What really drew me to this painting by William Blake is that it appears to bring together elements of heaven and earth. The people in the bottom of the picture are standing on the ground with trees behind them, yet they are surrounded by bright auras that suggest that they are angels and not of this earth. In the sky above, you can see different people, with one of them resting on the moon. This painting speaks to the aspect of religious melancholy where those following religion feel torn between heaven and the world.

From the very beginning of the world, starting with the Fall in the Garden of Eden, there has been a distinct division between good and evil. In the Bible, believers are instructed to reject the darkness of the world in the favor of God and His light. While this may seem easy, it is in fact very difficult to turn away from human nature and sinfulness to live in the light. Those who choose to follow a religious path are constantly torn between the familiarity and darkness of the world in which they live and following the path of light to a God and heaven which they cannot see. This leads to religious melancholy, where they are constantly trying to choose between the straight and narrow path or the wide and easy path.

Additionally, those who do not believe in the grace of God but only in earning salvation will eternally be disappointed in their own efforts. Robert Burton emphasized this idea in his writings, and he spoke of the disparity between how we want to value spiritual things more than worldly ones, yet the opposite ends up happening. This is an idea based in the Bible, where in Matthew 26:41, Jesus said to his disciples "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" (New International Version, 2011). This idea has since been used in more secular connotations to describe weak willpower, yet the idea remains in religious melancholy.

Those who choose to follow religion are drawn in by the promise of eternal life in paradise with God, yet on the other hand they are threatened with the idea of burning in hell with Satan. These opposing destinies quite easily lead to religious melancholy, especially due to the fact that the world is referenced as a place of darkness. They are told in the Bible that the earth is not their true home, yet that is where they live and all that they know. This leads to a pull in two opposing directions: to live a worldly life and enjoy the moment, or to reject the world in favor of a future promise. The stress of such a decision regarding their eternal fate was not an easy one by any means. Furthermore, William Blake proposed an idea congruent with religious melancholy, "that there is a road to happiness by way of suffering and that this happiness might be more adequately enjoyed in a melancholy state of mind" (Munteanu, 7).

With this juxtaposition of heaven and earth, good and evil, and joy and suffering, it makes sense that a religious person being pulled between the two sides may feel extreme melancholy and distress. These feelings, although less related to the suffering for a noble cause discussed on the previous page, are a reflection of the suffering due to human nature.