He found, concealed beneath a fair outside,
The filth of rottenness and worm of pride,
Their piety a system of deceit,
Scripture employed to sanctify the cheat,
The pharisee the dupe of his own art,
Self-idolized, and yet a knave at heart.
When nations are to perish in their sins,
'Tis in the church the leprosy begins:
The priest, whose office is, with zeal sincere,
To watch the fountain, and preserve it clear,
Carelessly nods and sleeps upon the brink,
While others poison what the flock must drink;
Or, waking at the call of lust alone,
Infuses lies and errors of his own:
His unsuspecting sheep believe it pure,
And, tainted by the very means of cure,
Catch from each other a contagious spot,
The foul forerunner of a general rot.
Then Truth is hushed, that Heresy may preach,
And all is trash that Reason cannot reach;
Then God's own image on the soul impressed
Becomes a mockery and a standing jest;
And Faith, the root whence only can arise
The graces of a life that wins the skies,
Loses at once all value and esteem,
Pronounced by greybeards a pernicious dream:
Then Ceremony leads her bigots forth,
Prepared to fight for shadows of no worth,
While truths on which eternal things depend,
Find not, or hardly find, a single friend;
As soldiers watch the signal of command,
They learn to bow, to kneel, to sit, to stand,
Happy to fill Religion's vacant place
With hollow form, and gesture, and grimace.
Such, when the Teacher of his church was there,
People and priest, the sons of Israel were;
Stiff in the letter, lax in the design
And import, of their oracles divine,
Their learning legendary, false, absurd,
And yet exalted above God's own word,
They drew a curse from an intended good,
Puffed up with gifts they never understood.
He judged them with as terrible a frown,
As if not Love, but Wrath, had brought Him down:
Yet He was gentle as soft summer airs,
Had grace for others' sins, but none for theirs;
Through all He spoke a noble plainness ran-—
Rhetoric is artifice, the work of man,
And tricks and turns, that Fancy may devise,
Are far too mean for Him that rules the skies.
The astonished vulgar trembled, while He tore
The mask from faces never seen before;
He stripped the impostors in the noonday sun,
Showed that they followed all they seemed to shun;
Their prayers made public, their excesses kept
As private as the chambers where they slept;
The Temple and its holy rites profaned
By mummeries He that dwelt in it disdained;
Uplifted hands, that, at convenient times,
Could act extortion and the worst of crimes,
Washed with a neatness scrupulously nice,
And free from every taint but that of vice.
Judgment, however tardy, mends her pace
When Obstinacy once has conquered Grace.
They saw distemper healed, and life restored,
In answer to the fiat of his word,
Confessed the wonder, and with daring tongue,
Blasphemed the authority from which it sprung.
They knew, by sure prognostics seen on high,
The future tone and temper of the sky,
But, grave dissemblers! could not understand,
That Sin let loose speaks Punishment at hand.
Ask now of History's authentic page,
And call up evidence from every age;
Display with busy and laborious hand
The blessings of the most indebted land;
What nation will you find, whose annals prove
So rich an interest in Almighty love?
Where dwell they now? Where dwelt in ancient day,
A people planted, watered, blest as they?
Let Egypt's plagues, and Canaan's woes proclaim
The favours poured upon the Jewish name,
Their freedom purchased for them, at the cost
Of all their hard oppressors valued most;
Their title to a country not their own,
Made sure by prodigies till then unknown;
For them, the states they left made waste and void,
For them, the states to which they went destroyed;
A cloud, to measure out their march by day,
By night a fire, to cheer the gloomy way;
That moving signal summoning, when best,
Their host to move, and when it stayed, to rest.
For them, the rocks dissolved into a flood,
The dews condensed into angelic food,
Their very garments sacred, old yet new,
And Time forbid to touch them as he flew;
Streams swelled above the bank, enjoined to stand,
While they passed through to their appointed land;
Their leader armed with meekness, zeal, and love,
And graced with clear credentials from above;
Themselves secured beneath the Almighty wing;
Their God their captain, lawgiver, and king;
Crowned with a thousand victories, and at last,
Lords of the conquered soil, there rooted fast,
In peace possessing what they won by war,
Their name far published, and revered as far;
Where will you find a race like theirs, endowed
With all that man e'er wished, or Heaven bestowed?
They, and they only, amongst all mankind,
Received the transcript of the Eternal Mind;
Were trusted with his own engraven laws,
And constituted guardians of his cause;
Theirs were the prophets, theirs the priestly call,
And theirs, by birth, the Saviour of us all.
In vain the nations, that had seen them rise,
With fierce and envious yet admiring eyes,
Had sought to crush them, guarded as they were
By power divine, and skill that could not err.
Had they maintained allegiance firm and sure,
And kept the faith immaculate and pure,
Then the proud eagles of all-conquering Rome
Had found one city not to be o'ercome;
And the twelve standards of the tribes unfurled
Had bid defiance to the warring world.
But Grace abused brings forth the foulest deeds,
As richest soil the most luxuriant weeds.
Cured of the golden calves, their fathers' sin,
They set up self, that idol-god, within;
Viewed a deliverer with disdain and hate,
Who left them still a tributary state;
Seized fast his hand, held out to set them free
From a worse yoke, and nailed it to the tree :
There was the consummation and the crown,
The flower of Israel's infamy full blown;
Thence date their sad declension, and their fall,
Their woes, not yet repealed, thence date them all.
Thus fell the best instructed in her day,
And the most favoured land, look where we may.
Philosophy indeed on Grecian eyes
Had poured the day, and cleared the Roman skies;
In other climes perhaps creative Art,
With power surpassing theirs, performed her part,
Might give more life to marble, or might fill
The glowing tablets with a juster skill,
Might shine in fable, and grace idle themes
With all the embroidery of poetic dreams;
'Twas theirs alone to dive into the plan
That Truth and Mercy had revealed to man;
And while the world beside, that plan unknown,
Deified useless wood or senseless stone,
They breathed in faith their well directed prayers,
And the true God, the God of truth, was theirs.
Their glory faded, and their race dispersed,
The last of nations now, though once the first;
They warn and teach the proudest, would they learn,
'Keep wisdom, or meet vengeance in your turn!
If we escaped not, if Heaven spared not us,
Peeled, scattered, and exterminated thus;
If Vice received her retribution due,
When we were visited, what hope for you?
When God arises, with an awful frown,
To punish lust, or pluck presumption down;
When gifts perverted, or not duly prized,
Pleasure o'ervalued, and his grace despised,
Provoke the vengeance of his righteous hand,
To pour down wrath upon a thankless land,
He will be found impartially severe,
Too just to wink, or speak the guilty clear.'
O Israel, of all nations most undone !
Thy diadem displaced, thy sceptre gone;
Thy temple, once thy glory, fallen and rased,
And thou a worshipper e'en where thou mayst ;
Thy services, once holy without spot,
Mere shadows now, their ancient pomp forgot;
Thy Levites, once a consecrated host,
No longer Levites, and their lineage lost,
And thou thyself o'er every country sown,
With none on earth that thou canst call thine own;
Cry aloud, thou that sittest in the dust,
Cry to the proud, the cruel, and unjust,
Knock at the gates of nations, rouse their fears,
Say Wrath is coming, and the storm appears,
But raise the shrillest cry in British ears.
What ails thee, restless as the waves that roar
And fling their foam against thy chalky shore?
Mistress, at least while Providence shall please,
And trident-bearing queen of the wide seas,
Why, having kept good faith, and often shown
Friendship and truth to others, findest thou none?
Thou that hast set the persecuted free,
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