Jacob Behmen, Alexander Whyte [android based ebook reader TXT] 📗

of all Essences to Behmen. GOD is the deepest Ground, the living and the life-giving Root of all existence. At the same time, the Divine Nature is so Divine; It is so high and so deep; It is so unlike all that is not Itself; It is so beyond and above all language, and all thought, and all imagination of man or angel, that universe after universe have had to come into existence, and have had to be filled, each successive universe after its own kind, with all the fulness of GOD, before that universe of which we form a part, and to which our utmost imagination is confined, could have come into existence, and into recognition of itself. Behmen's Eternal Nature must never be taken for the Eternal GOD. The Divine Nature, the Eternal Godhead, exists in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost; and then, after the Eternal Generation of the Son, and the Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost, there comes up in order of existence Eternal Nature. Eternal Nature is not the Divine Nature, but it is as near to the Divine Nature in its qualities and in its powers as any created thing can ever by any possibility be. Now, if we are still to follow Behmen, we must not let ourselves indolently think of the production of Eternal Nature as a divine act done and completed in any past either of time or of eternity. There is neither past nor future where we are now walking with Behmen. There is only an everlasting present where he is now leading us. For, as GOD the Father generates the Son eternally and continually; and as the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son eternally and continually, so GOD the Word eternally and continually says, 'Let this Beginning of all things be, and let it continue to be.' And, as He speaks, His Word awakens the ever-dawning morning of the ever new-created day. And He beholds Eternal Nature continually rising up before Him, and He pronounces it very good. The Creator so transcends the creation, and, especially, that late and remote creation of which we are a part, that, as the Creator's first step out of Himself, and as a step towards our creation, is His creation, generation, or other production of a nature or universe that shall be capable of receiving immediately into itself all that of the Creator that He has purposed to reveal and to communicate to creatures,--a nature or universe which shall at the same time be itself the beginning of creation, and the source, spring, and quarry out of which all that shall afterwards come can be constructed. Eternal Nature is thus the great storehouse and workshop in which all the created essences, elements, principles, and potentialities of all possible worlds are laid up. Here is the great treasury and laboratory into which the Filial Word enters, when by Him GOD creates, sustains, and perfects the worlds, universe after universe. Here, says Behmen, is the great and universal treasury of that heavenly clay of which all things, even to angels and men, are made; and here is the eternal turning-wheel with which they are all framed and fashioned. Eternal Nature is an invisible essence, and it is the essential ground out of which all the visible and invisible worlds are made. For the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. In that radiant original universe also all the thoughts of GOD which were to usward from everlasting, all the Divine ideas, patterns, and plans of things, are laid open, displayed, copied out and sealed up for future worlds to see carried out. 'Through this Kingdom of Heaven, or Eternal Nature,' says William Law, in his _Appeal to all that Doubt_, 'is the invisible GOD eternally breaking forth and manifesting Himself in a boundless height and depth of blissful wonders, opening and displaying Himself to all His heavenly creatures in an infinite variety and an endless multiplicity of His powers, beauties, joys, and glories. So that all the inhabitants of heaven are for ever knowing, seeing, hearing, feeling, and variously enjoying all that is great, amiable, infinite, and gracious in the Divine Nature.' And again, in his _Way to Divine Knowledge_: 'Out of this transcendent Eternal Nature, which is as universal and immense as the Godhead itself, do all the highest beings, cherubims and seraphims, all the hosts of angels, and all intelligent spirits, receive their birth, existence, substance, and form. And they are one and united in one, GOD in them, and they in GOD, according to the prayer of CHRIST for His disciples, that they, and He, and His Holy Father might be united in one.' A little philosophy, especially when the philosopher does not yet know the plague of his own heart, tends, indeed, to doubt and unbelief in the word of GOD and in the work of CHRIST. But the philosophy of Behmen and Law will deepen the mind and subdue the heart of the student till he is made a prodigal son, a humble believer, and a profound philosopher, both in nature and in grace, like his profound masters.

Behmen's teaching on human nature, his doctrine of the heart of man, and of the image of GOD in the heart of man, has a greatness about it that marks it off as being peculiarly Behmen's own doctrine. He agrees with the catechisms and the creeds in their teaching that the heart of man was at first like the heart of GOD in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. But Behmen is above and beyond the catechisms in this also, in the way that he sees the heart of man still opening in upon the Divine Nature, as also upon Eternal and Temporal Nature, somewhat as the heart of GOD opens on all that He has made. On every page of his, wherever you happen to open him, Behmen is found teaching that GOD and CHRIST, heaven and hell, life and death, are in every several human heart. Heaven and all that it contains is every day either being quenched and killed in every human heart, or it is being anew generated, rekindled, and accepted there; and in like manner hell. 'Yea,' he is bold to exclaim, 'GOD Himself is so near thee that the geniture of the Holy Trinity is continually being wrought in thy heart. Yea, all the Three Persons are generated for thee in thy heart.' And, again: 'GOD is in thy dark heart. Knock, and He shall come out within thee into the light. The Holy Ghost holds the key of thy dark heart. Ask, and He shall be given to thee within thee. Do not let any sophister teach thee that thy GOD is far aloft from thee as the stars are. Only offer at this moment to GOD thine heart, and CHRIST, the Son of GOD, will be born and formed within thee. And then thou art His brother, His flesh, and His spirit. Thou also art a child of His Father. GOD is in thee. Power, might, majesty, heaven, paradise, elements, stars, the whole earth--all is thine. Thou art in CHRIST over hell, and all that it contains.' 'Behmen's speculation,' Martensen is always reminding us, 'streams forth from the deepest practical inspiration. His speculations are all saturated with a constant reference to salvation. His whole metaphysic is pervaded by practical applications.' And conspicuously so, we may here point out, is his metaphysic of GOD and of the heart of man. The immanence of GOD, as theologians and philosophers call it; the indwelling of GOD, as the psalmists and the apostles and the saints call it; the Divine Word lightening every man that comes into the world, as John has it,--of the practical and personal bearings of all that Behmen's every book is full. Dost thou not see it and feel it? he continually calls to his readers. Heaven, be sure, is in every holy man, and hell in every bad man. When thou dost work together with GOD then thou art in heaven, and thy soul dwells in GOD. In like manner, also, thou art in hell and among the devils when thou art in any envy, malice, anger, or ill-will. Thou needest not to ask where is heaven or where is hell. Both are within thee, even in thy heart. Now, then, when thou prayest, pray in that heaven that is within thee, and there the Holy Ghost shall meet with thee and will help thee, and thy soul shall be the whole of heaven within thee. It is a fundamental doctrine of Behmen's that the fall would have been immediate and eternal death to Adam and Eve had not the Divine Word, the Seed of the woman, entered their hearts, and kept a footing in their hearts, and in the hearts of all their children, against the fulness of time when He would take our flesh and work out our redemption. And thus it is that Behmen appeals to all his readers, that if they will only go down deep enough into their own hearts--then, there, down there, deeper than indwelling sin, deeper than original sin, deep down and seated in the very substance and centre of their souls--they will come upon secret and unexpected seeds of the Divine Life. Seeds, blades, buddings, and new beginnings of the very life of GOD the Son, in their deepest souls. Secret and small, Behmen exclaims, as those seeds of Eden are, despise them not; destroy them not, for a blessing for thee is in them. Water those secret seeds, sun them, dig about them, and they will grow up in you also. The Divine Life is in you, quench it not, for it is of GOD. Nay, it is GOD Himself in you. It depends upon yourself whether or no that which is at this moment the smallest of all seeds is yet to become in you the greatest and the most fruitful of all trees.

'Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is,' is a characteristic saying of a fellow-countryman of Behmen's. And Behmen's super-confessional and almost super-scriptural treatment of that frequent scriptural anthropomorphism,--'unavoidable and yet intolerable,'--the wrath of GOD, must be left by me in Behmen's own bold pages. Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Behmen's philosophical, theological, and experimental doctrine of sin also, with one example, must be wholly passed by. 'If all trees were clerks,' he exclaims in one place, 'and all their branches pens, and all the hills books, and all the water ink, yet all would not sufficiently declare the evil that sin hath done. For sin has made this house of heavenly light to be a den of darkness; this house of joy to be a house of mourning, lamentation, and woe; this house of all refreshment to be full of hunger and thirst; this abode of love to be a prison of enmity and ill-will; this seat of meekness to be the haunt of pride and rage and malice. For laughter sin has brought horror; for munificence, beggary; and for heaven, hell. Oh, thou miserable man, turn convert. For the Father stretches out both His hands to thee. Do but turn to Him and He will receive and embrace thee in His love.' It was the sin and misery of this world that first made Jacob Behmen a philosopher, and