Jacob Behmen by Alexander Whyte (pdf ebook reader .TXT) 📕

to say nothing. Philo himself is a tyro and a timid interpreter beside Jacob Behmen. 'Which things are an allegory,' says the Apostle, after a passing reference to Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and Ishmael; but if you would see actually every syllable of Genesis allegorised, spiritualised, interpreted of CHRIST, and of the New Testament, from the first verse of its first chapter to the last verse of its last chapter, like the nobleman of Silesia, when you have leisure, read Behmen's deep _Mysterium Magnum_. I would recommend the enterprising and unconquerable student to make leisure so as to master Behmen's Preface to the _Mysterium Magnum_ at the very least. And if he does that, and is not drawn on from that to be a student of Behmen for the rest of his days, then, whatever else his proper field in life may be, it is not mystical or philosophical theology. It is a long step both in time and in thought from Behmen to SCHOPENHAUER; but, speaking of one of Schelling's books, Schopenhauer says that it is all taken from Jacob Behmen's _Mysterium Magnum_; every thought and almost every word of Schelling's work leads Schopenhauer to think of Behmen. 'When I read Behmen's book,' says Schopenhauer, 'I cannot withhold either admiration or emotion.' At his far too early death Behmen left four treatises behind him in an unfinished condition. The _Theoscopia_, or _Divine Vision_, is but a fragment; but, even so, the study of that fragment leads us to believe that, had Behmen lived to the ordinary limit of human life, and had his mind continued to grow as it was now fast growing in clearness, in concentration, and in simplicity, Behmen would have left to us not a few books as classical in their form as all his books are classical in their substance; in their originality, in their truth, in their depth, and in their strength. As it is, the unfinished, the scarcely-begun, _Theoscopia_ only serves to show the student of what a treasure he has been bereft by Behmen's too early death. As I read and re-read the _Theoscopia_ I felt the full truth and force of Hegel's generous words, that German philosophy began with Behmen. This is both German and Christian philosophy, I said to myself as I revelled in the _Theoscopia_. Let the serious student listen to the titles of some of the chapters of the _Theoscopia_, and then let him say what he would not have given to have got such a book from such a pen in its completed shape: 'What GOD is, and how we men shall know the Divine Substance by the Divine Revelation. Why it sometimes seems as if there were no GOD, and as if all things went in the world by chance. Why GOD, who is Love itself, permits an evil will contrary to His own. The reason and the profit, why evil should be found along with good. Of the mind of man, and how it is the image of GOD, and how it can still be filled with God. Why this Temporal Universe is created; to what it is profitable; and how God is so near unto all things': and so on. 'But no amount of quotation,' says Mrs. Penney, that very able student of Behmen, lately deceased, 'can give an adequate glimpse of the light which streams from the _Theoscopia_ when long and patiently studied.'

Another unfinished fragment that Behmen's readers seek for and treasure up like very sand of gold is his _Holy Week_. This little work, its author tells us, was undertaken upon the entreaty and desire of some loving and good friends of his for the daily exercise of true religion in their hearts and in the little church of their families. The following is Behmen's method of prayer for Monday, which is the only day's prayer he got finished before his death: 'A short prayer when we awake early and before we rise. A prayer and thanksgiving after we are risen. A prayer while we wash and dress. A prayer when we begin to work at our calling. A prayer at noon. A prayer toward evening. A prayer when we undress. A prayer of thanks for the bitter passion and dying of JESUS CHRIST.' What does the man mean? many of his contemporaries who came upon his _Holy Week_ would say, What does the madman mean? Would he have us pray all day? Would he have us pray and do nothing else? Yes; it would almost seem so. For in his _Supersensual Life_ the Master says to the disciple who has asked, 'How shall I be able to live aright amid all the anxiety and tribulation of this world?': 'If thou dost once every hour throw thyself by faith beyond all creatures into the abysmal mercy of GOD, into the sufferings of CHRIST, and into the fellowship of His intercession, then thou shalt receive power from above to rule over the world, and death, and the devil, and hell itself.' And again, 'O thou of little courage, if thy will could but break itself off every half-hour from all creatures, and plunge itself into that where no creature is or can be, presently it would be penetrated with the splendour of the Divine glory, and would taste a sweetness no tongue can express. Then thou wouldst love thy cross more than all the glory and all the goods of this world.' The author had begun a series of reflections and meditations on the Ten Commandments for devotional use on Tuesday, but got no further than the Fifth. Behmen is so deep and so original in his purely philosophical, theological, and speculative books, that in many places we can only stand back and wonder at the man. But in his _Holy Week_ Behmen kneels down beside us. Not but that his characteristic depth is present in his prayers also; but we all know something of the nature, the manner, and the blessedness of prayer, and thus it is that we are so much more at home with Behmen, the prodigal son, than we are with Behmen, the theosophical theologian. When Behmen begins to teach us to pray, and when the lesson comes to us out of his own closet, then we are able to see in a nearer light something of the originality, the greatness, the strength, and the true and genuine piety of the philosopher and the theologian. When Behmen's philosophy and theology become penitence, prayer, and praise, then by their fruits we know how good his philosophy and his theology must be, away down in their deepest and most hidden nature. I agree with Walton that those prayers are full of unction and instruction, and that some of them are of the 'highest magnetical power'; and that, as rendered into modern phraseology, they are most beautiful devotional compositions, and very models of all that a divinely illuminated mind would address to GOD and CHRIST. For myself, immediately after the Psalms of David I put Jacob Behmen's _Holy Week_ and the prayers scattered up and down through his _True Repentance_, and beside Behmen I put Bishop Andrewes' _Private Devotions_. I have discovered no helps to my own devotional life for a moment to set beside Behmen and Andrewes.

_A Treatise on Baptism and the Lord's Supper_; _A Key to the Principal Points and Expressions in the Author's Writings_; and then a most valuable volume of letters--_Epistolae Theosophicae_--complete the extraordinarily rich bibliography of the illuminated and blessed Jacob Behmen.

Though there is a great deal of needless and wearisome repetition in Jacob Behmen's writings, at the same time there is scarcely a single subject in the whole range of theology on which he does not throw a new, an intense, and a brilliant light. In his absolutely original and magnificent doctrine of GOD, while all the time loyally true to it, Behmen has confessedly transcended the theology of both the Latin and the Reformed Churches; and, absolutely unlettered man though he is, has taken his stand at the very head of the great Greek theologians. The Reformers concentrated their criticism upon the anthropology and soteriology of the Church of Rome, and especially upon the discipline and worship connected therewith. They saw no need for recasting any of the more fundamental positions of pure theology. And while Jacob Behmen, broadly speaking, accepts as his own confession of faith all that Luther and Calvin and their colleagues taught on sin and salvation, on the corruption and guilt of sinners, and on the redeeming work of our LORD, he rises far above the greatest and best of his teachers in his doctrine of the GODHEAD. Not only does he rise far higher in that doctrine than either Rome or Geneva, he rises far higher and sounds far deeper than either Antioch, or Alexandria, or Nicomedia, or Nice. On this profound point Bishop Martensen has an excellent appreciation of Behmen. After what I have taken upon me to say about Behmen, the learned Bishop's authoritative passage must be quoted:--'If we compare Behmen's doctrine of the Trinity,' says the learned and evangelical Bishop, 'with that which is contained in the otherwise so admirable Athanasian Creed, the latter but displays to us a most abstruse metaphysic; a GOD for mere thought, and in whom there is nothing sympathetic for the heart of man. Behmen, on the contrary, reveals to us the LIVING GOD, the GOD of Goodness, the Eternal Love, of which there is absolutely no hint whatever in the hard Athanasian symbol. By this attitude of his to the affections of the human heart, Behmen's doctrine of the Trinity is in close coherence with the Reformation, and with its evangelical churches. . . . Behmen is anxious to state a conception of GOD that will fill the hiatus between the theological and anthropological sides of the dogmatical development which was bequeathed by the Reformation; he seeks to unite the theological and the anthropological. . . . From careful study of Behmen's theology,' continues Bishop Martensen, 'one gains a prevailing impression that Behmen's GOD is, in His inmost Being, most kindred to man, even as man in his inmost being is still kindred to GOD. And, besides, we recognise in Behmen throughout the pulse-beat of a believing man, who is in all his books supremely anxious about his own salvation and that of his fellow-men.' Now, it is just this super-confessional element in Behmen, both on his speculative and on his practical side, taken along with the immediate and intensely practical bearing of all his speculations, it is just this that is Behmen's true and genuine distinction, his shining and unshared glory. And it is out of that supreme, solitary, and wholly untrodden field of Behmen's super-confessional theology that all that is essential, characteristic, distinctive, and fruitful in Behmen really and originally springs. The distinctions he takes within, and around, and immediately beneath the Godhead, are of themselves full of the noblest light. The Divine Nature, Eternal Nature, Temporal Nature, Human Nature, when evolved out of one another, and when related to one another, as Behmen sees them evolved and related, are categories of the clearest, surest, most necessary, and most intensely instructive kind. And if the height and the depth, the massiveness, the stupendousness, and the grandeur, as well as the sweetness, and the beauty, and the warmth, and the fruitfulness of a doctrine of GOD is any argument or evidence of its truth, then Behmen's magnificent doctrine of the GODHEAD is surely proved to demonstration and delight. GOD is the Essence