Jacob Behmen | Page 5

Aurora was written in a language, if writing and a language it can be called, that had never been seen written or heard spoken before, or has since, on the face of the earth. And as our students learn Greek in order to read Homer and Plato and Paul and John, and Latin in order to read Virgil and Tacitus, and Italian to read Dante, and German to read Goethe, so William Law tells us that he learned Behmen's Behmenite High Dutch, and that too after he was an old man, in order that he might completely master the Aurora and its kindred books. And as our schoolboys laugh and jeer at the outlandish sounds of Greek and Latin and German, till they have learned to read and love the great authors who have written in those languages, so WESLEY, and SOUTHEY, and even HALLAM himself, jest and flout and call names at Jacob Behmen, because they have not taken the trouble to learn his language, to master his mind, and to drink in his spirit. At the same time, and after all that has been said about Behmen's barbarous style, Bishop Martensen tells us how the readers of SCHELLING were surprised and enraptured by a wealth of new expressions and new turns of speech in their mother tongue. But all these belonged to Behmen, or were fashioned on the model of his symbolical language. As it is, with all his astrology, and all his alchemy, and all his barbarities of form and expression, I for one will always take sides with the author of The Serious Call, and The Spirit of Prayer, and The Spirit of Love, and The Way to Divine Knowledge, in the disputed matter of Jacob Behmen's sanity and sanctity; and I will continue to believe that if I had only had the scholarship, and the intellect, and the patience, and the enterprise, to have mastered, through all their intricacies, the Behmenite grammar and the Behmenite vocabulary, I also would have found in Behmen all that Freher and Pordage and Law and Walton found. Even in the short way into this great man that I have gone, I have come upon such rare and rich mines of divine and eternal truth that I can easily believe that they who have dug deeper have come upon uncounted riches. 'Next to the Scriptures,' writes William Law, 'my only book is the illuminated Behmen. For the whole kingdom of grace and nature was opened in him. In reading Behmen I am always at home, and kept close to the kingdom of GOD that is within me.' 'I am not young,' said CLAUDE DE ST. MARTIN, 'being now near my fiftieth year, nevertheless I have begun to learn German, in order that I may read this incomparable author in his own tongue. I have written some not unacceptable books myself, but I am not worthy to unloose the shoestrings of this wonderful man. I advise you to throw yourself into the depths of Jacob Behmen. There is such a profundity and exaltation of truth in them, and such a simple and delicious nutriment.'
The Town Council of Goerlitz, hounded on by their Minister, sentenced Behmen to be banished, and interdicted him from ever writing any more. But in sheer shame at what they had done they immediately recalled Behmen from banishment; only, they insisted that he should confine himself to his shop, and leave all writing of books alone. Behmen had no ambition to write any more, and, as a matter of fact, he kept silence even to himself for seven whole years. But as those years went on it came to be with him, to use his own words, as with so much grain that has been buried in the earth, and which, in spite of storms and tempests, will, out of its own life, spring up, and that even when reason says it is now winter, and that all hope and all power is gone. And thus it was that, under the same instigation which had produced the Aurora, Behmen at a rush wrote his very fine if very difficult book, The Three Principles of the Divine Essence. He calls The Three Principles his A B C, and the easiest of all his books. And William Law recommends all beginners in Behmen to read alone for some sufficient time the tenth and twelfth chapters of The Three Principles. I shall let Behmen describe the contents of his easiest book in his own words. 'In this second book,' he says, 'there is declared what GOD is, what Nature is, what the creatures are, what the love and meekness of GOD are, what GOD'S will is, what the wrath of GOD is, and what joy and sorrow are. As also, how