Thus, one by one, upon the spirit side,
An army gathered that defied defeat;
It filled with love of freedom every mind
Of willing mould on earth that it could find,
Till right of private judgment, long denied,
Walked boldly forth from its enforced retreat.
Then history and science both combined
To shed their light and make the error plain;
And one by one the church was forced to yield
The subjugated ground which it had sealed
With blood of martyrs, till it was confined
To work by subtle means its ends to gain.
Now Knowledge roams at large, and he who will
May sup from the eternal founts of truth;
As hell recedes, the church enfeebled grows,
And fast approach the last expiring throes;
It now may curse and rave, but dare not kill,
And views with anguish Freedom's lusty youth.
The present church is a continuance
Of the abomination that held sway
When Christ was on the earth; the change it made
Was but in form, not spirit; it essayed
To make the world believe that no advance
Could e'er be made for which it did not pray.
It fought all progress of the human race,
And sought to limit human thought and speech;
Dead books or living bodies, each in turn
It ready stood to torture or to burn;
It squid-like tried its slimy arms to place
On every thing of worth within its reach.
Its claims were boundless, and its vicious aim
Would subjugate all things from pole to pole;
Whate'er of good might triumph in despite
Of all its wiles to crush, this fiend of night
Set up the claim that the advancement came
Through its kind care and fostering control!
And to this day it makes the bold pretense
That all of human progress has been made
Beneath its banner; yet it ever warred
On science as a thing to be abhorred,
And still would banish thought and reason hence,
And of them seeks to make mankind afraid!
It points to the advancement of the world
As evidence of its benignant power;
Yet it has sought, with all its will and might,
To keep the children of the earth in night!
And this same course it will pursue till hurled
From power, and Truth and Justice rule the hour.
Let men no longer be deceived, for hell
Brought forth the church and fosters it to-day;
Let them cast off the shackles of the mind,
Which this same church continues still to bind
Upon them with Satanic art and spell,
And keep, oh! keep the children from its sway!
Thro' Mammon and the Church hell rules to-day,
And flaunts the cruel cross before our eyes;
Losing its hold on State, the church demands
All privileges which our thoughtless hands
Will grant unto its agents, who would slay
The Nazarene again as sacrifice.