be said that, than that day’s work, than those four quarto pages, not Augustine, not Luther, not Bunyan, not Baxter, not Shepard has ever written anything of more evangelical depth, and strength, and passion, and pathos.  It is truly a splendid day’s work!  But it might not have been possible even for Behmen to perform that day’s work had he not for months beforehand been dealing day and night with the deepest and the most heart-searching

things both of God and man.  What a man was Jacob Behmen, and chosen to what a service!  At work all that day in his solitary stall, and then all the night after over his rush-light writing for a memorial to himself and to us his incomparable Compendium of Repentance.

In a letter addressed to one of the nobility in Silesia, and dated February 19, 1623, Behmen says: ‘When you have leisure to study I shall send you something still more deep, for I have written this whole autumn and winter without ceasing.’  And if he had written nothing else but his great book entitled Mysterium Magnum that autumn and winter, he must have written night and day and done nothing else.  Even in size the Mysterium is an immense piece of work.  In the English edition it occupies the whole of the third quarto volume of 507 pages; and then for its

matter it is a still more amazing production.  To say that the Mysterium Magnum is a mystical and allegorical commentary upon the Book of Genesis is 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