The Everlasting Gospel, by A.L. Morton

[p024] The Everlasting Gospel, a study in the sources of William Blake, by A. L. Morton (Lawrence & Wishart, 7s. 6d.) How seldom does one wish a book was longer! This, how- ever, most decidedly whets one’s appetite for more, a lot more whether by Mr Morton himself or another. This illuminating view of Blake’s background and derivations ought to be used for further studies of the works themselves, the general purport of which now becomes several shades clearer. In outline, Mr Morton’s thesis is that Blake’s ‘Terusalem’ and ‘Everlasting Gospel’, so far from being symbols of his own, date from the time of the English Revolution more than a century earlier, and that Blake was continuing and expressing a still-living revolutionary tradition, that was both English and European. As he says, in Biake’s boyhood, London must have contained many old men who had seen and. spoken to the famous sectaries of the seventeenth century. ‘God is essentially in every creature’, said the Ranters. ‘Everything that lives is holy’, said Blake. ‘Sin and holiness are all one to God, said the Ranters. ‘Good and evil are no more, said Blake. ‘It is God in man that knows himself, believes in himself, prays to himself, said the Ranters. ‘Thine own humanity learn to adore,’ said Blake. It is very clear that much of what has been called Blake's personal and private mysticism was nothing of the sort, but a great poet’s expression of longstanding popular belief and imagery. Short though it is, this invaluable work makes its point very forcibly and convincingly: it is essential reading for anyone with a sense of history and of the complex and tenuous growth of man’s consciousness. ET. Socialist Lawyer