where Jacob Behmen
dwells and works. And that for a very good reason. For I have found no
firm footing in those deep places for my own feet. I wade in and in to
the utmost of my ability, and still there rise up above me, and stretch
out around me, and sink down beneath me, vast reaches of revelation and
speculation, attainment and experience, before which I can only wonder
and worship. See Jacob Behmen working with his hands in his solitary
stall, when he is suddenly caught up into heaven till he beholds in
enraptured vision The Most High Himself. And then, after that, see him
swept down to hell, down to sin, and down into the bottomless pit of the
human heart. Jacob Behmen, almost more than any other man whatsoever, is
carried up till he moves like a holy angel or a glorified saint among
things unseen and eternal. Jacob Behmen is of the race of the seers, and
he stands out a very prince among them. He is full of eyes, and all his
eyes are full of light. It does not stagger me to hear his disciples
calling him, as HEGEL does, 'a man of a mighty mind,' or, as LAW does,
'the illuminated Behmen,' and 'the blessed Behmen.' 'In speculative
power,' says dry DR. KURTZ, 'and in poetic wealth, exhibited with epic
and dramatic effect, Behmen's system surpasses everything of the kind
ever written.' Some of his disciples have the hardihood to affirm indeed
that even ISAAC NEWTON ploughed with Behmen's heifer, but had not the
boldness to acknowledge the debt. I entirely accept it when his
disciples assert it of their master that he had a privilege and a
passport permitted him such as no mortal man has had the like since
JOHN'S eyes closed upon his completed Apocalypse. After repeated and
prolonged reading of Behmen's amazing books, nothing that has been said
by his most ecstatic disciples about their adored master either
astonishes or offends me. Dante himself does not beat such a soaring
wing as Behmen's; and all the trumpets that sound in _Paradise Lost_ do
not swell my heart and chase its blood like Jacob Behmen's broken
syllables about the Fall. I would not wonder to have it pointed out to
me in the world to come that all that Gichtel, and St. Martin, and Hegel,
and Law, and Walton, and Martensen, and Hartmann have said about Jacob
Behmen and his visions of GOD and Nature and Man were all but literally
true. No doubt,--nay, the thing is certain,--that if you open Jacob
Behmen anywhere as Gregory Richter opened the