Beauties in Behmen's Writings. 193 sary to add that Behmen has not done justice to himself if he desired the first extract which has been quoted to be a fair example of the way in which he could make himself intelligible. Some parts of his writings we may at any rate understand, whether we agree with him or not; and some parts contain passages of singular beauty, both of idea and expression. Take, for example, the following very beautiful vindication of the efficacy of infant baptism, which, with one or two omissions, might be used in a church pulpit at the present day: 'Say not, What does Baptism avail a child which understandeth it not? The matter lies not in our understanding; we are altogether ignorant of the kingdom of God. If thy child be a bud, grown in thy tree, and that thou standest in the covenant, why bringest thou not also thy bud into the covenant? Thy faith is its faith, and thy confidence towards God in the covenant is its confidence. It is, indeed, thy essence, and generated in thy soul. And thou art to know, according to its exceeding worth, if thou art a true Christian, in the covenant of Jesus Christ, that thy child also (in the kindling of its life) passes into the covenant of Christ; and though it should die in the mother's womb, it would be found in the covenant of Christ. For the Deity stands in the centre of the Light of Life; and so now, if the tree stands in the covenant, then the branch may well do so.' Or take again the following description of 'the Lord's Supper': 'Christ gave not to his disciples the earthly substance, which did but hang to Christ's body, in which he suffered death, which was despised, buffeted, slain, for then he had given them the mortal flesh; but he gave them his holy body, his holy flesh, which hung also upon the cross in the mortal substance, and his holy blood which was shed together with the mortal, · The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, Behmen's ' Works,' vol.' i. chap. xxiii. p. 252. 194 Beauties in Behmen's Writings. as an immortal flesh and blood which the disciples received into their body, which was put on to the soul, as a new body out of Christ's body.' Again, the following is a very striking description of the future state, and, with the exception of one or two peculiar expressions, intelligible, at any rate, to the meanest capacity: If we will speak of our native country, out of which we are wandered with Adam, and will tell of the Resting-place of the Soul, we need not to cast our minds far off; for far off or near is all one and the same thing with God; the Place of the Holy Trinity is all over. . . . The Soul, when it departs from the Body, needs not to go far, for at that Place where the body dies, there is Heaven and Hell; and the man Christ dwells everywhere. God and the Devil is there; yet each in his own kingdom. The Paradise is also there; and the Soul needs only to enter through the deep door in the Centre. Is the Soul holy? Then it stands in the Gate of Heaven, and the earthly Body has but kept it out of Heaven; and now when the Body comes to be broken, then the Soul is already in Heaven; it needs no going out or in; Christ has it in his arms, &c.'' Many other passages might be quoted, strangely wild and fanciful, but with a certain weird and dreamy fascination about them, which none but a man of genius with a true poet's eye could have written; but as they seem to me to be entirely without foundation in the only Book which the Christian can recognise as an authority on subjects so utterly beyond human ken, I refrain from quoting them.3 The Threefold Life of Man, Behmen's 'Works,' vol. ii. chap. xvi. p. 175. 2 The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, Behmen's Works,' vol. i. chap. xix. ad fin ; see also chap. ix. p. 61, on the same subject. nothing nearer to you than Heaven, Paradise, and Hell. comes a paradisical child.' There is then it be For examples, such passages as that in the Aurora, commencing: 'It is most certain and true that there are all manner of Fruits in Heaven, and no merely Types and Shadows. Also the Angels pluck them with their Hands and eat them, as we do that are men; but they have not any Teeth, &c.' (chap. viii.). Behmen did not profess to be inspired. 195 Not that Behmen ever professed to have received any revelation which was to supersede the Bible, or even to supplement it in any way; but, as the inner light always existed in his own mind, and only required to be developed or 'opened' (to use his own expression), so the truths which he proclaimed were all contained in the Bible, and only required to be 'opened.' Thus, with regard to the Creation and the Fall, which were the very hinges on which his whole system turned, he thought at first that his discoveries were not in the Bible. But,' he says, 'when I found the Pearl, then I looked Moses in the face, and found that Moses had wrote very right, and I had not rightly understood it.' Neither is it correct to say that Behmen regarded himself as inspired; there was simply an 'opening' of God in him; that is, the impulse came from within, not from without,―strictly in accordance with the fundamental principle of all mysticism, that Christ is within us. Nor does he at all claim for himself the sole possession of the revelation which he had to make to the world; others had potentially what he had actually. 'O thou bright Crown of Pearl,' he exclaims, 'art thou not brighter than the Sun? There is nothing like thee; thou art so very manifest, and yet so very secret, that among many thousand in this world, thou art scarcely rightly known of any one; and yet thou art carried about in many that know thee not!' Once more, Behmen, like most mystics, though in this respect unlike his admirer William Law, loved to find allegorical meanings in every part of Scripture; but he did not, like the later mythical school, explain away the literal meaning of the historical facts. The sufferings of Christ, for example, were real, external facts, as well as being mystical. The outward man Christ underwent The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, chap. xvii. §§ 18, 19. 2 The Threefold Life of Man, Works,' vol. ii. p. 69, chap. vi. · 196 Law's Estimate of Behmen's Mission. this Pain also outwardly when He was scourged; for all the inward Forms which the man Christ must bear inwardly for our sakes, which caused him to sweat drops of Blood, they stood also outwardly on his Body.'1 In fact, Behmen's position in regard to God's Revealed Word could not be better described than in the following words of William Law: He has no right to be placed among the inspired Pen-men of the New Testament; he was no Messenger from God of anything new in Religion; but the mystery of all that was old and true both in Religion and Nature was opened in him. This is the particularity of his character, by which he stands fully distinguished from all the Prophets, Apostles, and extraordinary Messengers of God. They were sent with occasional Messages, or to make such alterations in the œconomy of Religion as pleased God; but this man came on no particular Errand, he had nothing to alter, or add, either in the Form or Doctrine of Religion; he had no new Truths of Religion to propose to the World, but all that lay in Religion and Nature, as a Mystery unsearchable, was in its deepest Ground opened in this Instrument of God. And all his Works are nothing else but a deep manifestation of the Grounds and Reasons of that which is done, that which is doing, and is to be done, both in the kingdom of Nature and the kingdom of Grace, from the Beginning to the End of Time. His Works, therefore, though immediately from God, have not at all the Nature of the Holy Scriptures; they are not offered to the World, as necessary to be received, or as a Rule of Faith and Manners, and therefore no one has any Right to complain, either of the Depths of his Matter, or the Peculiarity of his Stile: They are just as they should be, for those that are fit for them; and he that The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, chap. xxv.; Works,' vol. i. p. 267. Law on Behmen's Want of Learning. 197 likes them not, or finds himself unqualified for them, has no obligation to read them.'1 In spite of the marked and wide distinction which Law draws between the writers of Holy Writ and Behmen, it will be thought perhaps that he claims for his favourite a sufficiently exalted mission; and though he admits that no man is obliged to read Jacob's writings as necessary to salvation, yet in another passage he expresses pretty clearly what his opinion is of those who do not appreciate them. 'I have given,' he says, ' notice of a Pearl; if any one takes it to be otherwise, or has neither skill or value for Pearls, he is at Liberty to trample it under his feet.' We all know what is the kind of animal which tramples Pearls underfoot. It will be asked, What were the reasons for the fascination which Behmen exercised over a man of undoubted genius and piety like William Law? These will appear more fully when we come to Law's mystic writings, but one reason may be noted here, viz., the contrast between the mean condition and want of education in Behmen, and the spirituality and beauty of his writings. For years, Law had been taking up his parable on the utter insufficiency of human learning to discern spiritual truths; nay, on the positive hindrances which it gave to the discernment of them. Here was a very case in point! A pearl had been cast before these learned swine, cram-full of the husks of school-divinity, heathen mythology, profane poetry,--everything, in short, except the one thing needful,- and they trampled it under their feet, and turned again to rend him who had cast it before them! Over and over again Law refers with inexpressible gusto to Behmen's want of human Appeal to all that Doubt, &c.; Law's 'Works,' vol. vi. p. 323-4. 2 Ibid. p. 329. |