The Works of Jacob Behmen, the "Teutonic Theosopher," translated into
English, were first printed in England in the seventeenth century,
between 1644 and 1662. In the following century a complete edition in
four large volumes was produced by some of the disciples of William Law.
This edition, completed in the year 1781, was compiled in part from the
older English edition, and in part from later fragmentary translations
by Law and others. It is not easily accessible to the general reader,
and, moreover, the greater part of Behmen's Works could not be
recommended save to those who had the time and power to plunge into that
deep sea in search of the many noble pearls which it contains.
Behmen's language and way of thought are remote and strange, and in
reading his thought one has often to pass it through a process of
intellectual translation. This is chiefly true of his earlier work, the
"Aurora" or "Morning Redness." But among those works which he wrote
during the last five years of his life there are some written in a
thought-language less difficult to be understood, yet containing the
essential teaching of this humble Master of Divine Science. From these I
have selected some which may, in a small volume, be useful. It seemed
that for this purpose it would be best to take the "Dialogues of the
Supersensual Life," including as one of them the beautiful, really
separate, Dialogue, called in the Complete Works, "The way from darkness
to true illumination." In the case of neither of these works is the
translation used that of the seventeenth century. The first three
dialogues are a translation made by William Law, one of the greatest
masters of the English language, and found in MS. after his death. This
translation from the original German is not exactly literal, but rather
a liberal version, or paraphrase, the thought of Behmen being expanded
and elucidated, though in nowise departed from. The dialogue called "The
way from darkness to true illumination" was taken by the eighteenth
century editors from a book containing translations of certain smaller
treatises of Behmen then lately printed at Bristol and made, as they
say, "in a style better adapted to the taste and more accommodated to
the apprehension of modern readers." I do not know who was the
translator, but the work seems to be excellently well done.
It will be well to say a few words first as to the life, then as to the
leading ideas of Jacob Behmen. This name is more correctly written Jacob
Boehme, but I prefer to retain the more easily pronounced spelling of
Behmen, adopted by the Editors of both the complete English editions.
Jacob Behmen's outward life was simplicity itself. He was born in the
year 1575 at Alt Seidenberg, a village among pastoral hills, near
Goerlitz in Lusatia, a son of poor peasants. As a boy he watched the
herds in the fields, and was then apprenticed to a shoemaker, being not
enough robust for rural work. One day, when the master and his wife were
out, and he was alone in the house, a stranger entered the shop and
asked for a pair of shoes. Jacob had no authority to conclude a bargain
and asked a high price for the shoes in the hope that the stranger would
not buy. But the man paid the price, and when he had gone out into the
street, called out "Jacob, come forth." Jacob obeyed the call, and now
the stranger looked at him with a kindly, earnest, deep, soul-piercing
gaze, and said, "Jacob, thou art as yet but little, but the time will
come when thou shalt be great, and become another man, and the world
shall marvel at thee. Therefore be pious, fear God, and reverence his
Word; especially read diligently the Holy Scriptures, where thou hast
comfort and instruction; for thou must endure much misery and poverty,
and suffer persecution. But be courageous and persevere, for God loves,
and is gracious unto thee." So saying, the stranger clasped his hand,
and disappeared.
After this Jacob became even more pensive and serious, and would
admonish the other journeymen on the work-bench when they spoke lightly
of sacred things. His master disliked this and dismissed him, saying
that he would have no "house-prophet" to bring trouble into his house.
Thus Jacob was forced to go forth into the world as a travelling
journeyman, and, as he wandered about in that time of fierce religious
discord, the world appeared to him to be a "Babel." He was himself
afflicted by troubles and doubts, but clave to prayer and to Scripture,
and especially to the words in Luke xi.; "How much more shall your
heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." And once,
when he was again engaged for a time by a master, he was lifted into a
state of blessed peace, a Sabbath of the Soul, that lasted for seven
days, during which he was, as it were, inwardly surrounded by a Divine
Light. "The triumph that was then in my soul I can neither tell nor
describe. I can only liken it to a resurrection from the dead."
Jacob returned in 1594 to Goerlitz, became a master shoemaker in 1599,
married a tradesman's daughter, and had four children. In the year 1600
"sitting one day in his room, his eye fell upon a burnished pewter dish
which reflected the sunshine with such marvellous splendour that he fell
into a deep inward ecstasy and it seemed to him as if he could now look
into the principles and deepest foundations of things. He believed that
it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out
upon the green. But here he remarked that he gazed into the very heart
of things; the very herbs and grass, and that Nature harmonised with
what he had inwardly seen. He said nothing about this to any one, but
praised and thanked God in silence. He continued in the honest practice
of his craft, was attentive to his domestic affairs, and was on terms of
goodwill with all men."[A]
At the age of thirty-five, in the year 1610, Jacob Behmen suddenly
perceived that all which he had seen in a fragmentary way was forming
itself into a coherent whole, and felt a "fire-like" impulse, a yearning
to write it down, as a "Memorial," not for publication, but lest he
should forget it himself. He wrote it early in the morning before work,
and late in the evening after work. This was his "Morning Redness" or
"Aurora."
A nobleman of the country, called Carl von Endern, happened to see the
MS. at the shoemaker's house, was struck by it, and had some copies
made. One of these fell into the hands of the Lutheran Clergyman of
Goerlitz, Pastor Primarius Gregorius Richter, who thenceforth became a
bitter opponent of Behmen. He assailed him in sermons, in language of
savage invective, as a heretic of the most dangerous kind, until Jacob
was summoned before the Magistrates, and forbidden to write anything in
future. He was told that as a shoemaker he must confine himself to his
own trade. But the affair, as is usually the case, had an effect the
reverse of that intended by persecutors. It made him known to various
persons more learned than himself who were interested in the subject,
and from his converse with them he learned a better style, and some
Latin technical terms, which he afterwards found useful for expressing
his thoughts.
Jacob obeyed for some years the magisterial command to write nothing,
but it was very grievous to him, and he often reflected with dismay on
the parable of the talents and how "that one talent which 'tis death to
hide" was lodged with him useless. At length he would keep silence no
more. He says himself: "I had resolved to do nothing in future, but to
be quiet before God in obedience, and to let the devil, with all his
host, sweep over me. But it was with me as when a seed is hidden in the
earth. It grows up in storm and rough weather against all reason. For in
winter time all is dead, and reason says: 'It is all over with it.' But
the precious seed within me sprouted and grew green, oblivious of all
storms, and, amid disgrace and ridicule, it has blossomed forth into a
lily."
Between the year 1619 and his death in 1624, at the age of forty-nine,
he poured forth his stored up thoughts, writing a number of Works,
including those in the present volume, which were among his very latest.
He had the more time to write because his shoemaking business had fallen
off, by reason, perhaps, of the question as to his orthodoxy, but some
friends supplied him with the necessaries of life. He was now exposed
to fresh attacks from Gregorius Richter and was forced this time to go
into exile. At this period he went to the Electoral Court at Dresden
where the Prince was curious about him, and a conference took place
between him and John Gerhard and other eminent theologians. At the close
of this Dr Gerhard said: "I would not take the whole world and help to
condemn this man." And his colleague Meissner said, "My good brother,
neither would I. Who knows what stands behind this man? How can we judge
what we have not understood? May God convert this man if he is in error.
He is a man of marvellously high mental gifts who at present can neither
be condemned nor approved."
Soon afterwards, while Jacob was staying at the house of one of his
noble friends in Silesia he fell into a fever. At his own request he was
carried back to Goerlitz, and there awaited his end. On Sunday, November
21st 1624, in the early hours he called his son Tobias and asked him if
he did not hear that sweet melodious music. As Tobias heard nothing,
Jacob asked him to set wide the door so that he might the better hear
it; then he asked what was the hour, and when he was told that it had
just struck two he said, "My time is not yet; three hours hence is my
time." After some silence he exclaimed, "Oh thou strong God of Sabaoth,
deliver me according to thy Will," and immediately afterwards "Thou
Crucified Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me and take me to thyself
into thy Kingdom." At six in the morning he suddenly bade them farewell
with a smile, and said, "Now I go hence into Paradise," and yielded up
his Spirit.
Frankenberg writes of him: "His bodily appearance was somewhat mean; he
was small of stature, had a low forehead but prominent temples, a rather
aquiline nose, a scanty beard, grey eyes, sparkling into heavenly blue,
a feeble but genial voice. He was modest in his bearing, unassuming in
conversation, lowly in conduct, patient in suffering, and
gentle-hearted."
As the shoemaker of Goerlitz had in his life-time some disciples among
highly educated men, so has he always had a few since his departure from
this life. Men so diversely situated as the non-juror William Law in
England; St Martin, the "philosophe inconnu" of the French Revolution;
the sincere Catholic, Franz Baader, in Germany; Martensen, the
Protestant Bishop in Denmark, have found in him their Teacher.
The selections contained in the present book belong rather to the
practical or ethical side of Jacob Behmen's teaching than to his
Cosmogony, or _Vision_, as one may best call it, of the nature of all
things. I think that any old cottager, who had read nothing but his
Bible, but had lived his life, would well understand the general
teaching of most that is contained in these Dialogues, and would find
all Behmen's words most beautiful and comforting. It is not, therefore,
necessary for the present purpose to attempt fully to set forth the
whole Vision of Behmen, nor, in any case would it be within my power to
do so. But it may be of service to those readers who are not acquainted
with the writings of Behmen or of his disciples, if I here say something
as to his general teaching with regard to the nature of the soul of man
and its relation to that which is not itself, but like to itself.
The Soul, in the doctrine of Behmen, is a Being which has a will or
desire, and is aided by a mirror of understanding or imagination. Will
or Desire is of the very essence of the Soul, inseparable from its
existence. He says: "Where Desire is there is also Essence or Being."
The Soul is subject to the diverse attractions of the Centre of Divine
Life and Light, and of the Spirit of the World. Enlightened by its
understanding it has the free power to turn its will towards, and unite
itself to, this or that. "Choose well, thy choice is brief and yet
endless."
The Soul is a magic Fire derived out of, or from, God the Father's
Essence, _lumen de lumine_, and imprisoned in darkness. It is an intense
and incessant Desire after the Light; it longs to return to the
Light-centre, whence it originally came, that is, to the "heart of God."
Thus longing, it is a "Fire of Anguish," until it becomes a "Fire of
Love." It is a fire of anguish, so long as it is shut up in its dark
self. It is a fire of love when it pierces through and escapes from its
dark self-prison and burns freely and softly in union with the Divine
Love. God then comes as a Light, a soft purifying Fire into the Soul,
and changes all the wanting, hungering, empty, restless, self-tormenting
properties of the Natural Life into a sweetness of rest and peace. This
is called in Scripture the "new birth." Thus the same thing--the same
Fire,--is a cause of torment or of joy according to the conditions under
which it is. Man, who is a microcosm of the whole Universe, is a
mingling of light and darkness. His anguish comes from his Soul's
imprisonment in darkness (as a mere raging fire) and continues until it
can break forth and unite itself with _that_ whence it came and to which
it belongs.
Behmen says "The Eternal Darkness of the Soul is Hell, viz.: an aching
source of anguish, which is called the Anger of God, but the Eternal
Light in the Soul is the Kingdom of Heaven, where the fiery anguish of
darkness is turned into joy. For the _same_ nature of anguish, which, in
the Darkness, is a cause of sadness, is, in the Light, a cause of the
outward and stirring joy.... The Fire is painful and consuming, but the
Light is yielding, friendly, powerful and delightful, a sweet and
amiable Joy."
Pure delight, with no trace of doubt or fear, hope or regret, is the
sign of the presence of Love or Light. So again Behmen says: "The Fire
in the Light is a fire of Love, but the Fire in the Darkness is a fire
of Anguish, and is painful, irksome, and full of contrariety." The end
to which all things tend is the final separation of light from darkness;
the "last day" means this; but the present world is a perpetual mixture
of light and darkness, good and evil, joy and anguish. So, the Cross of
Jesus is at once the highest embodiment of Love and Hate.
It is remarkable that in this doctrine of light and darkness Behmen was
nearly followed by one who had not, I suppose, ever heard of him,
reading as he did little of anything but the Bible, who worked on the
Scriptures with his own powerful and earnest insight, the Christian
hero, Charles Gordon. In his little book called "Reflections in
Palestine" written in that one year, 1883, of unbroken repose from
action spent in the Holy Land, just before his final service at
Khartoom, Gordon dwells upon the repetition, as he calls it, _both in
the individual soul, and in the world's history_ of four processes
constantly recurring,--a state of darkness, a light breaking forth
through darkness, a division of light from darkness or gathering
together of light, a re-dispersion of light into darkness, and then a
renewal of the four processes, ever upon an ascending level of good,
directed towards the final elimination of all light from the darkness.
Fire must have fuel, something on which to feed. It must feed or perish.
But the magic Fire-spirit, the Soul, cannot perish because it is an
eternal Essence. Therefore it must either feed; or _hunger_. It desires
spiritual essence or "virtue" to allay its raging hunger. But, during
the space that it is embodied in this nature, it can feed _either_ on
the Divine Spirit, or upon the Spirit of this World. "Hence," says
Behmen, "we may understand the cause of that infinite variety which is
in the Wills and Actions of Men." For of whatsoever the Soul eateth, and
wherewith its Fire-life becometh kindled; "according to that the Soul's
life is led and governed." You become like to that which you eat. If the
Soul breaks forth out of its Nature-self and enters into "God's
Love-fire," it eats of the Divine Essence (the substance or flesh of
Christ) and it is to this that Jesus Christ referred when he spoke of
feeding upon his body, and when he spoke of the true bread from heaven
"which giveth life to the World" (John vi. 33), of which he that eateth
shall "live for ever" (John vi. 58), or the "living water," whereof
whosoever drinketh "shall never thirst," but it shall be to him "a well
of water springing up into everlasting life" (John iv. 13, 14). This
feeding is in no way metaphorical but as real and actual as physical
feeding.
Behmen says, "The Essence of that Life eateth the Flesh of Christ and
drinketh His Blood.... Now if the Soul eat of this sweet, holy and
heavenly food, then it kindleth itself with the great Love in the name
and power of Jesus, whence its fire of anguish becometh a great triumph
of joy and glory."[B]
Behmen held that man lives at once in three worlds, firstly in the
outward visible elementary world of space and time (where man "_is_ the
Time and _in_ the Time;") secondly, the "Eternal Dark World, Hell, the
centre of Eternal Nature, whence is _generated_ the Soul-fire, that
source of anguish, and thirdly, in the Eternal Light World, Heaven--the
Divine habitation." The same processes of feeding and life take place in
the three Worlds, so that physical feeding is a kind of outside sheath
of spiritual feeding.
If the Soul accustoms itself to feed in this life upon the heavenly food
(that _panem de coelo omne delectamentum in se habentem_) it gradually
itself becomes of quite heavenly substance, purged from darkness, and,
when the natural life falls off at death, stands in heaven, where indeed
it already is. But, if the Soul feeds upon the Spirit and Things of this
World, then, when by reason of death, it can no longer feed upon them,
it is left in the condition of mere "aching Desire," or eternal
unsatisfied Hunger, working in a void, in perpetual anguish. Thus Heaven
and Hell are not places, but conditions of the Soul. So Milton, who had
no doubt studied the translation of Behmen made in his own time,
writes:
"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
They are in this life everywhere commingled, but when this life falls
away, the Soul remains in that of the two states into which it has in
this life brought itself. The Soul, after death, remains _either_ as a
satisfied Desire, that is, a Desire no longer but a Joy, _or_ as an
aching Desire. The Persian says:--
Heaven is the vision of fulfilled Desire
And Hell the shadow of a Soul on fire.
Behmen says, Heaven _is_ fulfilled desire; Hell _is_ a Soul on fire, no
mere vision or shadow.
Heaven and Hell are within us, since our souls are portions of the
universe of things, in every part of which Heaven and Hell are
commingled. The gates of Heaven within us were shut in Adam, but the
Power of God, Christ in Jesus, broke open by his passion "the closed
gates of Paradise," that is, the gates of our "inward heavenly
humanity," and now the wayfarer can, if he will, pass through. We do not
spiritually live by a reasoning process, or acceptance of doctrines by
the understanding, but by the action of the Desire in feeding upon the
Spirit of Love, a process of laying hold, drawing in, and assimilating.
True prayer is like feeding, or still more, perhaps, like the
unconscious drawing in of the air: it should be as constant. By it is
introduced the heavenly life from without to nourish the like heavenly
life contained in the seed within. If a man thus rightly feeds, then, in
him, the hellish life and passions, portions of the powers of darkness,
"our creatures" as Behmen says, will be killed by starvation, wanting
their appropriate food. On the other hand, a man can feed these also
from without with their appropriate food by misdirected desire, thereby
starving the heavenly life in the Soul.
Thus the essence of Behmen's teaching as to the Soul incarnate in Man
and revealed by his body, is that it is an eternal Being, and that it is
a source of joy or anguish according as it is, or is not, purified or
tranquillised by communion with the Centre of Light, or the Fountain of
Life. He does not contemplate, as some Eastern teachers perhaps do, the
annihilation of the Will of the Soul by a kind of higher spiritual
suicide; its existence is to him the very condition of good no less than
of evil; he contemplates its liberation from the dark, contracted,
self-prison, its purification, and entrance into the full heaven-life.
This magical soul-fire, like visible fire, can rage and destroy, or it
can serve as the means and ground of all good. Here is the foundation
both of good and evil, in man as in all things.
To understand this better, one must consider the cosmic teaching lying
behind the rich profusion of images, often inconsistent and clashing, in
which Jacob Behmen embodies his Vision.
Man has fallen into Nature. But Nature itself, apart from and unfilled
by the Divine Light, is a self-torment, a mere Want, a Desire, a Hunger.
The true distinction between God and Nature is that God is an Universal
All, while Nature is an Universal Want, viz: to be filled by God.
Physical attraction is nothing but the outer sheath of this universal
desire. Nature filled by God is Heaven or fulfilled Desire.[C] Without
God it is Hell, mere Desire. Heaven is the Presence of God: Hell his
Absence. It is as true to say that Heaven is in God, as to say that God
is in Heaven.
Apart from the existence of God there could be neither Presence nor
Absence, neither Heaven nor Hell. If the Soul of Man were wholly divided
and separated from the Divine Life, it would, as a part of Nature, be a
mere hungering, restless, conscious Desire. In so far as it is so
separated it partakes of this pain. For "through all the Universe of
Things nothing is uneasy, unsatisfied, or restless, but because it is
not governed by Love, or because its Nature has not reached or attained
the full birth of the Spirit of Love. For when that is done, every
hunger is satisfied, and all complaining, murmuring, accusing,
resenting, revenging and striving are as totally suppressed and overcome
as coldness, thickness and horror of darkness are suppressed and
overcome by the breaking forth of the light. If you ask why the Spirit
of Love cannot be displeased, cannot be disappointed, cannot complain,
accuse, resent or murmur, it is because the Spirit of Love desires
nothing but itself, it is its own Good, for Love is God, and he that
dwelleth in God dwelleth in Love."[D]
Behmen's idea of the "fallen Angels" is that they are entirely and
hopelessly divided from the Life of God. They are mere embodied,
hopeless, self-tormenting Desires. They have fallen into the hell within
themselves, they _cannot but_ be hating, bitter, envious, proud,
wrathful, restless; and therefore tormentors of others. They have lost
that which man, however far astray, always possesses, the faculty of
return or regeneration through submission to and union with God. The
spark of the Life and Spirit of God which is in Men is not in the
fallen Angels. Let us hope that Beings so utterly lost do not exist.
God is outside of Nature and yet in a sense inside also, because there
is a divine life or virtue in Nature which, longing to re-unite itself
with its source, is a cause of anguish while divided, and of joy when
united. So, in the outer world, the seed buried in earth contains a
power kindred to the virtue of the sun. It is this which breaks forth
from the seed, forces itself up through the dark, imprisoning, and yet
nourishing and necessary earth, and at last, if it can win its way
through obstacles, cheerfully expands in the light of the sun and feeds
upon his warmth. That, in man's inner nature, which answers to this
power or life in the seed, is called by Behmen the Life or Spirit of
Jesus Christ. Egoism or _Ihood_, the old contracting, narrowing cell, is
destroyed as this expansive and expanding force grows and breaks forth.
Behmen says: "As the Sun in the visible world ruleth over Evil and Good,
and, with its light and power, and all whatsoever itself is, is present
everywhere, and penetrates into every Being, and wholly giveth itself to
every Being, and yet ever remaineth whole, and nothing of its being
goeth away therewith. Thus also it is to be understood concerning
Christ's person and office which ruleth in the inward spiritual world,
and penetrateth into the faithful man's soul, spirit and heart. As the
Sun worketh through a herb, so that the herb becometh filled with the
virtue of the Sun, and, as it were, so converted by the Sun that it
becometh wholly of the nature of the Sun, so Christ ruleth in the
resigned will or Soul and Body, over all evil inclinations and
generateth the man to be a new heavenly creature." The same teaching is
finely set forth in a passage of William Law.[E] He says:
"Man has a spark of the Light and Spirit of God, as a supernatural gift
of God given into the birth of his Soul to bring forth by degrees a new
birth of that life which was lost in Paradise. This holy spark of the
Divine Nature within him has a natural, strong, and almost infinite
tendency or reaching after that eternal Light and Spirit of God, from
whence it came forth. It came forth from God, it came _out_ of God, it
partaketh of the Divine Nature, and therefore it is always in a state of
tendency and return to God. All this is called the breathing, the
moving, the quickening of the Holy Spirit within us, which are so many
operations of this spark of life tending towards God. On the other hand
the Deity as considered in itself, and without the Soul of man, has an
infinite unchangeable tendency of love and desire towards the Soul of
man, to unite and communicate its own riches and glories to it, just as
the Spirit of the air _without_ Man unites and communicates its riches
and virtues to the Spirit of the air that is _within_ Man. This love or
desire of God toward the soul of Man is so great that he gave his
only-begotten Son, the brightness of his glory, to take the human nature
upon him, in its fallen state, that by this mysterious union of God and
Man, all the enemies of the Soul of Man might be overcome, and every
human creature might have a power of being born again according to that
Image of God in which he was first created. The gospel is the history of
this Love of God to Man. _Inwardly_ he has a seed of the Divine Life
given into the birth of his Soul, a seed that has all the riches of
eternity in it, and is always wanting to come to the birth in him, and
be alive in God. _Outwardly_ he has Jesus Christ, who as a Sun of
Righteousness, is always casting forth his enlivening beams on this
inward seed, to kindle and call it forth to the birth, doing that to
this Seed of Heaven in Man, which the sun in the firmament is always
doing to the vegetable seeds in the earth.
"Consider this matter in the following similitude. A grain of wheat has
the air and light of this world enclosed or incorporated in it. This is
the mystery of its life, this is its power of growing, by this it has a
strong continual tendency of uniting again with that ocean of light and
air from whence it came forth. On the other hand that great ocean of
light and air, having its own offspring hidden in the heart of the grain
has a perpetual strong tendency to unite and communicate with it again.
From this _desire of union on both sides_, the vegetable life arises and
all the virtues and powers contained in it. But let it be well observed
that this desire on both sides cannot have its effect till the husk and
gross part of the grain falls into a state of corruption and death; till
this begins, the mystery of life hidden in it cannot come forth."
The sun only acts by stirring up in each thing, and calling into
activity, its own imprisoned, dormant, heat or life. Save by the same
nature-process, working in an inner sphere, there cannot come to pass
the flower and fruit of the Soul. The Sun, true emblem of the Redeeming
Spirit, helps each vital force to break forth from its state of
death--even though, like the grains of wheat found in Egyptian graves
and then new-planted, it has been immured there thousands of years--and
to enter into its highest possible state of life. Indeed, in this school
of wisdom, the natural visible light, of which the Sun is the dispensing
medium to our solar system, and other suns to other circles of planets,
is actually an outer manifestation of the inner supernatural light, and
warmth, not a mere emblem at all. We speak more truly than we know, when
we speak of a "heavenly day." All Nature is a series of "out-births" of
the Deity. "The outward world," says Behmen, "is sprung out of the
inward spiritual world, viz., out of Light and Darkness." And his
English interpreter says: "Whatever is delightful and ravishing, sublime
and glorious in spirits, minds, or bodies, either in heaven, or on
earth, is from the power of the Supernatural Light opening its endless
wonders in them. Hell has no misery, horror or distraction, but because
it has no communication with the supernatural Light. And did not the
supernatural Light stream forth its blessings into this world, through
the materiality of the Sun, all outward Nature would be full of the
horror of Hell." And elsewhere, "There is no meekness, benevolence or
goodness in Angel, Man, _or any other Creature_, but where Light is the
Lord of its life. Life itself begins no sooner, rises no higher, has no
other glory, than as the Light begins it, and leads it on. Sounds have
no softness, flowers and germs no sweetness, plants and fruits have no
growth, but as the Mystery of Light opens itself in them."[F] And so
Behmen himself says: "There is nothing that is created or born in Nature
but it also manifests its internal form externally; for the internal
continually labours or works itself forth to manifestation. We know in
the power and form of this World, how the only Essence has manifested
itself with the external birth in the desire of the similitude; how it
has manifested itself in so many forms and shapes, which we see and know
in the stars and elements, likewise in the living creatures, and also in
the trees and herbs." Thus there is a real communion between all beauty,
sweetness, and glory, within and without the Soul of man.
It is this truth, not of the analogy between the essential life of Man
and Nature, but of the unity in all things, that is now opening itself
out in many ways. Wordsworth, a true seer, has given to it its highest
expression in English Poetry. Modern science all tends to confirmation
of this unity.
God, then, must become Man, there must be a birth of the Life of God in
the Soul, in order that the Soul may live its highest life. Only in
this way can the wild properties of Nature be subordinated and turned to
their proper use, their restless hunger pacified. Goodness and happiness
can be expected from nothing else but from the Divine Life united to and
dwelling in the Nature Life. It is the "ingrafted Word" of St James'
Epistle.
The plant cannot but grow towards the sun. If it is too deep in earth,
or prevented by a strong soil, or withered by dryness, so that it cannot
attain to its end, the fault is not with it. But, in the spiritual inner
world (in which the plant dwells not) the Soul of man has this
freedom--that it can consciously turn towards God, whose Spirit and Life
will then come forth to meet it, or can turn towards the Things of this
World. Upon this freedom of choice is founded Behmen's moral teaching.
The Soul is like a woman (and all nations have testified in their
languages and parables to their sense of this) who can freely choose to
submit and surrender her body to this Lover, or to that. When she has
chosen her free power ends. As she has chosen, so her life-faculty will
be fertilised by good or evil; so will be the new life that arises
within her, and so will be her future joy or sorrow.
In a deep sense, the desire of the spark of Life in the Soul to return
to its Original Source is part of the longing desire of the universal
Life for its own heart or centre. Of this longing the universal
attraction, striving against resistance, towards an universal centre,
proved to govern the phenomenal or physical world, is but the outer
sheath and visible working. It has been said that Sir Isaac Newton (who
was a diligent reader of Behmen's Works) "ploughed with Jacob Behmen's
heifer." There is in truth but one Religion, that founded upon the
eternal, immutable, universal processes of the actual Nature of things,
and of this Christianity, rightly apprehended, is the supreme
Revelation. This will be seen better by all as the Religion unfolds
itself. Rightly speaking there is no such thing as _supernatural_
religion; there is but one Religion, that of Nature. It is the work of
visible religion to teach by signs and parables, embodying the mystery
in symbols, and clothing it with adoration.
Jacob Behmen's mode of expression is all his own, and there is much in
the fabric of his thought which men of our time, if they take a
superficial view, would not find it easy to accept. The doctrine of
Evolution now profoundly influences every corner of the field of
thought. We now incline to think rather of the rise of Man out of Nature
than of his fall into it, though, perhaps, there can no more be a rise
without a precedent fall, than there can be a return without a precedent
out-going. Evolution may be the time-form of Attraction. But all this
affects the outside form, not the essence of the doctrine. Behmen is
concerned with the real nature of things, apart from time and space,
with their apparent, but so misleading, facts. He appeals to each Soul's
knowledge of itself, and, on the principle that _all is in everything_,
draws from the nature of Man, that little Universe (and we can no
otherwise learn things as they are in themselves), his teaching as to
Universal Nature. "In Man (he says) lies all whatsoever the Sun shines
upon, or Heaven contains, as also Hell and all the Deeps." His Iliad is
the struggle between light and darkness, life and death, expansion and
contraction, the centripetal and centrifugal force, heat and cold, love
and hatred, peace and wrath, humility and pride, self-sacrifice and
self-seeking, joy and anguish, repose and restlessness, in the whole of
Nature and in the Soul of Man. Does not every man, who has lived his
full life, know the truth and reality of all this? It is known more
especially and actually by those ardent and adventurous spirits who have
sailed in far seas of thought or action, not merely coasting along the
shores of tradition, authority and established rule. Sinners know some
things more vividly than those who ever and easily have been good. Only
the man who has been sick knows the difference between sickness and
health. The prodigal who had wandered in a far country and had lived as
he would, understood the meaning of peace and love better than the
brother who had always stayed at home.
These wanderers, if they return in time, know best, taught by the
heart-rending lessons of experience, the difference between the Heaven
and Hell within them; the Hell of wrath, self-torment, fear, anxiety,
envy, malice, evil-will, pride, cruelty, sensual passion, longing to
domineer, and the Heaven of love, benevolence, meekness, humility,
compassion, peace, joy, long-suffering.
They know that Heaven and Hell can alike be revealed in the Soul. From
youth they have felt something in them striving, often feebly enough,
against passionate desires for wealth, honour, success, and for mastery
over the minds, affections, and bodies of others. Behind all this
turmoil and ever unsatisfied anguish of seeking that which satisfies
not, they have been aware of a diviner life slowly growing towards
heaven, ever and again thwarted and driven back by the renewed assaults
of the Spirit of the World, yet never quite destroyed. At the moments of
fiercest fight against rebel passions they have felt the divine
assisting strength flow into them, if only they powerfully invoked it,
turning towards its source as a babe towards its mother's breast. They
have heard the "Peace be still" amid the wildest spiritual storms. They
know that if they have been saved, it is not by their own strength nor
by reasoning, but by this power from without.
They know the impotence, in action, of the merely reflective or
spectator faculty. In this sense of the word "reason," they would agree
with him who wrote "Your Heart is the best and greatest gift of God to
you; it is the highest, greatest, strongest, and noblest Power of your
Nature; it forms your whole Life, be it what it will; all Evil and all
Good comes from it; your Heart alone has the key of Life and Death; it
does all that it will; Reason is but its plaything; and whether in Time
or Eternity, can only be a mere Beholder of the wonders of happiness, or
forms of misery, which the right or wrong working of the Heart is
entered into."[G]
William Law remarks that Jesus Christ, though he had all wisdom, yet
gives but a small number of doctrines to mankind "whilst every moral
teacher writes volumes upon every single virtue." It is, he adds,
because our Lord "knew what they know not, that our whole malady lies
in this, that the Will of our Mind is turned into this World, and that
nothing can relieve us, or set us right, but the _turning_ of the Will
of our Mind and the Desire of our Hearts to God. And hence it is that he
calls us to nothing but a total denial of ourselves and the Life of this
World and to faith in him as the Worker of a new birth and life in us."
On this one root of the whole matter Jacob Behmen insisted, expressing
one truth in a thousand ways and through images, which to him are not
images but the same process working in other spheres. His whole
practical, moral teaching enforces the right direction of Desire. _Mali
mores sunt mali amores_, said one who also truly _saw_; the profound
Augustine. The hunger of the Soul must be turned to the source of
eternal joy. All that is good and beautiful in nature or in the heart of
man flows from that fountain. Desire _is_ everything in Nature; _does_
everything. Heaven is Nature filled with divine Life attracted by
Desire.