, swirling, Drowsint;, drowsincr on. 18 Down it drops tlirougli layers of j^eoples, do^vn tliroiigli crypts and courts and stee])]es, Bares a brow, a loin, a sceptre, and a throne with monarch set : Captaiu-jewelled-crowned Osiris, circled with the magic iris. All, as once they looked on Egypt, still on Egypt looking yet. Face to face in silhouette, Kanked alon"- that runic river, mirrorinu- all Time ever met. Cangias, je^vels, crystals, vases. Orgies, odors, voices, faces, Teai'-drops, passions, torn emliraces, Driftintic, driftinof on. Down it rolls and down it raijes, thunderinc; from oiit the ages, Down a dee^), volcanic whirlpool, pouring with its frenzied throng ; Through an oltl Pompeian city, crying, " Jesu, Nunc Dimmitte." O'er whose shipwrecked crew Time's river omi- nously Hows along. Listen, as it flows along, To the revelry, to the devilry of that cacopho- nian song. For it seems all sounds intoning. Wheezing, muttering, cursing, groaning. Hooting, howling, bellowing, moaning. Moaning, moaning on. 30 Brightly stands that Liimaii toiTent, sliudJer- ing back as if aljhorreiit, Sunset of lost souls all going doAvu in darkness and in doubt : Tantalus, witli wild endeavor, drinks the watery di'ouglit forever, Round -whose Thirst-cup whorls the whirlpool, round its heterogeneous rout. Round and round its hollow spout. Round and ]-ound and round forever, but it cann(_)t wash it out. In its coil a serjient couches, 0])en-mouthed it cranes, it crouches, Sucks — and witJi distended pouches, Sucks — and swallows on. Through its Jim mysterious portal on whose crest a mythic mortal * Strains a silver cloud forever to his cheated bosom fond ; Through its shadowy recesses that its labyriutli confesses, Deep from out that inky darkness a dia^^hanous creature dawned, That forever did respond, " Come with me and I will light you through this labyrinth beyond." She, with singing and with smiling. She, with languoring face, beguiling, All her pits with victims piling, Many a soul lures on. * Ixion embracing Juno. 22 I had seen in mai'ljles scented, in old tapestries, tormented Contours of this curious creature at whose feet the snake's mouth yawned ; Wrought of woven wind the vapory tissue of whose trailing dra])ery, Whispered on the checi|uered marl)le with its Lanceolated frond. As her heavy eyes des])ond. Standing there a yellow leopardess in the tam- arisk shade Ijejoiid, Far from love and virtue straying, Far from home and -wrung hands prayini', Dice and drink and music jilaying, She, her Aveb weaves on. ?3 E'en the wliile I did heliold her, fi-orn tlie clasp ii])on lier shoulder, Slowly slid tlie purple peplum till about her feet it fell : And beneath the round pilaster, like a lamp in alabaster, So her soul shone through her body, as a sea- nymph through its shell, So she sang her syren-spell, Lurina; foolish mortals downward till their feet take hold on hell. " Come," she sighed with cinel malice, "Come," she sighed with cu]) and chalice, " Come, with me into my Palace," " Come with me, come on. 24 ■• Oins ! wliat means thy growling tluuiJer, why thy pent, thy wikl-eyed wonder? See ! the gates of Hell are opening and a soul goes in a-train ; Howls of rai^e and veils of lauji-hter, rinfin" ^' ^' 7 l)ack from roof and rafter, Swell the wild tremendous ui)roar of each con"-- resouudino- chain. Rend the Book of souls in twain. And a name — your name upon it — and the gates crash too again. Be it god or demon nu;ttering, Be it fiend or faiiy fluttering, Round it rustling shajies ai'e cluttei'ing, As that soul glides on. * 0ms, tbo Dog of Hell. Swift from out tlie crimson flurry clutching grifEons liiss and hurry, Beaked and talon-hooked together, fiends of every sort and size ; For a share of her damnation, piece-mealing with delectation. One l:)y one each shape that enters in her train with fiery eyes; Ghoul-watched gate of Paradise, Verminous with griffons craning at each shadow as it flies : Satyr, gorgon, dragon, goggling. Scorpion, vampire, bogie, boggling, Harpy, ]iixy, ogre, oggliug. Gloating, gloating on. * O'er its arch that deadly sentence, once witldn it.— no repentance, Every face a branding horror, every breath a smoking prayer, Burning floors and vaults and dresses, burning chains and wings and tresses, Burning hands flung up for torches that but light them to des|)air, Swirlinu: down that headlong stair. Swirling, bottomlessly swirling, down, down, down that dizzy stair. In each drop I seem discerning Countenances dazzled, turning. Sizzling, crackling, blistering, burning, Burning, burning on. *A11 ye who eutei- here leave hope behind, a? Swart amid them sits the devil on a throne in ghastly revel, Rattling in his monstrous shackles all the prison- house of Hell : One hand pointing light supernal, and the other gloom infernal. As he cries, " For God a handful, but for me these myriads tell," " All these peopled planets tell," " All these starry camp-fires burning in the bi- vouac of Hell," Sun and sky and space enshrouding. Threatening, gathering, blackening, clouding. Rumbling, thundering, piling, ci'owding, Crowding, cro^vding on. its "All are called Imt few are eliosen," warm Heaven in a tear-drop frozt-ii, Thinly sown the i)ath to glor}-, l)ut devonred the road to night : Here and there a hermit's taper shines, elect, through mantling vapor, 'Mid the windows that are darkened in the Palace of the Light, Darkened Palace of the Light. Till a grand deserted ruin Heaven stands out against our sight. Nearly all God's throne forsaken, Nearly all God's crown outsliaken, x\nd its captain-jewels taken, Satan has it on. There tlie vast assembled millions, tiered on billions, tiered on trillions, Lost long years before the coming of that Christ they ne'er should see : There that fog-like army rising from the sea, a satirizing Swarm, and all -without a Saviour, damned and damned eternally. Think of it — eternally, All past Time a point forever to the Timeless- ness to l)e. And the distant " Ever" " Ever," Echoing back the " Never" "Never," Runs through Acheron forever, On and on and on. There the troops of little Aviuuiiig siuners ere they Ivuew of sinuiiig, Lost for Ijiit a dro]) of water, sob along those walls a-side ; Too deformed for recognition, masked the l)et- ter for derision. Till the s})irit of St. Vitus ^\■ould Ije fully sat- isfied ; Father, mother, sweetheart, Ijride, Through the glare of dazzliui:- darkness diabol- ically eyed Countenances, knotted, staring, Leering, mocking, taunting, glaring. Scowling, glowering, wild, despairing, Dead but liviuo- on. There the go\vk.s, the dwarfs, the dragons, idiots straining fiery flagons, Shrivelled wails, sleep-walking shrouds, gnarled, bleared enormities a-lile : There, luicouched, the sick, the weary, deaf and duml) and lilind and dreary. Moralist and Ma^'delena fluuo; to one incestuous pile, Lifting xi-p high Mass the while, Typhon wiithing under ^tua with its mon- strous el)Ouy smile. Tangled stack of serpents, coiling. Hissing, fanging, frothing, boiling, Tightning, festering, weltering, toiling. Writhing, wi'ithing on. 33 Burnt ill Effigy God's creatures, with his staiiij) iip(jii their features, Gorgon smiling l)aek Apolhi, carved to monu- mental man ; All that image fast departing, on those stony eyeballs starting, Hands o'er hands of blackened pillars liohlliig up Heav^en's gorgeous s})an, Sport-making Sampsonion ! Bow thyself — thy unshorn fury wamld pull down the eternal plan. To^vering l\]^ a human Babel, Reaching Heaven, out-fabling fable, And yet 1 )ut a stony table Law is writino- on. Down upon tliat city burning, looks tlie face of God discernint; Everything in Heaven turning red with its retlection set : Blood-shot moon iipon Gil)raltar, as upon its smoking altar, Flames the smile of satisfaction with its relish- ing regi'et O'er Heaven's i-ed-robed parapet, On death-kissed remembered faces, and yet able to forget. Two worlds turned toward one another, Two souls in them, child and mother, One in Heaven — in Hell the other, Smiling, sobbing on. 34 Look down tlirougli the gates below thee, mother, on those eyes that know thee, Can'st thou say from Heaven's "Good Moruiug" to that chdd HelFs " Good Night ? " No, Can'st thou from tlnit orphan ever turn and say " Our Father ? " Never. By a mother's love I cannot, ^vill not, dare not make it so. Slie had left Heaven long ago, Crying out — "If this Ije Heaven then t<) all Hell will I tro Be she saint or be she sinner. While that ehild cries out within lier "Mother," 'twere n<_>t God to Aviu lier While tliat child cries on. Not a star above but nightly for the darkness shines more brightly, What Avere Heaven in all its splendor without Hell to set it off 'i What were light Avithout its shadoAV on the cloudless Eldorado ? What Avei-e joy without its sorrow, what -were song Avithout its scoff ? Each to set the other off. And a gluttony for glory and a skeleton at its trough, Till in tui'u no less amazing, Lurid Hell on Heaven lies blazing. See ! the angels with their glazing, Bloodshot eyes look on. 3t) What are all those people burning iu that whirlpool redly turning ? Burninc-- Joss-sticks to Jehovah seated on the throne of Thor : Ilr ^^-ho, like that king of glory in an old bar- baric story, AVhen the enemy hud landed Ijurned their ships upon the shore, That they should depart no more, Wrapt asV)estosdike in fire yet imconsumed, that siege ne'er o'er. Writhing in a wild endeav(->r To appease God's wratli, ah never. Great Implacable! forever, Love sits hating on. " I will laugli at their disaster. I will nicK-k as fear comes faster. " I Avill sit as a refiuer briiio-ino- out what sin begat : " I will sear the shining lenses of their filmy- folded senses, " Lest, mayhap, they be converted, till the fire drops out thereat. From the winedight of the vat, " Mercy, when I will have mercy," tliink'st thou ever God said that ? Laughing — while fresh vengeance waking. Laughing — while a world forsaking. Laughing — while his heart is breakinrr, Laughing, laughing on. Are they all alike foi'sakeii, is the last, the last kiss taken l Suifei'ing foi- tlie sake of suffering, a revenge that mortals spurn : Thus, as virtue God condoning what his creat- ures are disowning, That as Time's slow-fingered Sybil Ijook ])y l)Ook its volumes liurn In the ashes of their urn. There shall still 1:»e always sometliing left of sin for sin to learn. Still the Sybil sits there turning, All that lore of guilty learning. And though leaf by leaf is burning, Still a leaf turns on. 39 But suppose them thus deserted, and the Face of God averted, What free choice in such a creature without God — yet God begot ? Without eyes, damned for not seeing ; without feet, damned for not fleeing ; Without ears, damned for not hearing ; without wills, for choosing not. Judgment over — Justice — What ? Down in such a spiderous dungeon immortality would rot. All in Thee, Thou great All-seeing, All in Thee, thy shadows fleeing. Live and move and have their being. Dead in Thee — live on. 40 Shut a child up in a closet, till the stiiiing Jarkuess awes it ; Hear its sob, " O IMamina, mamma," dwiudle to a moan, a sigh ; Go some morning and undo it ; look, O mon- ster, look into it, See ! a little heap of ashes, all that's left of that Ijright eye. And the whole Avorld cries out, Fie ! Yet you leave that very closet on God's hands eternally. You do more — you turn its story To a shamble grim and gory, In which God, for his own glory, Stands and slaughters on. Sin — you punisli — yet preserve it — steal Heav- en's fire witli which to serve it, Fan it till a wild contagion leaps through cor- ridor and hall : Till the cyclone hath arisen, till the lightning strikes tlie prison, Slam the lid do\vn on the caldron, " Come out " to the chained wretch call. That is Hell — if that a])pall, To preserve sin and forever were the greatest sin of all. Guilt that makes high God its miser. Hoarding up with vault and visor. Dark Malignity grown wiser, As its plot goes on. Thou who all cm- hands hast broken from the hands that wave no token, Does forgiveness turn to hatred in a single honr above ? Eye that warms not, weeps not-answer-m thy breast that luirning cancer, Says, "for this there now is nothing, nothing left that Love can do." " Nothing left for God to do." "But to sit and smile and feel it burning, burn- ing through and through," Spoken to, l)ut never speaking. Sought, alas, but never seeking, God have mercy-but that reeking, Eye looks on, looks on. Still o'er all that burning city, weeps tliat figure carved to Pity, With the -water trickling, trickling, through its eyes and hands and lips : Still that terrible clepsydra, through its human- headed hydra, On each brow in molten minutes maddeningly drips and drips, And a spectre sips and sips, And a rainbow playing in it over all that wild eclipse. Peeping through their dungeon-gi-ating. Peeping, calling, crouching, waiting, Beckoning, listening, watching, waiting, Vainly, vainly on. 44 And those spectres will be found there, when a cycle shall go round there, At those bolted doors of Doom ^vith charred heads listening at the grate For a knock— that falleth never, though they wait for it forever. Key and keeper gone to glory, an.l the i)rison locked— Too late ! O Thou Irony of Fate ! With thy hand-a shaking palsy-fumlding for a latchless gate. Hopeless— yet forever hoping, Bandaged-swathed, yet blindly groping Toward those doors that shnt in opening, Shut and open on. Dost thou still refuse to reason ? tLen to sleep to-night were treason, Fie thee on this earth, O preacher, till thon all that hori'or tell : Stop the clock, for Time is over, stay the scythe a-cut the clover Hang the houses all in mourning, drape the plough, the wheel, the bell Toll the deep-toned funeral knell, For the village, for the city, for the whole world is in Hell. Why, since Hell you hold my brother, Why, with holy water smother? Paint it as you paint the other, All its colors on. 46 All its groans, its i^ants, its embers, all its love no love remembers, All its liuuian-heaving contours, all its fever- crimsoning face, All its tears, its scars, its blisters — and that smile on Heaven that glisters. All, for God's eternal glory, all to show abound- ing grace ; All for glory, all for grace. Better Christ had died on Clu'istmas than such glory, than such grace. God for judge and Heaven for jiiry. Did the world believe that, surely, It would l)e a slinging fury Ere an hour rolled on. 47 Lost — a, foundling — at Heaven's portal, 1)oru dead, but a dead Immortal : Lost — a child — without a mother ; lost — -it knows not where or how : Lost — a soul — without a warning, sun eclipsed at gates of morning : Lost — a ship — without a captain, but his shadow at the prow ; Lost — l>ut none so lost as Thou. Lost unto Thyself, yet on Thyself all intro- verted now. Like a longforgotten story, Like a song of lark or lory. Lost — in light of thy own glory, Adnate-faced, lost on. 4S What bath this God-pointing slander done to make tlie great world grander? Hatli it glorified religion, frightened nations \vith its fume ? It hath filled the earth with scorners standing upon all its corners, It hath made Christ's death a failure, it hath wrapt the world \vith gloom. In the shadow of its doom, Till each \vord we speak sounds ghastly as a death-groan from a tomb. It hath taught the churcli to palter, It hath taught the heai't to falter, And to stand still at the altar, While the lips moved on. 49 I begod a God supernal working out a good eternal, But a God who let Time's oliain down link liy link into tlie grave : Saw the end from the beginning, made a world, and with it, sinning Creatures that he could not govern, creatures that he could not save, Offered pardon to a slave, To a soul he felt beforehand doomed and damned ere life he gave ; Diabolical ! the Devil, In his wildest rage and revel, Never touched so low a level. As such God stands on. 60 All tlie types of luimau passion that the brutal ages fashion, All the gods of mythic fury meet iu such a God above. Wouldst thou coin a splendid casting of that One God everlasting ? All his attributes are ^vritten in those three words, " God is Love." Grand, exhaustless Godlike Love ; There it stands — the one solution of the world's great problem — Love. Not in -wrath vindicatory, Not in nature's stariy story, This is God's eternal glory, Lo\'ing, lo%'ing on. Thou, of tLis great l)all the moulder, charged with it against thy shoulder, Thou, that sweepest the horizon. Thou so sphere- less, we so small : Thou hast made us — by that token, can the bond 'twixt us be broken ? Thou hast made us. Shall thy image from its shining pedestal Into darkened ruins fall? Thine Ave are. Thou hast no orphans. Thou the Father of us all ! Who hatli need of such a blessing. Who hath case so wildly pressing. As a wretch, thy love transgressing, Still transgressing on ? Nothing dies — tlie distant " Ever " is the eclio of tlie " Never," Silence is but unheard music soundins; some- where still iu space : Somewhere in the distance dying, bugles calling, colors flying, Troy is carrying off Helen, Cain strikes Aljel in the face. Veiled in melancholy lace, In some cloud-ljower Eloisa falls in Abelard's embrace. And the " Ever " and the " Ever," To the " Never " and the " Never," Through the river runs forever — And forever on. 53 Bring me up the blackest Ethiop stooping down to drink all Lethe up, In that fiend a bright Celestial gleams out of his eyes again : Still for him all sweet sounds tingle through his memory as they mingle, Still for him a bird is singing, and a flower tincts all the glen, Something in him now as then, 'Tis tlie far-off " Alter E2:o " Time is bringing out in men. For, if holiness eternal, Lost St. Satan once supernal. Why should sin hold him infernal, As that sin goes on ? 64 iufallil^le Tradition, crossed -witli priestly superstition — 1 and God — Imperial It — tlie thing done tells God what to do : God saw not \\liat Galileo saw, knew not great Kepler's " Deo," Nor the fall of Newton's apj)le, though by that same ajiple too, Adam fell and downwaird drew By its law of gravitation, sin you never did on you. All the suns and stars that dapple This vast Universe, shall grapple With the theft of that one apple, Fallins;, fallinsr on. He who rids the woi'kl's sad story of a super- stition hoary, Is the greatest Benefactor, dead or living, men confess : He who shows the Avorld its Vision, shall hold up to high Elysian, The eternity of evil — that great curse — the churches hless, To be notliing more nor less, Thau a grand apotheosis to stupendous nothing- ness. After smiling, after weeping. After sowing, after reaping, Nothing left Lut love -worth keeping, Ever, ever on. 56 When God's hand the World had moulded slowly through long time unfolded, Last to come and late to ripen, in his lowest form came man : Man shall sin, and, sorrow-laden, ere he finds that sorrow's Aiiiden, Stand for all his solemn shadow far beyond where he began ; But beyond this earthly span, Man shall be a higher being, built upon a higher plan. Patience is God's pastime, slowly He is lifting up the lowly. To the pure, the high, the holy, Upward, upward on. 57 Still o'er all that burning City, weeps that fig- ure, pale with pity, From whose eyes and lips and fingers Time in blood-drops trickles through : And the throu&s still lean and harken as the shadows round it darken : — Such a sin and such a Saviour as its deep ver- milion drew, At the Cross that City threw. Father ! Father ! O forgive them, for they know not what they do ! O ye priests, ye schools, go borrow Justice, from that dying sorro^v ! Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, Jesus Christ ! live on ! es Jesus Christ ! divinely human — something man and something Avoman, Crown of universal empire claims no other king but Thee : From the deserts Ethio2)ic, from the ocean and the tropic, From the glittering suns and systems that go round Immensity, (For they all l)elong to Thee) " I, if I be lifted up will draw the whole world unto me." Hark ! I hear — a whispered thunder. Filling all the \\>n-]il \\'ith wonder, 'Tis the tread of millions under Coming, coming on. 59 For, did Christ, tliougli God's hand beckoned, with anxiety unreckoned, See do^\•n through the gates infernal one whom ouce he loved so well : He would turn his back on glory, on its song and on its story. Tear the crown from off his forehead, and the robe that round him fell. Hurry down to darkest hell. Crying, " Judas." " The Lord's Supjier "—that is irresistible. That is Christ — sublime engraving. Holy with its human craving. Souls worth making are worth saving. While a soul throbs on. 60 I behold their lighted tapers, rising from the Avliirlpool's vapors, Through the orescent pales of l)eing up the steep of world's afar : I behold them — the Past hovers — the air throbs, the eye discovers Uj) vast flights of steps — a Thi'one-Cross — shining in a nightless star. Two Thieves at its Judgment bar. "To bless Heaven is good," the judge says, " to bless Hell is better far." Rags and shame and destitution, Vice and squalor and pollution, All that wails for absolution, Bless that — bless, bless on. ei Flow, thou stream of Time, flow coldly, and througli all that City boldly. With thy waters wash it, wash it, all away forevermoi'e : Earth grows still, its voices miiml)le, ships and cities rot and crumble. Skeletons of nations whiten to the wild beasts famished roar, Sinks its last sun low and lower. Life is dead — the world deserted — darkness falls — and Time is o'er. Dimly earth's last soul descrying, Faster and still faster flying, In the golden distance dying. Dying — dying — gone. >)) rr- I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ni6 117 424 5 • ''^>^