Take heart-the Waster builds again,—
A charmed life old Goodness hath;
The tares may perish, but the grain
Is not for death.

God works in all things; all obey

His first propulsion from the night:
Wake thou and watch!-the world is grey
With morning light!

CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.

[In the report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S. C., on the 4th of the 9th month, 1835, published in the Courier of that city, it is stated, "The clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene."]

JUST God!—and these are they

Who minister at thine altar, God of Right!
Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay
On Israel's Ark of light!

What! preach, and kidnap men?
Give thanks,—and rob thy own afflicted poor?
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
Bolt hard the captive's door?

What! servants of thy own

Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
The homeless and the outcast,-fettering down
The tasked and plundered slave!

Pilate and Herod friends!

Chief priests and rulers as of old combine!
Just God and holy! is that church, which lends
Strength to the spoiler, thine?

Paid hypocrites, who turn

Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book

Of those high words of truth which search and burn In warning and rebuke;

Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!

And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord
That, from the toiling bondman's utter need,
Ye pile your own full board.

How long, O Lord! how long
Shall such a priesthood barter truth away,
And, in thy name, for robbery and wrong
At thy own altars pray?

Is not thy hand stretched forth
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite?
Shall not the living God of all the earth,
And heaven above, do right?

Woe then to all who grind

Their brethren of a common Father down!
To all who plunder from the immortal mind
Its bright and glorious crown!

Woe to the priesthood! woe

To those whose hire is with the price of blood,—
Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go,
The searching truths of God!

Their glory and their might

Shall perish; and their very names shall be
Vile before all the people, ir the light

Of a world's liberty.

Oh speed the moment on

When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and Love
And Truth and Right throughout the earth be known,
As in their home above!

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

[In a late publication of L. T. Tasistro,-Random Shots and Southern Breezes, — is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as 66 A GOOD CHRISTIAN!']

"A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!"

Who bids for God's own image?-for his grace,
Which that poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?

My God! can such things be?

Hast thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
Unto thy weakest and thy humblest one
Is even done to thee?

In that sad victim, then,

Child of thy pitying love, I see thee stand,-
Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,
Bound, sold, and scourged again!

A Christian up for sale!

Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask her frame,
Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame,
Her patience shall not fail!

A heathen hand might deal

Back on your heads the gathered wrong of
But her low broken prayer and nightly tears
Ye neither heed nor feel.

Con well thy lesson o'er,

years;

Thou prudent teacher,―tell the toiling slave
No dangerous tale of Him who came to save
The outcast and the poor.

But wisely shut the ray

Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart,
And to her darkened mind alone impart

One stern command,-OBEY!

So shalt thou deftly raise

The market-price of human flesh; and, while
On thee their pampered guest the planters smile,
Thy church shall praise.

Grave, reverend men shall tell

From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest,
While, in that vile South Sodom, first and best
Thy poor disciples sell.

O shame! the Moslem thrall,
Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels,
While turning to the sacred Kebla feels
His fetters break and fall.

Cheers for the turbaned Bey

Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath torn
The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne
Their inmates into day.

But our poor slave in vain

Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes,—
Its rites will only swell his market-price,
And rivet on his chain.

God of all right! how long
Shall priestly robbers at thine altar stand,
Lifting, in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand
And haughty brow of wrong?

Oh, from the fields of cane,

From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cell,From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell, And coffle's weary chain,—

Hoarse, horrible, and strong,

Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,

"How long, O God, how long?"

THE PASTORAL LETTER.

So, this is all,-the utmost reach

Of priestly power the mind to fetter! When laymen think-when women preachA war of words, a "Pastoral Letter!" Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes!

Was it thus with those, your predecessors, Who sealed with racks and fire and ropes Their loving-kindness to transgressors?

A "Pastoral Letter," grave and dull—
Alas! in hoof and horns and features
How different is your Brookfield bull

From him who bellows from St. Peter's! Your pastoral rights and powers from harm, Think ye, can words alone preserve them? Your wiser fathers taught the arm

And sword of temporal power to serve them

O glorious days,-when Church and State
Were wedded by your spiritual fathers,
And on submissive shoulders sat

Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers!
No vile "itinerant" then could mar

The beauty of your tranquil Zion,

But at his peril of the scar

Of hangman's whip and branding-iron.

Then, wholesome laws relieved the Church
Of heretic and mischief-maker,

And priest and bailiff joined in search,

By turns, of Papist, witch, and Quaker! The stocks were at each church's door, The gallows stood on Boston Common, A Papist's ears the pillory bore,

The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman!

Your fathers dealt not as ye deal

With "non-professing" frantic teachers;