Page:A channel passage and other poems (IA channelpassageot00swinrich).pdf/71

 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.