The Deadliest Sin

There are not many sins when once we sift them.     In actions of evolving human souls     Striving to reach high goals     And falling backward into dust and mire,     Some element we find that seems to lift them     Above our condemnation - even higher     Into the realm of pity and compassion.     So beauteous a thing as love itself can fashion     A chain of sins; descending to desire,     It wanders into dangerous paths, and leads     To most unholy deeds,     And light-struck, walks in madness toward the night.     Wrong oft-times is an over-ripened right,     A rank weed grown from some neglected flower,     The lightning uncontrolled:    flames meant for joy     And beauty, used to ravage and destroy.     For sins like these repentance can atone.     There is one sin alone     Which seems all unforgivable, because     It springs from no temptation and no need     And no desire, save to make sweet faith bleed,     And to defame God's laws.     Oh! viler than the murderer or the thief     Who slays the body and who robs the purse,     Is he who strives to kill the mind's belief     And rob it of its hope     Of life beyond this little pain-filled span.     God has no curse     Quite dark enough to punish such a man,     Who, seeing how souls grope     And suffer in this world of mighty losses,     And how hearts stagger on beneath life's crosses,     Yet strives to rob them of their staff of faith     And make them think dark death     Ends all existence; think the worshipped child     Cold in its mother's arms is but a clod     And has not gone to God;     That souls united by love undefiled     And holy can by death be torn asunder     To meet no more.     It must be true that under     This earth of ours there lies a Purgatory     For those who seek to rob grief of the glory     That shines through hope of life immortal.    In     Sin's lexicon this is the vilest sin -     Needless and cruel, ugly, gaunt and mean,     Without one poor excuse on which to lean,     A vandal sin, that with no hope of gain     Finds pleasure only in another's pain.     God! though all other sins on earth persist,     Strike dumb the blatant, loud-mouthed atheist.