Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 21

_The Disciple_: "But how shall I comprehend it?"

_The Master_: "If thou goest about to comprehend in thy own will, it flieth from thee, but if thou dost surrender thyself wholly, then thou art dead to thy own will, and Love will be the Life of thy nature."[65]

He seems to go as far in this direction toward the annihilation of desire, negation of the finite, and loss of self-hood as any of the pantheistic mystics. This sample pa.s.sage will indicate his teaching: "When thou art wholly gone forth from the creature and become nothing to all that is nature and creature, then thou art in that Eternal One which is G.o.d Himself, and then thou shalt experience the supreme virtue of Love."[66]

These two diverse statements are, however, not as inconsistent as they at first seem. The _will_, the _intention_ that is a psychological preparation for this mystical experience is a will washed and purged of selfish impulse and self-seeking aims. It is an _intention_ that cannot be described in terms of any finite "content." It is the intense heave of the whole undivided being toward G.o.d with no reservation, no calculation of return profits, no thought even of isolated and independent personality. A true account of consciousness, preceding the moment of bursting through the Gate, might emphasize with equal accuracy either the "earnest resolution," "the storm and onset of will," or "the annihilation of particular desire," "the surrender of individualistic self-hood," "death to own will in the Life and Virtue of Love."

The effects of such an experience as that which came to Boehme, if we may take his case as typical, are (1) The birth of an inner conviction of G.o.d's immediate and environing Presence amounting to axiomatic certainty--faith through experience has become "the substance," and "is now one spirit with G.o.d"; (2) The radiation of the whole being with "a joy like that which parents have at the birth of their first-born child"--the joy now of the {206} soul crying, "Abba"; (3) A vastly heightened perception of what is involved in the eternal nature of the religious life and in the spiritual relation between the soul and G.o.d, _i.e._ increased ability to see what promotes and furthers the soul's health and development; (4) A unification, co-ordination, and centralizing of the inner faculties, so that there is an increment of power revealed in the entire personality; and (5) An increase of clarity and a sharpening of focus in the perception of moral distinctions together with a distinctly heightened moral and social pa.s.sion.

Boehme himself always believed, further, that his entire system of ideas, his philosophy of the universe, and his way of salvation were a "revelation" of the Spirit to him,--in a word, that his wisdom was "theosophy," a G.o.d-communicated knowledge. I have no desire to mark off dogmatically the scope and possible limits of "revelation," nor is it necessary here to discuss the abstract question whether "ideas" are ever "communicated" to a mind _ab extra_, and without the mediation of subjective processes, or not. In the concrete case of Jacob Boehme, I do not find any compelling evidence of the unmediated communication of ideas. He was a man of unusual native capacity, and, though untrained, his mind possessed a high order of range and quality, and swept, as he was, by a mighty transforming experience, he _found himself_ in novel fas.h.i.+on, and was the recipient of inspirations, which fired and fused his soul, gave him heightened insight into the significance of things old and new, and often enabled him to build better than he knew. He is, however, obviously using the stock of ideas which his generation and those early and late before it, had made "part of the necessary air men breathed." His terminology and symbolism were as old as mythology, and were the warp and woof of the nature philosophies and the alchemy of his day. His impressive and spiritual interpretation of Christianity is always deep and vital, and freighted with the weight of his own inward direct appreciation of G.o.d's revelation of Himself in Christ, {207} but even here he is walking on a road which many brave souls before him had helped to build, and we cannot with truth say that he supplies us with a new gospel which had been privately "communicated" to him. In fact, the portions of his voluminous writings which bear the mark of having been written as automatic script--by "this hand," as he often says--are the chaotic and confused portions, full of monotonous repet.i.tions, of undigested and indigestible phrases and the dreary re-shufflings of sub-conscious wreckage. Boehme used to say that "in the time of the lily" his writings would be "much sought after." But I doubt if, even "in the time of the lily," most persons will have the patience to read this shoemaker-prophet's books in their present form, that is, if "in the time of the lily" men still enjoy and prize intelligence and lucidity; but there already is enough of "the lily-spirit" in the world to appreciate and to give thanks for the experience, the flashes of insight, the simple wisdom, the brave sincerity, the inner certainty of the true World within the world we see, and the spiritual message of "the way to the soul's native Country," which he has given us.

[1] _True Repentance_, i.

[2] I have given his _Weltanschauung_ in the previous chapter, and I shall discuss his mysticism at the end of this chapter.

[3] Hegel says that Boehme's piety is "in the highest degree deep and inward."--_History of Philos._ iii. p. 216.

[4] _True Resignation_, iii. 20.

[5] _The Three Princ._, Preface, 4.

[6] "There is in every man an incorporate ground of Grace, an inner Temple of Christ, the soul's immortal Dowry. No man can sell or p.a.w.n this ground of Grace, this habitation and dwelling-place of Christ. It remains unlost as the possession of G.o.d--an inward Ground and spiritual substance."--_Myst. mag._ lxxiv. 20-33, freely rendered.

[7] _Sig. re._ xv. 45.

[8] _Aurora_, xviii. 43.

[9] _The Three Princ._, xiv. 3 and 12; also _ibid._ 85 and 88.

[10] _Myst. mag._ xxvii. 41.

[11] _Ninth Epistle_, 16.

[12] _Myst. mag._ xxvii. _pa.s.sim_; also _Seventh Epistle_, 11-14.

[13] _Tenth Epistle_, 13-14.

[14] _Regeneration_, 6.

[15] For a sample pa.s.sage see _Sig. re._ xv. 22-47.

[16] _True Resignation_, 30-41. Freely rendered.

[17] _The Three Princ._ x.x.xiii. 8-17.

[18] _Ibid._ xix. 6.

[19] _Sig. re._ ix. 67.

[20] _Ibid._ xi. 88.

[21] _Aurora_, Preface, 27.

[22] _Sig. re._ xi. 80.

[23] Prayer in _True Repentance_.

[24] _Three Princ._ xxii. 81.

[25] _Myst. mag._ lxx. 7-10; _Three Princ._ xviii. 80; and _Supersensual Life_, 27.

[26] _Three. Princ._ xxv. 43.

[27] _Ibid._ xxv. 6.

[28] Read _Ibid._ xxv. 7-41.

[29] _True Repentance_.

[30] _First Epistle_, 6. Hegel well says of Boehme: "What marks him out and makes him noteworthy is the Protestant principle of placing the intellectual world within one's own mind and heart, and of experiencing and knowing and feeling in one's own self-consciousness all that was formerly conceived as a Beyond."--_History of Philos._ iii. p. 191.

[31] _Tenth Epistle_, 16-19.

[32] _Incarnation_, part iii. chap. i. 5-15.

[33] _Sig. re._ xii. 10-13.

[34] _The Threefold Life_, iii. 31.

[35] _Ibid._ vi. 71.

[36] _The Three Princ._ iv. 9.

[37] _Aurora_, xix. 52-66.

[38] _Myst. mag._ lxxii. 7-10.

[39] _Ibid._ xxiv. 17.

[40] _Sig. re._ ix. 63.

[41] _Seventh Epistle_, 1.

[42] _Ibid._, 6 and 12.

[43] _Apology to Stiefel_, 23.

[44] _True Resignation_, iii. 21.