THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL.
59
- Was Jesus born of a virgin pure
- With narrow soul and looks demure?
- If He intended to take on sin
- His mother should an harlot have been,
- Just such a one as Magdalen
- With seven devils in her pen.
- Or were Jew virgins still more cursed,
- And with more sucking devils nursed?
- Or what was it that He took on
- That He might bring salvation?
- A body subject to be tempted,
- From neither pain nor grief exempted, —
- Or such a body as might not feel
- The passions that with sinners deal?
- Yes, but they say He never fell.
- Ask Caiaphas, for he can tell.
- "He mocked the Sabbath, and he mocked
- The Sabbath's God, and he unlocked
- The evil spirits from their shrines,
- And turned fishermen to divines,
- O'erturned the tent of secret sins,
- And all its golden cords and pins;
- 'Tis the bloody shrine of war,
- Poured around from star to star, —
- Halls of justice, hating vice,
- Where the devil combs his lice.
- He turned the devils into swine
- That he might tempt the Jews to dine;
- Since when a pig has got a look
- That for a Jew may be mistook.
- ' Obey your parents.' What says he?
- ' Woman, what have I to do with thee?
- No earthly parents I confess,
- I am doing my father's business.'
- He scorned earth's parents, scorned earth's God
- And mocked the one and the other rod;
- His seventy disciples sent
- Against religion and government,
- They by the sword of Justice fell,
- And him their cruel murderer tell.
- He left his father's trade to roam
- A wandering vagrant without home,
- And thus he others' labours stole
- That he might live above control.
- The publicans and harlots he
- Selected for his company,
- And from the adultress turned away
- God's righteous law that lost its prey."