"For Who Maketh Thee to Differ?" by Josiah Conder
1 Cor. IV. 7.
My God, I thank thee I am free,
Born on this happy soil,
Where equal laws give liberty,
And wages sweeten toil.
Born on this happy soil,
Where equal laws give liberty,
And wages sweeten toil.
I would not be a fettered slave,
The pomp of courts to share:
Better the rudest lot to brave,
Than glittering chains to wear.
The pomp of courts to share:
Better the rudest lot to brave,
Than glittering chains to wear.
But, oh! it might have been my fate,
Born of a darker race,
To fret out life's contracted date
In predial bondage base:
Doomed daily, with my fellow-gang,
To vex the exhausted soil,
And feel the whip with torturing fang
Urging my fainting toil.
Or, guilty of the Christian's creed,
Caught in the act of prayer,
My tortured flesh had learned to bleed,
Like those poor martyrs there.
Yet, had the gospel set me free,
As that can disenthral,
The earnest of Heaven's liberty
Had compensated all.
O when shall Truth's redeeming reign
To Sin's foul sway succeed,
And minds shake off the slavish chain,
And souls be free indeed?
Josiah Conder.
May, 1833.