Jacob Behmen | Page 7

book was one of the best inventions that had ever been written. The Forty Questions ran through many editions both on the Continent and in England, and it was this book that gained for Jacob Behmen the denomination of the Teutonic Philosopher, a name by which he is distinguished among authors to this day. The following are some of the university questions that Balthazar Walter took down and sent to Jacob Behmen for his answer: 'What is the soul of man in its innermost essence, and how is it created, soul by soul, in the image of GOD? Is the soul propagated from father to son like the body? or is it every time new created and breathed in from GOD? How comes original sin into each several soul? How does the soul of the saint feed and grow upon the word of GOD? Whence comes the deadly contrariety between the flesh and the spirit? Whither goes the soul when it at death departs from the body? In what does its rest, its awakening, and its glorification consist? What kind of body shall the glorified body be? The soul and spirit of CHRIST, what are they? and are they the same as ours? What and where is Paradise?' Through a hundred and fourteen large quarto pages Behmen's astonishing answers to the forty questions run; after which he adds this: 'Thus, my beloved friend, we have set down, according to our gifts, a round answer to your questions, and we exhort you as a brother not to despise us. For we are not born of art, but of simplicity. We acknowledge all who love such knowledge as our brethren in CHRIST, with whom we hope to rejoice eternally in the heavenly school. For our best knowledge here is but in part, but when we shall attain to perfection, then we shall see what GOD is, and what He can do. Amen.'
A Treatise of the Incarnation of the Son of God comes next, and then we have three smaller works written to clear up and to establish several difficult and disputed matters in it and in some of his former works. To write on the Incarnation of the Son of GOD would need, says Behmen, an angel's pen; but his defence is that his is better than any angel's pen, because it is the pen of a sinner's love. The year 1621 saw one of Behmen's most original and most powerful books finished,--the Signatura Rerum. In this remarkable book Behmen teaches us that all things have two worlds in which they live,--an inward world and an outward. All created things have an inner and an invisible essence, and an outer and a visible form. And the outward form is always more or less the key to the inward character. This whole world that we see around us, and of which we ourselves are the soul,--it is all a symbol, a 'signature,' of an invisible world. This deep principle runs through the whole of creation. The Creator went upon this principle in all His work; and the thoughtful mind can see that principle coming out in all His work,--in plants, and trees, and beasts.
As German Boehme never cared for plants Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed-- Colloquized with the cowslips on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose.
But, best of all, this principle comes out clearest in the speech, behaviour, features, and face of a man. Every day men are signing themselves from within. Every act they perform, every word they speak, every wish they entertain,--it all comes out and is fixed for ever in their character, and even in their appearance. 'Therefore,' says Behmen in the beginning of his book, 'the greatest understanding lies in the signature. For by the external form of all creatures; by their voice and action, as well as by their instigation, inclination, and desire, their hidden spirit is made known. For Nature has given to everything its own language according to its innermost essence. And this is the language of Nature, in which everything continually speaks, manifests, and declares itself for what it is,--so much so, that all that is spoken or written even about GOD, however true, if the writer or speaker has not the Divine Nature within himself, then all he says is dumb to me; he has not got the hammer in his hand that can strike my bell.'
The Way to Christ was Behmen's next book, and in the four precious treatises that compose that book our author takes an altogether new departure. In his Aurora, in The Three Principles, in the Forty Questions,