THE MODERN MENDICANT by Frances E. Bolton

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 29, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 48.

THE MODERN MENDICANT

By Frances E. Bolton

BY FRANCES E. BOLTON

She comes as one that’s shorn of power, She comes as one deprived of dower, As one bereaved and desolate, And wails beside grim Caesar’s gate, Beseeching in long, dolorous chant As one who begs,—a mendicant.

Alas! she has indeed lost dower,— The Holy Spirit and its power; For she hath turned from God above, And seeketh to the state for love. She is indeed in wo and want,— A piteous, wailing mendicant.

Grim Caesar o’er the battlement Laughed once to hear her sore lament. His courtiers scoffed to hear her moan, A bride abandoned by her own; For well they knew the reason sore, That made her moan and so implore.

Then came a fiend, a treacherous spy, To urge and then to aid her cry. His fault and hers had made her fate, He needs her help to wrong the state, And enters in with scheme and cant To raise the fallen mendicant.

Alas! for Cæsar. By and by He listens to her flattering cry. He yields his strength to seek her charms, And drunken lies within her arms, As Sampson to Delilah sworn, And knows not that his strength is shorn.

Now what a change has come. Behold! The mendicant wears gem and gold, Her wailing cry is heard no more; She kneels no longer to implore; But laughs assured of power by fate, A Jezebel who rules the state.

Alas! this is the history Of all the church named, “Mystery.” Adulteress she is called by Heaven To whom the power of state is given; Yet heedless of the past, again She strives to sit as queen ’mong men.

Exalted by the world again, The church will bind the souls of men; And, urged by her, the state will stand Her evil mandates to command, That Truth shall bow beneath a yoke, And both the wrath of Heaven provoke.

Yea, it shall come in doom and ire, And men shall see her burned with fire, And wail to see her doom draw on, Her dainties and her glory gone. With her shall fall the ruined state, And those who loved shall share her fate.

“Come out of her, My people, come, Babylon is fallen, flee her doom. Partake not of her sins, that so Ye may not share her plagues of wo. Around the banner rallying stand For faith in Christ, for God’s command.”