The Present Crisis

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 22, 4 August 1911, Page 3

The Present Crisis

Once to every man and nation comes '.-■•■ the moment to decide In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; ....-.- Some groat cause,, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheer, upon the right, And the choice goes by for ever 'twixt that darkness and that light. Hast thou chosen, O, my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land! Though the cause of : : evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tali angels, to enshield her from all wrong. Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whoso feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till tho judgment hath passed by. Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-graple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on tho scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own. List the ominous stern whisper from tho Delphic cavo within— "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

New occasions teach new duties; Tim© makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, arid onward, ~ who would keep abreast of Truths Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires, w& ourselves must pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly though the desperate winter sea. Nor attempt the Future's portal with, the Past's glood-rusted key. •—J. It. Lowell.