Emphasis Preaching Journal

The obscurity and apparent heterodoxy of much of the work of the English poet, artist and visionary William Blake prevented him in life from attaining the sort of celebrity he enjoys today. Filled with a deep and powerful vision of a loving God, he saw a world around him which mouthed the words of love, but whose actions opposed God's ways. His best-known work is the hymn "Jerusalem," which, set to Hubert Parry's stirring melody, became almost a national anthem for England, but which Blake intended as a polemic against the greed and inhumanity of the industrial revolution.