"Isaiah answer'd. I saw no God nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded and remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote." These words are quoted from one of Blake's "Memorable Fancies" in the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," and in some such vein as that which Blake makes Isaiah describe, did he himself commence the writing of the "Prophetic Books." The sense of his great, though somewhat indefinite mission, came upon Blake gradually. Much of his time, even when engaged in designing, engraving and painting, was spent in thinking immense and original thoughts. They tyrannized over him, these thoughts, and instead of his guiding their sun-ward and most daring flight, they drew him along on their reckless course, sometimes bringing him to complete overthrow, as did the horses of Apollo when driven by Phaethon. In the same "Memorable Fancy" from which I have already quoted, Blake continues, "Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? He (Isaiah) replied, All poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion moved mountains: but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything." Blake, however, _was_. He had a fine contempt for argument and proof. Nothing mattered to him but the inner witness, the lively intuition of internal evidence. Convinced as he was of the cruelty of the fate that had chained eternal man into the bondage of the life of the senses and the division of the sexes; safe-guarding each self-hood from merging in the universal, by laws of restraint and prohibition, Blake took upon himself to proclaim a gospel of deliverance, to awaken man to the perception of the Infinite which lay without the clogged-up chinks of his senses. He passionately advocated--Blake, the peaceful citizen, the faithful husband--the freedom of the senses, that all natural impulses should be enjoyed to the utmost limit and with the frankest delight. The body is but the accident of this life, and its free natural impulses may be trusted, for everything that tends to freedom belongs to eternal life, he thought. Christ was the supreme Saviour, but to his eyes the Christ of orthodox religion was the God of this world, and therefore Christ needed to be held up again before men and exhibited as He really is, before He could be worshipped in truth.