Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete

CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.

In the report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S.C., on the 4th of the ninth month, 1835, published in the Courier of that city, it is stated: "The clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene!"

     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.

     1836.