The Everlasting Gospel -- William Blake's preferred version

This is the closest to a final version there is, as judged by W.B. Yeats.

The Vision of Christ that thou dost see,

Is my vision's greatest enemy.

Thine has a long, hook nose like thine,

Mine has a snub nose like mine.

Thine is the Friend of all Mankind,

Mine speaks in Parables to the blind.

Thine loves the same world that mine hates,

Thy heaven-doors are my hell-gates.

Socrates taught what Melitus

Loathed as a nation's bitterest curse.

And Caiaphas was, in his own mind,

A benefactor to mankind.

Doth read the Bible day and night,

But thou readest black where I read white.

Was Jesus humble, or did He
Give any proofs of humility;
Boast of high things with a humble tone,
And give with charity a stone?
When but a child He ran away,
And left His parents in dismay.
When they had wandered three days long,
This was the word upon His tongue:
"No, earthly parents, I confess
I am doing My Father's business.
When the rich learned Pharisee
Came to consult Him secretly,
Upon his heart with iron pen
He wrote, " Ye must be born again." 
He was too proud to take a bribe;
He spoke with authority, not like a scribe. 
He says, with most consummate art, 
" Follow me : I am meek and lowly of heart," 
As that is the only way to escape 
The miser's net and the glutton's trap. 
He who loves his enemies hates his friends. 
This surely was not what Jesus intends, 
But the sneaking pride of heroic schools, 
And the scribes and Pharisees' virtuous rules ; 
But He acts with honest triumphant pride,
And this is the cause that Jesus died.
He did not die with Christian ease, 
Asking pardon of His enemies. 
If He had, Caiaphas would forgive: 
Sneaking submission can always live. 
He had only to say that God was the Devil, 
And the Devil was God, like a Christian civil.

Mild Christian regrets to the Devil confess 
For affronting him thrice in the wilderness
Like to Priestley, and Bacon, and Newton,
Poor spiritual knowledge is not worth a button.
But thus the Gospel of St. Isaac confutes, 
"God can only be known by His attributes." 
He had soon been bloody Caesar's elf, 
And at last he would have been Cresar himself. 
And as for the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, 
Or Christ and His Father, it's all a boast, 
Or pride and fallacy of the imagination, 
That disdains to follow this world's fashion. 
To teach doubt and experiment, 
Certainly was not what Christ meant.

What was He doing all that time, 
From ten years old to manly prime ? 
Was He then idle, or the less, 
About His father's business ? 
Or was His wisdom held in scorn, 
Before His wrath began to burn, 
In miracles throughout the land, 
That quite unnerved the (?) seraph hand ? 
If He had been Antichrist — creeping Jesus — 
He'd have done anything to please us: 
Gone sneaking into synagogues, 
And not used the elders and priests like dogs, 
But humble as a lamb or ass, 
Obeyed Himself to Caiaphas. 
God wants not man to humble himself. 
That is the trick of the ancient elf. 
This is the race that Jesus ran : 
Humble to God, haughty to man. 
Cursing the rulers before the people, 
Even to the temple's highest steeple.

And when He humbled Himself to God, 
Then descended the cruel rod.
If thou humblest thyself thou humblest Me. 
Thou also dwellest in eternity. 
Thou art a man. God is no more. 
Thy own humanity learn to adore ; 
For that is my spirit of life. 
Awake, arise to spiritual strife, 
And thy revenge abroad display, 
In terrors at the last judgment day. 
God's mercy and long suffering 
Are but the sinner to justice to bring. 
Thou on the cross for them shall pray, 
And take revenge at the last day. 
Jesus replied in thunders hurled, 
" I never will pray for the world ; 
Once I did so when I prayed in the garden. 
I wished to take with me a bodily pardon. 
Can that which was of women born, 
In the absence of the morn, 
When the soul fell into sleep, 
And archangels round it weep, 
Shooting out against the light, 
Fibres of a deadly night, 
Reasoning upon its own dark fiction, 
In doubt, which is self-contradiction ? 
Humility is only doubt, 
And does the sun and moon blot out, 
Roofing over with thorns and stems 
The buried soul and all its gems. 
This life's five windows of the soul 
Distort the heavens from pole to pole, 
And leads you to believe a lie, 
When you see with not through the eye, 
Which was born in a night to perish in a night, 
When the soul slept in beams of light."
Was Jesus chaste, or did he

Give any lessons in chastity ?

The Morning blushed fiery red.

Mary was found in adulterous bed.

Earth groaned beneath, and Heaven above

Trembled at discovery of love.

Jesus was sitting in Moses' chair.

They brought the trembling woman there.

Moses commands she be stoned to death.

What was the sound of Jesus' breath ?

He laid his hand on Moses' law.

The ancient heavens in silent awe,

Writ with curses from pole to pole,

All away began to roll.

The Earth trembling and naked lay

In secret bed of mortal clay.

On Sinai fell the hand Divine,

Putting back the bloody shrine,

And she heard the breath of God

As she heard by Eden's flood.

" Good and evil are no more ;

Sinai's trumpets cease to roar.

Cease, finger of God, to write ;

The heavens are not clean in thy sight.

Thou art good, and thou alone ;

Nor may the sinner cast one stone.

To be good only, is to be

As God or else a Pharisee.

Thou Angel of the Presence Divine,

That didst create this body of mine,

Wherefore hast thou writ these laws

And created Hell's dark jaws ?

My presence I will take from thee.

A cold leper thou shalt be,

Though thou wast so pure and bright

That Heaven was not clean in thy sight;

Though thy oath turned Heaven pale,

Though thy covenant built Hell's jail,

Though thou dost all to chaos roll

With the serpent for its soul.

Still the breath Divine does move,

And the breath Divine is love.

Mary, fear not. Let me see

The seven devils that torment thee.

Hide not from my sight thy sin,

That forgiveness thou mayst win.

Has no man condemned thee?"

"No man, Lord." "Then what is he

Who shall accuse thee? Come ye forth,

Fallen fiends of Heavenly birth

That have forgot your ancient love

And driven away my trembling dove.

You shall bow before her feet;

You shall lick the dust for meet,

And though you cannot love, but hate,

You shall be beggars at love's gate.

What was thy love? Let me see it.

Was it love, or dark deceit?"

"Love too long from me has fled.

'Twas dark deceit to earn my bread.

'Twas covet, or 'twas custom, or

Some trifle not worth caring for

That they may call a shame and sin;

Love's temple that God dwelleth in,

And hide in secret hidden shrine

The naked human form divine

And render that a lawless thing

On which the soul expands her wing.
But this, O Lord, this was my sin,

When first I let the devils in,

In dark pretence to chastity,

Blaspheming love, blaspheming Thee.

Thence rose secret adulteries,

And thence did covet also rise.

My sin thou hast forgiven me.

Canst thou forgive my blasphemy?

Canst thou return to this dark hell,

And in my burning bosom dwell?

And canst thou die that I may live

And canst thou pity and forgive? "

Then rolled the shadowy Man away

From the limbs of Jesus to make them his prey,

An ever-devouring appetite

Glistering with festering venoms bright,

Saying, — " Crucify this cause of distress,

Who don't keep the secret of holiness!

The mental powers by disease we bind,

But he heals the deaf, the dumb, the blind,

Whom God hath alHicted for secret ends.

He comforts and heals and calls them friends,

But when Jesus was crucified

Then was perfected his galling pride.

In three days he devoured his prey,

And still devours this body of clay.

For dust and clay is the serpent's meat

That never was meant for man to eat."