THE ALTAR OF THE RIGHTEOUSNESS
57
Priests gazed upon God in the eyes of a babe new-born,
and therein
Beheld not heaven, and the wise glad secret of love, but
sin.
Accursed of heaven, and baptized with the baptism of
hatred and hell,
They spat on the name they despised and adored as a
sign and a spell.
"Lord Christ, thou art God, and a liar: they were children
of wrath, not of grace,
Unbaptized, unredeemed from the fire they were born
for, who smiled in thy face."
Of such is the kingdom—he said it—of heaven: and
the heavenly word
Shall live when religion is dead, and when falsehood is
dumb shall be heard.
And the message of James and of John was as Christ's
and as love's own call:
But wrath passed sentence thereon when Annas replied
in Paul.
