p. 5 | Maintain the Right by John Greenleaf Whittier

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 18, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 24.

Maintain the Right

By John Greenleaf Whittier

Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging, In God's name, let us speak while there is time! Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging, Silence is crime!

What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter, For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us, God and our charter?

Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters, Here the false jurist human rights deny, And, in the church, their proud and skilled abettors Make truth a lie?

Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible, To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood? And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel Both man and God?

Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter With all they left you periled and at stake? Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar The fire awake!

Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come together, Put on the harness for the moral fight, And, with the blessing of your heavenly Father, MAINTAIN THE RIGHT! —J. G. Whittier.