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γ WAS 1 Jesus humble? or did He | |
| Give any proofs of humility? | |
| Boast of high things with humble tone, | |
| And give with charity a stone? | |
| When but a child He ran away, | 5 |
| And left His parents in dismay. | |
| When they had wander’d three days long | |
| These were the words upon His tongue: | |
| ‘No earthly parents I confess: | |
| I am doing My Father’s business.’ | 10 |
| When the rich learnèd Pharisee | |
| Came to consult Him secretly, | |
| Upon his heart with iron pen | |
| He wrote ‘Ye must be born again.’ | |
| He was too proud to take a bribe; | 15 |
| He spoke with authority, not like a Scribe. | |
| He says with most consummate art | |
| ‘Follow Me, I am meek and lowly of heart, | |
| As that is the only way to escape | |
| The miser’s net and the glutton’s trap. | 20 |
| What can be done with such desperate fools | |
| Who follow after the heathen schools? | |
| I was standing by when Jesus died; | |
| What I call’d humility, they call’d pride. | |
| He who loves his enemies betrays his friends. | 25 |
| This surely is not what Jesus intends; | |
| But the sneaking pride of heroic schools, | |
| And the Scribes’ and Pharisees’ virtuous rules; | |
| For He acts with honest, triumphant pride, | |
| And this is the cause that Jesus died. | 30 |
| He did not die with Christian ease, | |
| Asking pardon of His enemies: | |
| If He had, Caiaphas would forgive; | |
| Sneaking submission can always live. | |
| He had only to say that God was the Devil, | 35 |
| And the Devil was God, like a Christian civil; | |
| Mild Christian regrets to the Devil confess | |
| For affronting him thrice in the wilderness; | |
| He had soon been bloody Caesar’s elf, | |
| And at last he would have been Caesar himself, | 40 |
| Like Dr. Priestly and Bacon and Newton— | |
| Poor spiritual knowledge is not worth a button! | |
| For thus the Gospel Sir Isaac confutes: | |
| ‘God can only be known by His attributes; | |
| And as for the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, | 45 |
| Or of Christ and His Father, it’s all a boast | |
| And pride, and vanity of the imagination, | |
| That disdains to follow this world’s fashion.’ | |
| To teach doubt and experiment | |
| Certainly was not what Christ meant. | 50 |
| What was He doing all that time, | |
| From twelve years old to manly prime? | |
| Was He then idle, or the less | |
| About His Father’s business? | |
| Or was His wisdom held in scorn | 55 |
| Before His wrath began to burn | |
| In miracles throughout the land, | |
| That quite unnerv’d the Seraph band? | |
| If He had been Antichrist, Creeping Jesus, | |
| He’d have done anything to please us; | 60 |
| Gone sneaking into synagogues, | |
| And not us’d the Elders and Priests like dogs; | |
| But humble as a lamb or ass | |
| Obey’d Himself to Caiaphas. | |
| God wants not man to humble himself: | 65 |
| That is the trick of the Ancient Elf. | |
| This is the race that Jesus ran: | |
| Humble to God, haughty to man, | |
| Cursing the Rulers before the people | |
| Even to the Temple’s highest steeple, | 70 |
| And when He humbled Himself to God | |
| Then descended the cruel rod. | |
| ‘If Thou humblest Thyself, Thou humblest Me. | |
| Thou also dwell’st in Eternity. | |
| Thou art a Man: God is no more: | 75 |
| Thy own Humanity learn to adore, | |
| For that is My spirit of life. | |
| Awake, arise to spiritual strife, | |
| And Thy revenge abroad display | |
| In terrors at the last Judgement Day. | 80 |
| God’s mercy and long suffering | |
| Is but the sinner to judgement to bring. | |
| Thou on the Cross for them shalt pray— | |
| And take revenge at the Last Day.’ | |
| Jesus replied, and thunders hurl’d: | 85 |
| ‘I never will pray for the world. | |
| Once I did so when I pray’d in the Garden; | |
| I wish’d to take with Me a bodily pardon.’ | |
| Can that which was of woman born, | |
| In the absence of the morn, | 90 |
| When the Soul fell into sleep, | |
| And Archangels round it weep, | |
| Shooting out against the light | |
| Fibres of a deadly night, | |
| Reasoning upon its own dark fiction, | 95 |
| In doubt which is self-contradiction? | |
| Humility is only doubt, | |
| And does the sun and moon blot out, | |
| Rooting over with thorns and stems | |
| The buried soul and all its gems. | 100 |
| This life’s five windows of the soul | |
| Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole, | |
| And leads you to believe a lie | |
| When you see with, not thro’, the eye | |
| That was born in a night, to perish in a night, | 105 |
| When the soul slept in the beams of light. | |
