The Divine Image and The Human Abstract by William Blake analysis

The Divine Image

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

All pray in their distress;

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

Blake believed that Man and God were identical.  God became Man in the form of Jesus – but every man has God within him. To revile another man is to revile God himself.

Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love are natural human emotions – but these emotions are God himself.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our father dear,

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is Man, his child and care.

In feeling these beautiful emotions we experience the best of God and Man – and God and Man are completely linked.

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

Spontaneous emotions that arise in distress bring us close to God because they are God himself.

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, Turk, or Jew;

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

God is beyond organized religion. In it not a man’s BELIEFS that make him religious – it is his emotions.  Man is more than the religion he espouses. Man is God himself.

Blake believes in the divinity of human nature.

Blake quotes:

‘Human Nature is the image of God. The worship of God is honouring his gift in other men..those who envy or calumniate great…