Jacob Behmen | Page 9

described by Walton as containing the philosophy of temptation; and
by Martensen as displaying a most profound knowledge of the human
heart. Behmen sets about his task as a ductor dubitantium in a masterly
manner. He takes in hand the comfort and direction of sin-distressed
souls in a characteristically deep, inward, and thorough-going way. The
book is full of Behmen's observation of men. It is the outcome of a
close and long-continued study of character and conduct. Every page of
The Four Complexions gleams with a keen but tender and wistful
insight into our poor human nature. As his customers came and gave
their orders in his shop; as his neighbours collected, and gossiped, and
debated, and quarrelled around his shop window; as his minister fumed
and raged against him in the pulpit; as the Council of Goerlitz sat and
swayed, passed sentence upon him, retracted their sentence, and again
gave way under the pressure of their minister, and pronounced another
sentence,--all this time Behmen was having poor human nature, to all
its joints and marrow, and to all the thoughts and instincts of its heart,
laid naked and open before him, both in other men and in himself. And
then, as always with Behmen, all this observation of men, all this
discovery and self-discovery, ran up into philosophy, into theology,
into personal and evangelical religion. In all that Behmen better and
better saw the original plan, constitution, and operation of human
nature; its aboriginal catastrophe; its weakness and openness to all evil;
and its need of constant care, protection, instruction, watchfulness, and
Divine help. Behmen writes on all the four temperaments with the
profoundest insight, and with the fullest sympathy; but over the last of
the four he exclaims: 'O hear me! for I know well myself what
melancholy is! I also have lodged all my days in the melancholy inn!'
As I read that light and elastic book published the other day, The Life

and Letters of Erasmus, I came on this sentence, 'Erasmus, like all men
of real genius, had a light and elastic nature.' When I read that, I could
not believe my eyes. I had been used to think of light and elastic
natures as being the antipodes of natures of real genius. And as I
stopped my reading for a little, a procession of men of real and
indisputable genius passed before me, who had all lodged with Behmen
in the melancholy inn. Till I remembered that far deeper and far truer
saying, that 'simply to say man at all is to say melancholy.' No: with all
respect, the real fact is surely as near as possible the exact opposite. A
light, elastic, Erasmus- like nature, is the exception among men of real
genius. At any rate, Jacob Behmen was the exact opposite of Erasmus,
and of all such light and elastic men. Melancholy was Jacob Behmen's
special temperament and peculiar complexion. He had long studied,
and watched, and wrestled with, and prayed over that complexion at
home. And thus it is, no doubt, that he is so full, and so clear, and so
sure-footed, and so impressive, and so full of fellow-feeling in his
treatment of this special complexion. Behmen's greatest disciple has
assimilated his master's teaching in this matter of complexion also, and
has given it out again in his own clear, plain, powerful, classical
manner, especially in his treatise on Christian Regeneration. Let all
preachers and pastors who would master the rationale of temptation,
and who would ground their directions and their comforts to their
people in the nature of things, as well as in the word of GOD, make
Jacob Behmen and William Law and Prebendary Clark their constant
study. 'I write for no other purpose,' says Behmen, 'than that men may
learn how to know themselves. Seek the noble knowledge of thyself.
Seek it and you will find a heavenly treasure which will not be eaten by
moths, and which no thief shall ever take away.'
I shall not attempt to enter on the thorny thicket of Jacob Behmen's
polemical and apologetical works. I shall not even load your mind with
their unhappy titles. His five apologies occupy in bulk somewhere
about a tenth part of his five quarto volumes. And full as his apologies
and defences are of autobiographic material, as well as of valuable
expansions and explanations of his other books, yet at their best they
are all controversial and combative in their cast and complexion; and,
nobly as Behmen has written on the subject of controversy, it was not

given even to him, amid all the misunderstandings, misrepresentations,
injuries, and insults he suffered from, always to write what we are glad
and proud and the better to read.
About his next book Behmen thus writes: 'Upon the desire