Our God is light, intelligence, and love—
Is reason, freedom, justice, and the truth;
He does not rule through blind belief in creeds,
But fact and judgment—good expressed in deeds
Of brotherly assistance, and above
All aims to subjugate the minds of youth.
The God of orthodoxy doth delight
In ways of darkness, superstition, fear;
He bids all men their reason set aside
And take, like birds with mouths spread open wide,
Whatever priests, those messengers of night,
See fit to drop into the gaping ear.
He bids us bow to creeds and servile forms,
And walk submissive under Mammon's reign;
Before him all must bend the cringing knee,
And shout his praise in fulsome minstrelsy;
His followers no love of freedom warms;
He rules them, all through penalty and pain.
With ceremonies, rites, and cunning tricks,
He seeks to captivate the human will;
Thus far his agents have, alas! too well
Succeeded in their wicked work of hell,
Which at no subterfuge or falsehood sticks;
They fill their mission with Satanic skill.
They claim to represent the Nazarene
And teach his doctrines, while they grossly lie
In word and deed, and all his views pervert;
He aimed to help the world; they aim to hurt;
His yoke is easy and his path serene,
While wearing theirs the soul must surely die.
While he would have the world live out the law
Of being as engraved in each true heart,
And seen with vision clear by every mind
That is to justice, truth and good inclined,
They would subdue it, by a sense of awe,
To arbitrary rule and selfish art.
When men shall cease to worship wealth and might,
And turn their backs on superstition's door;
When reason lights her lamp, and equity
Becomes the portion of the truly free;
When Christ shall reign on earth through love and light,
The rule of man and Mammon will be o'er.
Then all machinery of Church and state
Will drop aside as rubbish of the past;
Then social harmony will take the place
That human governments so much disgrace;
The cruel reign of discord, born of hate,
Will be reversed, and order reign at last.
Then each will work for all instead of self,
As faithful parents for their children toil;
All will be educated in the right,
All will by birth inherit living light;
None will from duty turn for sordid pelf,
And none will seek his neighbor to despoil.
And there will be abundance everywhere,
With want and fear of want forever gone;
No more will men indulge in worldly lust;
The aims of life will be above the dust;
Then men the spirit life will seek and share,
Their souls aglow with rays of Heaven's dawn.