Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/253

Rh bow in lamentation; before that of death, on the left, the Pharisees are pleading their own righteousness. The one shines with beams of light, the other utters lightnings and tempests.

A Last Judgment is necessary because fools flourish. Nations flourish under wise rulers, and are depressed under foolish rulers; it is the same with individuals as with nations. Works of art can only be produced in perfection where the man is either in affluence or is above the care of it. Poverty is the fool's rod, which at last is turned on his own back. That is a Last Judgment, when men of real art govern, and pretenders fall. Some people, and not a few artists, have asserted that the painter of this picture would not have done so well if he had been properly encouraged. Let those who think so reflect on the state of nations under poverty, and their incapability of art. Though art is above either, the argument is better for affluence than poverty; and, though he would not have been a greater artist, yet he would have produced greater works of art, in proportion to his means. A Last Judgment is not for the purpose of making bad men better, but for the purpose of hindering them from oppressing the good.

Around the throne, heaven is opened and the nature of eternal things displayed, all springing from the Divine Humanity. All beams from Him: He is the bread and the wine; He is the water of life. Accordingly, on each side of the opening heaven appears an Apostle: that on the right represents Baptism; that on the left represents the Lord's Supper.

All life consists of these two: throwing off error and knaves from our company continually, and receiving truth or wise men into our company continually. He who is out of the Church and opposes it is no less an agent of religion than he who is in it: to be an error, and to be cast out, is a part of God's design. No man can embrace true art till he has explored and cast out false art (such is the nature of mortal O2