ursing,
To our own and our masters' dismayal.
'Tis for this that we seek the all-loving,
Whose nature is justice and pity;
And we'll find Him, wherever he's roving,
In country, in town, or in city.

He must show us his justice, who made us;
He must place sin where sin was conceived;
We must know if man's God will upbraid us
Because we both loved and believed.
We must know if man's riches and power,
His titles, crowns, sceptres and ermine,
Weigh with God against womanhood's dower,
Or whether man's guilt they determine.

It would seem that man's God should restrain him,
Or else should avenge our dishonor:
Shall the cries of the hopeless not pain him,
Or shall woman take all guilt upon her?
Let us challenge the maker that made us;
Let us cry to Christ, son of a woman;
We shall learn if, when man has betrayed us,
Heaven's justice accords with the human.

We must know if because we were lowly,
And kept in the place man assigned us,
He could seek us with passions unholy
And be free, while his penalties bind us.
We would ask if his gold buys exemption,
Or whether his manhood acquits him;
How it is that we scarce find redemption
For sins less than his self-law permits him.

Do we dare the Almighty to question?
Shall the clay to the potter appeal?
To whom else shall we go with suggestion?
Shall the vase not complain to the wheel?
God answered Job out of the groaning
Of thunder and whirlwind and hailing;
Will he turn a deaf ear to our moaning,
Or reply to our prayers with railing?

Did you speak of a Christ who is tender--
A deity born of a woman?
Of the sorrowful, God and defender,
And brother and friend of the human?
Long ago He ascended to heaven,
Long ago was His teaching forgotten;
The lump has no longer the leaven,
But is heavy, unwholesome and rotten.

The gods are all man's, whom he praises
For laws that make woman his creature;
For the rest, theological mazes
Furnish work for the salaried preacher.
In the youth of the world it was better,
We had deities then of our choosing;
We could pray, though we wore then a fetter,
To a GODDESS of binding and loosing.

We could kneel in a grove or a temple,
No man's heavy hand on our shou