p. 9 | Sin’s Slavery by Whittier

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 5, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 26.

Sin’s Slavery

By Whittier

A BITTER cup each life must drain; The groaning earth is cursed with pain, And, like the scroll the angel bore The shuddering Hebrew seer before, O’erwrit alike without, within, With all the woes which follow sin; But bitterest of the ills beneath Whose load man totters down to death, Is that which plucks the regal crown Of freedom from his forehead down, And snatches from his powerless hand The sceptered sign of self-command, Effacing with the chain and rod The image and the seal of God; Till from his nature, day by day, The manly virtues fall away, And leave him naked, blind, and mute, The godlike merging in the brute! — Whittier.