The Respectable Burgher On "The Higher Criticism"

Since Reverend Doctors now declare     That clerks and people must prepare     To doubt if Adam ever were;     To hold the flood a local scare;     To argue, though the stolid stare,     That everything had happened ere     The prophets to its happening sware;     That David was no giant-slayer,     Nor one to call a God-obeyer     In certain details we could spare,     But rather was a debonair     Shrewd bandit, skilled as banjo-player:     That Solomon sang the fleshly Fair,     And gave the Church no thought whate'er;     That Esther with her royal wear,     And Mordecai, the son of Jair,     And Joshua's triumphs, Job's despair,     And Balaam's ass's bitter blare;     Nebuchadnezzar's furnace-flare,     And Daniel and the den affair,     And other stories rich and rare,     Were writ to make old doctrine wear     Something of a romantic air:     That the Nain widow's only heir,     And Lazarus with cadaverous glare     (As done in oils by Piombo's care)     Did not return from Sheol's lair:     That Jael set a fiendish snare,     That Pontius Pilate acted square,     That never a sword cut Malchus' ear     And (but for shame I must forbear)     That - - did not reappear! . . .     - Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair,     All churchgoing will I forswear,     And sit on Sundays in my chair,     And read that moderate man Voltaire.