On this is episode of five minutes in church history we are talking about the Tiger in the Lamb not the lion in the Lamb that we know is a biblical language

This is the tiger in the Lamb. This is actually a reference to two poems by the poet William Blake.

William Blake was born in 1757.

He died in 1827.

He is buried in Bunhill Fields in London. This is the dissenters or the non-conformist cemetery

in London. It's the burial place of John Bunyan and Isaac Watts and John Owen and the poet

William Blake. His family were all dissenters. He was a dissenter. He was a poet, he was a dissenter he was a poet he was a painter he was an illustrator

he wasn't all that appreciated in his lifetime but after his lifetime he certainly has

taken his place among the pantheon of the great British poets he's seen as a romantic poet.

I want to talk about two collections of his poetry.

These were entitled Songs of Innocence

and Songs of Experience.

Songs of Innocence was a collection of 19 poems. It was published in 1789. Five years later in 1794 he published songs of experience. 26 poems. So we have 45 poems all together. He was playing off his predecessor,

the great English poet, Milton, who saw these two states of mankind, a state of innocence of course, was Adam and Eve in paradise.

And the songs of experience is William Blake's way of talking about the fall.

Well, one of those poems that comes from the song of experience

is a poem called The Tiger.

And you might remember this line,

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright,

in the forest of the night.

What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry.

Here, William Blake is using the tiger, much like Herman Melville uses the great white whale,

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