No human character has proved too sacred

For these ingenious men to anatomise :

Witness the purest and the noblest minded

Of English statesman and philosophers,

The founder of the State of Pennsylvania,



152 THE SETTING SUN.
A man at once of piety and genius,

Accomplished, eloquent; a Christian gentleman:

And yet Macaulay, a mean crawling viper.
Snapped at him with his fangs, and bit himself, —

The just reward of his malignity.
To such a pitch of daring have men come

That even Christ Himself, the Son of God,

Who bore, for us, atoning agony.
That we might be His fellow-heirs of glory.
Is laid upon the cold dissecting-table

For heartless jackanapes to cut and hack,

And try to prove him nothing but a man —

Yet only prove themselves not men, but bloodhounds.
I have no unity with gifted men.
However learned or however clever.
Who set aside the truths of revelation
As often as they clash with their opinions.
Bringing the doctrines of the Holy Bible
Unto the fallible bar of their vain minds,
And setting up a standard of the truth
That even Lucifer himself must laugh at
As blowflies busily hum about a carcase,
Seeking for crevices to lay their eggs in.
So do these learned transcendental sceptics —
Biblical blowflies — with persistent zeal.
Not to discover truth, but seeming error,
Believing naught save their own unbelief.
Buzz round the Bible to find out its faults,
And so insinuate into every part,
Their little, loathsome, mischievous, infidel eggs.
THE SETTING SUN. I S3

Which, when they hatch, become devouring maggots.
