Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 3.djvu/156

 152 BLAKE'S RELIGIOUS LYEICS

in Jerusalem, which contrasts on this point 'Natural Religion' with Christianity :

Jesus is the bright Preacher of life,

Creating Nature from this fiery law

By self-denial and forgiveness of sin.

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, like to the Pharisees

Crucifying and encompassing sea and land

For proselytes to tyranny and wrath.

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, and the Prisoners set free.

But whatever Blake's theory of forgiveness may have been, we are grateful to him for a few couplets in which he enforces the duty :

In Heaven the only art of living Is forgetting and forgiving.

Mutual forgiveness of each vice, Such are the gates of Paradise.

H. C. BEECHING. Oxford : Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart