But into these darker parts of the book we will not go too deep. Time, patience, and insight on the part of writer and reader might perhaps clear up all details and lay bare much worth sight and study; but only at the expense of much labour and space. It is feasible, and would be worth doing; but not here. If the singular amalgam called Blake’s works should ever get published, and edited to any purpose, this will have to be done by an energetic editor with time enough on his hands and wits enough for the work. We meantime will gather up a few strays that even under these circumstances appear worth hiving. In the address (p. 27) to the Jews, &c., Blake affirms that “Britain was the primitive seat of the patriarchal religion”: therefore, in a literal as well as in a mystical sense, Jerusalem was the emanation of the giant Albion. (This it should seem was, according to the mythology, before the visible world was created; in the time when all things were in the divine undivided world of the gods.) “Ye are united, O ye inhabitants of Earth, in one Religion: the most Ancient, the Eternal, and the Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn it to Wickedness; the Righteous, to Righteousness.” If there be truth in the Jewish tradition, he adds further on, that man anciently contained in his mighty limbs all things in heaven and earth, “and they were separated from him by cruel sacrifices; and when compulsory cruel sacrifices had brought Humanity into a feminine tabernacle in the loins of Abraham and David, the Lamb of God, the Saviour, became apparent on earth as the prophets had foretold: the return of Israel is a return to mental sacrifice and war,” to noble spiritual freedom and labour, which alone can supplant “corporeal war” and violence of error.
The second address (p. 52) “to the Deists” is more singular and more eloquent. Take a few extracts given not quite at random. “He,” says Blake, “who preaches natural religion or morality is a flatterer who means to betray, and to perpetuate tyrant pride and the laws of that Babylon which he foresees shall shortly be destroyed with the spiritual and not the natural sword; he is in the state named Rahab.” The prophet then enforces his law that “man is born a spectre or Satan and is altogether an Evil,” and “must continually be changed into his direct contrary.” Those who persuade him otherwise are his enemies. For “man must and will have some religion; if he has not the religion of Jesus he will have the religion of Satan.” Again, “Will any one say, Where are those who worship Satan under the name of God?—where are they? Listen. Every religion that preaches vengeance for sin is the religion of the enemy and avenger, and not of the forgiver of sin: and their God is Satan named by the Divine Name.” This, he says, must be at root the religion of all who deny revelation and adore nature;[64] for mere nature is Satanic. Adam the first man was created at the same time with Satan, when the earth-giant Albion was cast into a trance of sleep: the first man was a part of the universal fluent nature made opaque; the first fiend, a part contracted; and only by these qualities of opacity and contraction can man or devil have separate natural existence. Those, the prophet adds in his perverse manner, who profess belief in natural virtue are hypocrites; which those cannot be who “pretend to be holier than others, but confess their sins before all the world.” Therefore there was never a religious hypocrite! “Rousseau thought men good by nature; he found them evil, and found no friend. Friendship cannot exist without forgiveness of sins continually.” And so forth.
At p. 66 is a passage recalling the myth of the “Mental Traveller,” and which seems to bear out the interpretation we gave to that misty and tempestuous poem. This part of the prophecy, describing the blind pitiful cruelty of divided qualities set against each other, is full of brilliant and noble passages. Even the faint symbolic shapes of Tirzah and all her kind assume now and then a splendour of pathos, utter words of stately sound, complain and appeal even to some recognizable purpose. So much might here be cited that we will prefer to cite nothing but this slight touch of myth. In the world of time “they refuse liberty to the male: not like Beulah,
Where every female delights to give her maiden to her husband.”
The female searches sea and land for gratification to the male genius, who in return clothes her in gems and gold and feeds her with the food of Eden: hence all her beauty beams. But this is only in the “land of dreams,” where dwell things “stolen from the human imagination by secret amorous theft:” and when the spectres of the dead awake in that land, “all the jealousies become murderous:—forming a commerce to sell loves with moral law; an equal balance, not going down with decision: therefore—mutual hate returns and mutual deceit and mutual fear.” In fact, the divorce batteries are here open again.
The third address “to the Christians” is too long to transcribe here; and should in fairness have been given in the biography. Its devout passion and beauty of words might have won notice, and earned tolerance for the more erratic matter in which it lies embedded. “What is the joy of heaven but improvement in the things of the spirit? What are the pains of hell but ignorance, bodily lust, idleness, and devastation of the things of the spirit?” Mental gifts, given of Christ, “always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrite as sins; but that which is a sin in the sight of cruel man is not so in the sight of our kind God.” Every Christian after his ability should openly engage in some mental pursuit; for “to labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem; and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her builders.” A little before he has said: “I know of no other Christianity and no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of imagination.” God being a spirit, and to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, are not all his gifts spiritual gifts? “The Christians then must give up the religion of Caiaphas, the dark preacher of death, of sin, of sorrow, and of punishment, typified as a revolving wheel, a devouring sword; and recognize that the labours of Art and Science alone are the labours of the Gospel.” As to religion, “Jesus died because he strove against the current of this wheel—opposing nature; it is natural religion. But Jesus is the bright preacher of life, creating nature from this fiery law, by self-denial and forgiveness of sin.” So speaks to the prophet “a Watcher and a Holy One;” bidding him
“Go therefore, cast out devils in Christ’s name,
Heal thou the sick of spiritual disease;
Pity the evil; for thou art not sent
To smite with terror and with punishments
Those that are sick. * * * *
But to the publicans and harlots go:
Teach them true happiness; but let no curse
Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace.
For hell is opened to heaven; thine eyes behold
The dungeons burst, the prisoners set free.
England, awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy sister calls;
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death
And chase her from thy ancient walls?
Thy hills and valleys felt her feet
Gently upon their bosoms move;
Thy gates beheld sweet Zion’s ways;
Then was a time of joy and love.
And now the time returns again;
Our souls exult; and London’s towers
Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
In England’s green and pleasant bowers.”
Much might also be said, had one leave of time, of the last chapter; of the death of the earth-giant through jealousy, and his resurrection when the Saviour appeared to him revealed in the likeness and similitude of Time: of the ultimate deliverance of all things, chanted in a psalm of high and tidal melody; a resurrection wherein all things, even “Tree, Metal, Earth and Stone,” become all
“Human forms identified; living, going forth, and returning wearied
Into the planetary lives of years, months, days, and hours: reposing
And then awaking into his bosom in the life of immortality.
And I heard the name of their emanations: they are named Jerusalem.”
We will add one reference, to pp. 61-62, where God shows to Jerusalem in a vision “Joseph the carpenter in Nazareth, and Mary his espoused wife.” Through the vision of their story the forgiveness of Jerusalem also, when she has gone astray from her Lord, is made manifest to her.