Book (§ 3). His Transcendentalism (§ 7).
His Essential Orthodoxy (§ 8).
The famous German mystic Jakob Bohme (often
written Behmen or Boehme in English), born at
Alt-Seidenberg, nearGorlitz, Nov., 1575; d. at Gbr-
litz Nov. 17, 1624. His parents were peasants,
from whom he inherited, it seems, a
i. Early strain of visionary mysticism. Unable
Tendency to bear the rough outdoor life of the
Toward farm, he was put to shoemaking in the
Mysticism, little town of Seidenberg, where he
had a hard apprenticeship with a
family that had no Christian principles, and got an
early insight into the controversies of the age.
With diligent reading of the Bible and prayer for
Boehme Boehringer
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the illumination of the Holy Spirit he combined eager study of the works of fanatical visionaries, such as Paracelsus, Weigel, and Schwenckfeld, by means of which he felt himself elevated above the strife of tongues around him into the light and joy of the contemplation of God. He settled, as master of his trade, at Gorlitz in 1599. He had his shop there until 1613, and must have prospered to a certain extent, since he bought a house in 1610 and had fully paid for it in 1618. He married a master butcher's daughter in 1599, and had four sons and two daughters, passing as a model husband and father among his neighbors. All these things go to show that he had a practical hold on life, and was far from being a mere crazy visionary. A visionary, however, he remained. He tells the story of a stranger coming into his shop and calling him by name, taking him aside to tell him he should be so great that the world should wonder at him, and warning him to remain true to the Word of God and to a life of virtue. Other visions followed. One day the reflection of the sun from
2. Mystic a bright metal vessel in his shop seemed Visions, to infuse such spiritual light into his
soul that the inner mysteries of things were laid open to his sight. He went out into the fields to seek the revelation of God's will in earnest prayer, and found his peace and joy only grow the deeper. None the less, ten years passed before he ventured to put down in writing what he had seen, and then he did so only on the encouragement of a new vision and as a memorandum for himself. The incomplete manuscript, written in great haste, which he called Aurora oder die Morgennite im Aufgang, began to circulate among his acquaintances at the instance of Karl von Ender, a friendly nobleman who was an adherent of Schwenckf eld's. In this way it came under the notice of Gregorius Richter, the pastor of Gorlitz, who at once began a fanatical war upon the presumptuous shoemaker, and urged the local magistrate to suppress him, lest the wrath of God should fall upon the town.
Bohme was minutely examined be-
3. Oppo- fore the council, and only dismissed sition to his on promising to write no more books. First Book. The observance of this promise,
however, was not only made difficult by the insistence of his friends, but by his own inner feeling that the fear of men had driven him to deny the grace of God that was in him. The bitter abuse of Richter, too, still continued, and after five years of silence, during which he had learned a good deal and developed more, Bohme could bear it no longer, and, encouraged by a fresh vision, again took up his pen. His new writings were at first circulated only in manuscript copies. Richter, who thought himself the appointed guardian of orthodoxy, thundered against him from the pulpit and attacked him in a vulgar lampoon, which Bohme answered in a tone naturally excited, but still showing a nobler spirit than the absurdly haughty and unchristian contempt of the attack. Far from having broken with the word of God and the sacraments, he was trying to live as an upright Christian, in strict self-discipline; and although among his twenty-eight works there are some which
directly attack the visible Church as Babel, the city of confusion, and set forth Christ in us as the mystical ideal, his general attitude by no means justifies the scornful " Shoemaker, stick to thy last " of his opponent. In 1624 he was obliged to leave Gorlitz, and went to Dresden, where he found shelter in the house of the director of the Elector's chemical laboratory • nd enjoyed the society of many of the most intellec-
4. Finds tual people of the court and the capital. Sympathy In May he had a hearing before several
in distinguished clerics and professors,
Dresden, who fully recognized his mental endowments, and encouraged him to go home, especially as his family, deprived of its head, had been exposed to no little suffering in the confusion of the Thirty Years' War. He returned to Gorlitz, but his end was near. When he asked for communion upon his death-bed, the successor of Richter, a man like-minded, would only give it to him after a searching examination, of which the report is still extant. Full of confidence, however, and with heavenly voices ringing in his ears,
5. Death Bohme took leave of his wife and of Bohme. children and died with the joyful cry
"I go to Paradise!" In spite of clerical opposition, a befitting funeral was provided by the town authorities; a cross was put up over the grave by his friends, to be defiled and thrown down by the populace.
Thus despised and rejected in his own day, Bdhme has been honored by some of the greatest minds of Germany in a later age; such men as Friedrich von Hardenberg, Jung-Stilling, Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, Hegel and Schelling received valuable intellectual impulses from his works, which also attracted much attention in England, where a complete translation appeared between 1644 and 1662. Besides those already named, the most important are Von den drei Principien gottlichen Wesens ; Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen ; Vierzig Fragen von der Seele ; Yon wahrer Busse ; Das Gesprdch einer unerleuchteten Seele ; and Der Weg zu Christo ; including two against predestinarianism and two
6. His against pantheism. Bohme's influ- Writings. ence has never been a popular one, because his train of thought is frequently difficult and sometimes almost impossible to follow. This is due partly to his lack of education, which prevented him from expressing himself clearly, but partly also to the depth and intensity of his thought, which has to struggle for adequate representation in words. With sincere longing, with real hunger of the soul he plunges into the depths of God's being. The traditional theology of the schools, with its strife about the letter, could not content him. " As the many kinds of flowers grow in the earth near each other, and none
contends with the other about color,
7. His smell, or taste, but they let the earth Transcen- and the sun, rain and wind, heat and dentalism. cold, do what they will with them,
while they grow each according to its own nature, so is it with the children of God." And he was simply a child of God, that longed to