This is surely bedrock, a real fixed point for thought and conduct. True reverence for and a right relation to the living man, my neighbor-here is the law and the prophets.

For Blake, then, morality is the art of fellowship; and the virtues he extols are the society-making graces. It is from this that his continual emphasis on forgiveness comes. "The Spirit of Jesus," he says, "is continual forgiveness of sins." And again, "The Glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness."

"Why should punishment weave the veil with iron wheels of war

When forgiveness might weave it with wings of Cherubim?"

The law of God for human life is reciprocity, mutuality -call it what you will. In a world where men need and cannot do without each other, where separation spells starvation of spirit, the tempers and policies which sunder men spring from a kind of atheism. Instead of the healing and unitive influences which should produce the society of his dreams, Blake saw the world overrun with passions of vengeance, doctrines of punishment, which, while they were supposed to repress the evil in the world, deepened and widened the gulf which divides man from his fellow. Our human frailty makes it impossible for us to live together except upon a basis of mutual forbearance and forgiveness. The true life is that which makes for human brotherhood. That man has found himself who has learned to bind his brother-man to his heart in healing, forgiving, long-suffering love.

Fifth Week, Seventh Day

And I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and behold a man with a measuring line in his hand. Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof. And, behold, the angel that talked with

me went forth, and another angel went out to meet him, and said unto him, Run, speak to this young man, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, by reason of the multitude of men and cattle therein. For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and I will be the glory in the midst of her. -Zech. 2:1-5.

To Blake then, Jesus was the core, the heart of an expanding fellowship of redeemed men. Dante saw Him as the central glory of the host of the redeemed in heaven; but Blake's vision is in an earthly setting. He sees Jerusalem arising in England, in the world; and it is to be a Jerusalem like Zechariah's, a Jerusalem without wallsso full of life, so irresistibly expanding that no walls can contain it:

"In my Exchanges every land

Shall walk; and mine in every land
Mutual shall build Jerusalem

Both heart in heart and hand in hand."

This is assuredly the "League of Nations." But Blake sees that it is only to be realized as nations as well as individuals practice fellowship. The old doctrines of sovereignty and empire must give way to an ideal of reciprocity and cooperation. To the jingo patriotism of his own country, Blake addressed a pointed question:

"Is this thy soft family love,
Thy cruel patriarchal pride,
Planting thy family alone,

Destroying all the world beside ?"

The question has not lost its pertinence; indeed it has today a wider challenge. Imperialism, Chauvinism, PanGermanism—all these things and such as these are of their father the devil.

Naturally Blake detested all forms of militarism.

"The strongest poison ever known
Came from Cæsar's royal crown;
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow."

And he has much to say on this subject in the same spirit. But this attitude in Blake's mind was the very reverse of a soft passivity. He was a fighting man; his images are chiefly borrowed from the battlefield. To him, the fighting instinct was a priceless gift of God; and its tragedy as he saw it was that it had been misdirected. Greedy men had exploited it for selfish ends. It was muddied and soiled by the spirit of hate, of revenge, or destruction. But to suppose that there is no way of satisfying the fighting instinct save by the slaughter and destruction of men was, to Blake, mere foolishness. He was no pacifist in the sense of desiring peace above all things else; what he wanted and was ready to fight for was not peace, but fellowship. But that sort of fighting requires peculiar weapons.

"Our wars are wars of life, and wounds of love,

With intellectual spears and longwinged arrows of thought,

Mutual in one another's wrath, all renewing

We live as One Man. For contracting our infinite senses
We behold multitude; or expanding, we behold as One,
As one man all the Universal Family; and that man
We call Jesus the Christ, and He in us, and we in Him,
Live in perfect harmony in Eden the land of life,
Giving, receiving, and forgiving each other's trespasses."

Here, then, it is that Blake places Jesus. He is the Incarnation and Embodiment of the Divine Spirit of fellowship, the source and the channel of the divine-human impulse that makes for fellowship. He is the Soul of the Universal Family, He is the supreme manifestation of the

creative urge of God which expresses itself in many ways, but chiefly and most gloriously in the creative evolution of that society of man which is also the Kingdom of God.

SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION Can you distinguish between Religion and Theology and between Morality and Law? Which do you think more important, a living religion or a sound theology? What is meant by the statement that "the maximum of legal obligation is the minimum of moral obligation"?

Do you think William Blake was right in insisting that the chief end of man was to be creative?

What is William Blake's message to our time?

It has been said that salvation meant to Zaccheus being made a member of a family, his inclusion in a society; and Zacchæus himself felt it to be so, for he began at once to do certain social acts. Read the story of Zaccheus and consider it in the light of Blake's view of Jesus. What are the "society-making virtues"?

CHAPTER VI

The Poet as Philosopher

Browning

(1812-1889)

We saw that it was Browning's view that if Shelley had lived, he would have become a Christian. It may be that Browning recognized in Shelley's mind a certain kinship with his own and felt that he might in time have come to share his own faith. At least it is true that what we see as tendencies in Shelley have reached the point of a robust faith in Browning. It is true we cannot trace very clearly the early stages of the movement of Browning's thought into the faith of his poetry; in any case, it is doubtful whether it is possible to give a systematic account of Browning's mental development. He did not reach this faith altogether by processes of reasoning. "I know," he once wrote, "I have myself been aware of the communication of something more subtle than a ratiocinative process, when the convictions of 'genius' have thrilled my soul to its depths." That is to say, things came to him. He did not indeed despise reasoning processes; nor was he like Blake in his fear of reason; but he knew there were other avenues into truth than those of accurate logic. Browning's faith does, however, stand out as a coherent whole, of which it is possible to give a fairly complete account within narrow limits.

Shelley and Blake were products of an age of revolution, and we have seen the emphasis they laid on liberty.