THE CROSS.

Emblem of Ignorance and Cruelty, Ensign of Superstition's brutal reign, Banner of Despotism's foul career, Signal of Reason laid upon its bier, Image of dark and gross Idolatry, Object of worship since the Christ was slain! The sign of the impostor and the fool, By which they conquer and command the throng, The cross is lifted upward everywhere Man will submissive bow and mutter prayer, The minion meek, or church's thoughtless tool, Or worse, the cunning priest who knows the wrong. When Satan tempted Christ upon the Mount, He said: "But worship me, the world is thine!" But Christ refused the service and reward, And said: "Get thee behind; worship thy Lord!" And thus called Satan to a quick account, For his attempt to humble the divine. Christ taught no worship and believed in none; His teaching was of equal Brotherhood; But, if there must be worship, it was meet That he who claimed it should bow at the feet Of him of whom 'twas claimed; the evil one So claiming should bow down before the good. Christ did not ask for worship, nor it seek; This he abhorred in every form and phase; He was resolved to ever upright stand; 'Twas to rebuke he gave that stern command; And he who claims the homage of the weak His low condition to the wise betrays. Satan still tempts all greedy human kind With his rewards of selfishness and lust; He would their minds in superstition steep, And mercilessly every soul would keep Forever to the lower realms confined, Where all is turned to ashes and to dust. Oh! what a world of malice Christ awoke In Satan when he bade him "get behind!" Then all the fury of the fiends of hell Around his earthly way exhaled their spell; Beset by every snare hell could evoke, He suffered hellish tortures of the mind. He lived alone; he was not understood By those with whom he most communed and taught; His sole support was love and faith in truth And principles he'd pondered from his youth; He saw right living and the doing good Must bring a future life with gladness fraught. But hell would not consent to tolerate The presence here on earth of one who chose To be so independent of its sway; It would not do to longer let him stay, And so the vicious tools of hell and hate Were set to work his teachings here to close. He long had seen or guessed how it would end; But faith in principle in him was strong, And he would not consent to change his course Nor to retract, nor turn to such resource As would the purpose of his foes unbend, And thus his labors on the earth prolong. But he resolved to carry on the fight Beyond the grave, and to contend for power And freedom to reject the homage base Which Satan claimed, and meet him face to face In his own realms of cruelty and night, And try his title there to freedom's dower. It was a faith sublime that thus could nerve The Nazarene to face the death they chose; But patiently he met his fate alone, Without complaint, and scarcely gave a groan, So sure was he that Freedom he could serve And in the end could conquer all his foes. It was not long before the end was reached, So far as earth could end his grand career; His body lifeless hung upon the cross; Yet still his deadly foes were at a loss How to annul the doctrines he had preached Lest they forever should torment them here. So they resolved upon a double course— They would pervert what they could not destroy; Their earthly agents were induced to choose The bloody cross as symbol of their views, Which they proclaimed were Christ's, and were the source Of all their power—His name made a decoy. The banner of the cross they raised aloft, To conquer by this sign of all that's vile; "Christians" they called themselves, and fiends in glee Must have rejoiced their bloody course to see, As with brute force, or threats, or pleadings soft, They coupled hell's dark doings with its guile. To blind belief they added blinder faith, And relegated reason to the shades; Dark superstition ruled the bloody hour, The world bowed down before religion's pow'r, And truthfully the page of history saith Mankind gave up to riots and to raids. It was a very pandemonium here, A hell on earth, a night without a star; Good manners and good morals passed away, Corruption and pollution ruled the day, And Pity left the earth without a tear, While pallid Justice trembling stood afar. Contending sects and creeds each other tore; A word or syllable gave cause for war, And e'en a single letter made men tear Each other and profane the decent air With angry words, and drench their hands in gore, Performing all that Heaven must abhor. Men lost all reason, women lost all shame, And gross indecency ruled day and night; Fortunes were given to the rotten priests, Who rated virtue lower than the beasts; Pollution of the maiden or the dame Alike was holy in the priestly sight. At first, it was a struggle mild between The pagan doctrines and the newer creeds, Whose crazy devotees quite often sought The crown of martyrdom, and therefore wrought Insultingly to taunt and rouse the spleen That oft in furious wrath its victim bleeds. But paganism was a placid rill Beside the roaring torrent of the new And wild religion that its ruin sought; And most of all its cruelty was taught Unto it by the men of bloody will Who did the work of the infernal crew. When Satan's agents found no pagan foe, They tore each other with tenfold delight; There was no epithet too harsh to use, There was no instrument of brute abuse Severe enough to add unto the woe Of brothers now grown hateful in their sight. Such scenes the world had never known before, So fierce did angry passion's billows toss; Hell seemed let loose, and scarce a Heavenly ray Shone in the hearts of men to light the way; All virtue gone, or rotten to the core, O'er all there rose the dark and bloody cross. But brutal passion cannot always rule; Reaction comes with renovating sway; The violence that may at first succeed Quite soon returns to make its victims bleed; Coercion is a sharp and treacherous tool— A two-edged sword that cutteth either way. For centuries the nations struggled on, While reason scarcely gave a glimmering ray; The rack, the faggot, and anon the sword, Each played its part to teach the "Holy Word;" While hated Science, pallid, weary, wan, Amid the hosts of darkness skulked away. Not idle was the Nazarene the while; He marshaled on the other side of life The hosts of gentle truth and reason mild, Swaying with love the heart of man and child To long for freedom and the rights that guile Had trampled down amid intolerant strife. The work was one of love, the progress slow, For hell contended every inch of ground, And, through the church, assaulted every thing That wrought for good, and cat-like watched to spring Upon whoever rose to strike a blow To break the chains with which men's souls were bound. Bearing the cross before them, hell's dark crowd Rushed wildly on to crush each rising thought That in the freedom-loving soul sought vent In deed of daring, or, in speech intent On firing other minds, was heard aloud; In fear and hate the hosts of fury wrought. Christ poured his consolation in the ear Of every suffering soul, and fired the heart To meet with resignation calm the fate Imposed upon it by the powers of hate; And every body slain let loose, to cheer, A spirit nerved to play a noble part. 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. Hell still is tempting men with wealth and power, And finds of Judases a fearful host; Free thought and speech it everywhere assails, Religion's sure decay loudly bewails, But while it reads the tokens of the hour, It still persists in threat and empty boast. It mumbles prayers in legislative halls, And in our courts of justice utters oaths; It clutches every thing within its reach, And hangs tenacious as the sucking leech; Where'er we go its mocking presence palls, And every thinking mind its workings loathes. Its ministers assume superior airs, And claim to compensate all earthly loss; They help to rob the unsuspecting mass, And for their sorrows, with a cheek of brass, They give them rich rewards of empty prayers, And impudently point unto the cross! As if an instrument of torture could Be grateful to the sight of suffering man! Or he should willingly be crucified Because good men upon the cross have died! But hell adopts this horrid thing of wood And bears the bloody symbol in the van. It is a cruel mockery of all That Christ has taught to an unthinking world— A gross perversion of the living light With which he sought to open human sight; 'Tis Satan's beacon, leading to enthrall— Banner of night, by Satan's hosts unfurled. All progress made has been despite the power That marshaled all its forces 'neath the cross; The hosts of light, led on by Christ, have fought And slowly won the field in spite of aught The foe beneath the symbol of the hour Could treacherously do to bring them loss. And Christ will overwhelmingly, at last, Defeat the hosts of darkness and of death; For Truth and Justice surely will bear sway, To usher in the bright millennial day, And Satan's hosts from power on earth to cast And fill each longing soul with vital breath. But just so long as men will give support And countenance unto the wily church, They may expect the fiends of wrong and wrath To scatter want and woe along their path, For by such act they gross injustice court And will that on its banner victory perch. Let all men, then, ignore the church and strive For Justice, Truth, and true Fraternal Love; Let them resolve to be forever free, And walk in reason's light, so all may see They tread the straight and narrow path, alive To good and peace, as symboled by the dove. Thus may a bloodless victory be won, And Satan's hosts cast out forevermore; The cross of hell from earth will disappear Before the symbol of a higher sphere; Thus may the reign of reason be begun, And earth become to Heaven an open door. Oh! let the scales fall from the eyes of men, And all the horrors of the cross appear; Then Satan's reign on earth will have an end, And men no more the craven knee will bend; But Justice, Freedom, Love, and Truth, will then Bring in the prophesied millennial year.