discountenance
every one
among you who shall pretend to despise art and science.
among you who shall pretend to despise art and science.
Yeats
' Dante, indeed, taught, in the 'Purgatorio,' that sin and
virtue are alike from love, and that love is from God; but this love
he would restrain by a complex eternal law, a complex external Church.
Blake upon the other hand cried scorn upon the whole spectacle of
external things, a vision to pass away in a moment, and preached the
cultivated life, the internal Church which has no laws but beauty,
rapture and labour. 'I know of no other Christianity, and of no other
gospel, than the liberty, both of body and mind, to exercise the
divine arts of imagination, the real and eternal world of which this
vegetable universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in
our eternal or imaginative bodies when these vegetable mortal bodies
are no more. The Apostles knew of no other gospel. What are all their
spiritual gifts? What is the divine spirit? Is the Holy Ghost any other
than an intellectual fountain? What is the harvest of the gospel and
its labours? What is the talent which it is a curse to hide? What are
the treasures of heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves? Are
they any other than mental studies and performances? What are all the
gifts of the gospel, are they not all mental gifts? Is God a spirit
who must be worshipped in spirit and truth? Are not the gifts of the
spirit everything to man? O ye religious!
discountenance every one
among you who shall pretend to despise art and science. I call upon you
in the name of Jesus! What is the life of man but art and science? Is
it meat and drink? Is not the body more than raiment? What is mortality
but the things relating to the body which dies? What is immortality
but the things relating to the spirit which lives immortally? What is
the joy of Heaven but improvement in the things of the spirit? What
are the pains of Hell but ignorance, idleness, bodily lust, and the
devastation of the things of the spirit? Answer this for yourselves,
and expel from amongst you those who pretend to despise the labours
of art and science, which alone are the labours of the gospel. Is not
this plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, and not
pronounce heartily that to labour in knowledge is to build Jerusalem,
and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her builders? And
remember, he who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling
it pride, and selfishness, and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every
mental gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrites
as sins. But that which is sin in the sight of cruel man is not sin
in the sight of our kind God. Let every Christian as much as in him
lies engage himself openly and publicly before all the world in some
mental pursuit for the building of Jerusalem. ' I have given the whole
of this long passage because, though the very keystone of his thought,
it is little known, being sunk, like nearly all of his most profound
thoughts, in the mysterious prophetic books.
virtue are alike from love, and that love is from God; but this love
he would restrain by a complex eternal law, a complex external Church.
Blake upon the other hand cried scorn upon the whole spectacle of
external things, a vision to pass away in a moment, and preached the
cultivated life, the internal Church which has no laws but beauty,
rapture and labour. 'I know of no other Christianity, and of no other
gospel, than the liberty, both of body and mind, to exercise the
divine arts of imagination, the real and eternal world of which this
vegetable universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in
our eternal or imaginative bodies when these vegetable mortal bodies
are no more. The Apostles knew of no other gospel. What are all their
spiritual gifts? What is the divine spirit? Is the Holy Ghost any other
than an intellectual fountain? What is the harvest of the gospel and
its labours? What is the talent which it is a curse to hide? What are
the treasures of heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves? Are
they any other than mental studies and performances? What are all the
gifts of the gospel, are they not all mental gifts? Is God a spirit
who must be worshipped in spirit and truth? Are not the gifts of the
spirit everything to man? O ye religious!
discountenance every one
among you who shall pretend to despise art and science. I call upon you
in the name of Jesus! What is the life of man but art and science? Is
it meat and drink? Is not the body more than raiment? What is mortality
but the things relating to the body which dies? What is immortality
but the things relating to the spirit which lives immortally? What is
the joy of Heaven but improvement in the things of the spirit? What
are the pains of Hell but ignorance, idleness, bodily lust, and the
devastation of the things of the spirit? Answer this for yourselves,
and expel from amongst you those who pretend to despise the labours
of art and science, which alone are the labours of the gospel. Is not
this plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, and not
pronounce heartily that to labour in knowledge is to build Jerusalem,
and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her builders? And
remember, he who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling
it pride, and selfishness, and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every
mental gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrites
as sins. But that which is sin in the sight of cruel man is not sin
in the sight of our kind God. Let every Christian as much as in him
lies engage himself openly and publicly before all the world in some
mental pursuit for the building of Jerusalem. ' I have given the whole
of this long passage because, though the very keystone of his thought,
it is little known, being sunk, like nearly all of his most profound
thoughts, in the mysterious prophetic books.
