Once to every man and nation, a great hymn

 I usually have a hymn in my morning devotions, and today it was "Once to every man and nation." I looked through my various hymn resources and couldn't find it, although I was almost marching and humming from the kitchen to the library. I knew it; why couldn't I find it?

That's not the title.  Actually, it's from a poem called "The Present Crisis," written by a very famous 19th century poet, James Russell Lowell, in protest of the Mexican War and slavery, published in 1845. Lowell was an ardent abolitionist.

For me, this hymn from "The Present Crisis" is the current crisis of life vs. death--abortion. Yes, the word slave appears a few times in the poem, but it could be slave to materialism, an ideology or "reproductive freedom."   Death is in every platform and policy of the Democrats, and although Republicans don't write it into their mission statement, many do support abortion. Imagine, a country hoping to succeed in economics, education, technology, safety and health, and virtue by destroying the weak and helpless? It should be our anthem, as it was for abolitionists in the 19th century, and for Martin Luther King, Jr. for civil rights in the 20th century. It speaks of man and nation, truth and falsehood, darkness and light. The hymn begins with the 5th stanza of the poem, so there is much more. East to west, hut and palace, right and wrong, conscious and unconscious, gain or loss, "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne," and "on the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands." Listen closely.

 https://youtu.be/cSMqesZz3tU?si=alcdkTshtIDxjFal

Also wrote about this in 2020 Collecting My Thoughts: Once to every man and nation when I had a Methodist hymnal on hand.