Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet Earth's chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.
Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.
The whole poem is full of this passionate great-hearted, manly, God-like sympathy, now and here, with the needy, the oppressed, the helpless of today. The crises are here now, those stern winnowers that test and try men's souls, that discover whether they are wheat or chaff, ashes or gold. Oh, for men who have made already the "choice momentous"—while the battle is raging, when there is danger, risk, peril, possible death in the conflict. Is he a true man who waits, pauses, hesitates, wavers in such conflicts, "till the judgment hath passed by"?
I would radiate, again let me say it, my readiness to march at the sound of the drum, to advance with the front ranks, to fight at the first word.
History affords us many noble examples and "beacon lights" of those who have lived in accordance with the principles herein laid down.