Clerical Oppressors

Just God! and these are they     Who minister at thine altar, 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     Bolt 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, then, 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 glory 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