"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?"
The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may
be as truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees, "They
bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's
shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their
fingers. All their works they do for to be seen of men.--They love the
uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, . . .
. . . and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.--But woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against
men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are
entering to go in. Ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make
long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Ye
compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye
make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.--Woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise,
and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment,
mercy, and faith; these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
other undone.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151