THE UNFAITHFUL MINISTER IN THE DAY OF GOD.
THIS truly awful account of the unfaithful watchman is from the description of the day of Judgment given in Pollok's "Course of Time." It is essentially a truthful representation. Let all who read it lay its solemn admonitions to heart. Among th' accursed, who sought a hiding place
In vain, from fierceness of Jehovah's rage,
And from the hot displeasure of the Lamb,
Most wretched, most contemptible, most vile,—
Stood the false priest, and in his conscience felt
The fellest gnaw of the undying worm:
And so he might, for he had on his hands
The blood of souls, that would not wipe away.
Hear what he was. He swore in sight of God
And man, to preach his Master, Jesus Christ;
Yet preached himself: he swore that love of souls,
Alone, had drawn him to the church: yet strewed
The path that led to hell with tempting flowers,
And in the ear of sinners, as they took
The way of death, he whispered peace: he swore
Away all love of lucre, all desire
Of earthly pomp: and yet, a princely seat
He liked, and to the clink of mammon's box
Gave most rapacious ear. His prophecies,
He swore, were from the Lord: and yet, taught lies
For gain: with quackish ointment, healed the wounds
And bruises of the soul, outside, but left,
Within, the pestilent matter unobserved,
To sap the moral constitution quite,
And soon to burst again, incurable.
He, with untempered mortar, daubed the walls
Of Zion, saying Peace, when there was none.
The man who came with thirsty soul to hear
Of Jesus, went away unsatisfied:
For he another gospel preached than Paul,
And one that had no Saviour in't: and yet,
His life was worse. Faith, charity, and love,
Humility, forgiveness, holiness,
Were words well lettered in his Sabbath creed;
But with his life he wrote as plain, Revenge,
Pride, tyranny, and lust of wealth, and power
Inordinate, and lewdness unashamed.
He was a wolf in clothing of the lamb,
That stole into the fold of God, and on
The blood of souls, which he did sell to death,
Grew fat: and yet, when any would have turned
Him out, he cried, "Touch not the priest of God."
And that he was anointed, fools believed;
But knew, that day, he was the devil's priest,
Anointed by the hands of sin and death,
And set peculiarly apart to ill,—
While on him smoked the vials of perdition,
Poured measureless. Ah me! what cursing then
Was heaped upon his head by ruined souls,
That charged him with their murder, as he stood,
With eye of all the unredeemed most sad,
Waiting the coming of the Son of Man!