‘I gave thee liberty and life, O lovely Jerusalem,
And thou hast bound me down upon the Stems of Vegetation.
I gave thee Sheep-walks upon the Spanish Mountains, Jerusalem,
I gave thee Priam’s City and the Isles of Grecia lovely,
I gave thee Hand & Scofield & the Counties of Albion,
They spread forth like a lovely root into the Garden of God,
They were as Adam before me, united into One Man,
They stood in innocence & their skiey tent reach’d over Asia
To Nimrod’s Tower, to Ham & Canaan walking with Mizraim
Upon the Egyptian Nile, with solemn songs, to Grecia
And sweet Hesperia, even to Great Chaldea & Tesshina,
Following thee as a Shepherd by the Four Rivers of Eden.
Why wilt thou rend thyself apart, Jerusalem,
And build this Babylon, & sacrifice in secret Groves
Among the Gods of Asia, among the fountains of pitch & nitre?
Therefore thy Mountains are become barren, Jerusalem,
Thy Valleys, Plains of burning sand; thy Rivers, waters of death;
Thy Villages die of the Famine, and thy Cities
Beg bread from house to house, lovely Jerusalem.
Why wilt thou deface thy beauty & the beauty of thy little-ones
To please thy Idols in the pretended chastities of Uncircumcision?
Thy Sons are lovelier than Egypt or Assyria; wherefore
Dost thou blacken their beauty by a Secluded place of rest
And a peculiar Tabernacle, to cut the integuments of beauty
Into veils of tears and sorrows, O lovely Jerusalem?
They have perswaded thee to this; therefore their end shall come,
And I will lead thee thro’ the Wilderness in shadow of my cloud,
And in my love I will lead thee, lovely Shadow of Sleeping Albion.’
This is the Song of the Lamb, sung by Slaves in evening time.
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Devils are False Religions. ‘Saul, Saul, Why persecutest thou me?’ |
I give you the end of a golden string. Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate Built in Jerusalem’s wall. |
We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may lose no time from the Work of the Lord. Every moment lost is a moment that cannot be redeemed; every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our station is a folly unredeemable, & is planted like the seed of a wild flower among our wheat. All the tortures of repentance are tortures of self-reproach on account of our leaving the Divine Harvest to the Enemy, the struggles of intanglement with incoherent roots. I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination, Imagination, the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, & 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 were 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 & its Labours? What is that 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 & 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 & in Truth, and are not the Gifts of the Spirit Everything to Man? O ye Religious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise Art & Science! I call upon you in the Name of Jesus! What is the Life of Man but Art & Science? is it Meat & 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 Eternally? 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 & devastation of the things of the Spirit? Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel. Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all & not pronounce heartily That to Labour in Knowledge is to Build up Jerusalem, and to Despise Knowledge is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders. And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another, calling it pride & selfishness & sin, mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift, which 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. Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly & publicly before all the World in some Mental pursuit for the Building up of Jerusalem.
I stood among my valleys of the south
And saw a flame of fire, even as a Wheel
Of fire surrounding all the heavens: it went
From west to east, against the current of
Creation, and devour’d all things in its loud
Fury & thundering course round heaven & earth.
By it the Sun was roll’d into an orb,
By it the Moon faded into a globe
Travelling thro’ the night; for, from its dire
And restless fury, Man himself shrunk up
Into a little root a fathom long.
And I asked a Watcher & a Holy-One
Its Name; he answer’d: ‘It is the Wheel of Religion.’
I wept & said: ‘Is this the law of Jesus,
This terrible devouring sword turning every way?’
He answer’d: ‘Jesus died because he strove
Against the current of this Wheel; its Name
Is Caiaphas, the dark Preacher of Death,
Of sin, of sorrow & of punishment:
Opposing Nature! It is Natural Religion;
But Jesus is the bright Preacher of Life
Creating Nature from this fiery Law
By self-denial & 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 & with punishments
Those that are sick, like to the Pharisees
Crucifying & encompassing sea & land
For proselytes to tyranny & wrath;
But to the Publicans & Harlots go,
Teach them True Happiness, but let no curse
Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace;
For Hell is open’d to Heaven: thine eyes beheld
The dungeons burst & the Prisoners set free.’
England! awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy Sister calls!
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death?
And close her from thy ancient walls.
Thy hills & 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, & London’s towers
Recieve the Lamb of God to dwell
In England’s green & pleasant bowers.