Jacob Boehme

“ Even a polished sword-blade has been asserted to have made an effective magic mirror, and it is recorded that Jacob Boehme penetrated into the innermost secrets of nature and the hearts of men by means of a tin cup. ”

“ In his endeavour to make his position clear he published in 1654 his ‘Academiarum Examen,’ in the epistle to which he asserts that he intends not ‘to traduce or calumniate the academies themselves, but only the corruptions that time and negligence hath introduced there.’ He gives vent, however, to his tendency towards mysticism in his expressed admiration of Jacob Boehmen (p. 26) , and his recommendation of the study of astrology (p. 51) . ”

“ Schelling, the idealist philosopher, bears testimony to Boehmen’s great merits as a thinker. Hegel speaks of him as the “Teutonic philosopher,“ and adds, ”In reality, through him, for the first time, did philosophy in Germany come forward with a characteristic stamp.” S. T. Coleridge in his “Literary Remains” [93] says: “I have often thought of writing a book to be entitled ‘A Vindication of Great Men Unjustly Branded,’ and at such times the names prominent to my mind’s eye have been Giordano Bruno, Jacob Boehmen, Benedict Spinoza, and Emanuel Swedenborg.” ”

“ Then he is artless, clear and strong; and no man can help listening to him, whether he dive deep down with the conviction “ohne Gift und Grimm kein Leben,” or rise with the belief that “the being of all beings is a wrestling power,” or soar with the persuasion that Love “in its height is as high as God.” The mystical poet of Silesia, Angelus Silesius, discerned where Boehme’s truest power lay when he sang—
The three periods of Boehme’s authorship constitute three distinct stages in the development of his philosophy. ”

“ He proceeded at once—"without sufficient examination or knowledge"—to {163} "vilify and condemn" the writing, and in a sermon on "False Prophets" he vigorously attacked the local prophet of Görlitz, who meekly sat in Church and listened to the "fulminations" against him. [33] After the sermon, Boehme modestly asked the preacher to show him what was wrong with his teaching, but the only answer he received was that if he did not instantly leave the town the pastor would have him arrested ”

“ It was well the rapids were between them, or he would have betrayed himself.
"My father, my father!" he murmured, while unseen tears suffused his eyes. It seemed good to pronounce the name. An overwhelming tenderness for the old man filled his soul. The weight of years and sorrow had bent, but not broken, him. Like Jacob, of old, he had wrestled with the Lord; and though ravaged by the conflict, he stood yet upon his legs. The son thought, with humility, of his own vain and flimsy woes, which were but boyish resentment and wounded pride; and his cherished plans of revenge vanished like smoke. ”

“ Jacob must be filled with God's Blessing, that he might bless the First-Born of angry Adam and Esau; for the Blessing, that is, Christ must be born in our Flesh and Soul, that the Seed of the Woman might bruise the Head of the Serpent.
32. The Anger must be drowned and appeased in the Humanity; an Offering did not do it, but this resigning into the Wrath, that the Love might drown the Wrath. Jacob in Christ must drown Esau in the Love-Power in his Blood, that Esau might also become a Jacob in Christ: But Esau was not willing to receive his brother Jacob, and contended about the first Birth ”

“ For when God's Love in the Humanity entered into God's Anger, the angry Father bewailed our Sins and Misery, and Jacob with his Humility drove forth mournful Tears out of his brother Esau; that is, the Love in the Humanity brought forth the great compassion out of and through the angry Father; so that the angry Father in the midst of his enkindled Wrath in the Humanity did set open a Gate of Mercy for Adam and all his Children; for his Love broke the Anger, which [Love] put itself into Death, and made an open Gate for poor Sinners in the Death to his Grace. ”

“ Hear!" cried Boakoam. "We will teach you our refined manners in return for your practical spirit."
"I consent," replied Jacob smiling. "One word more: you have alluded to some of us as rude and having repulsive manners. Very well; even among these men, vain, proud, and gross, there are some who are benevolent; though their appearance does not indicate it. I have not finished. In the presence of the representatives of the past I know not whether I shall be permitted to express my ideas. Behold them, if you will be kind enough to listen. Humanity will not retrograde. ”

“ Boehmer threw himself upon his knees, clasped his hands, burst into tears, and exclaimed, "Madame, I am ruined and disgraced if you do not purchase my necklace. I cannot outlive so many misfortunes. When I go hence I shall throw myself into the river."
"Rise, Boehmer," said the Queen, in a tone sufficiently severe to recall him to himself; "I do not like these rhapsodies; honest men have no occasion to fall on their knees to make their requests. ”

“ He studied under Abraham Gottlob Werner at Freiberg, travelled through several of the mining districts in north Germany, and for four years, 1792–1796, resided in England. There he became acquainted with the works of Jakob Boehme, and with the ideas of Hume, Hartley and Godwin, which were extremely distasteful to him. The mystical speculations of Meister Eckhart, Saint Martin, and above all those of Boehme, were more in harmony with his mode of thought. ”

“ Between 1644 and 1662 all Boehme’s works were translated by John Ellistone (d. 1652) and John Sparrow, assisted by Durand Hotham and Humphrey Blunden, who paid for the undertaking. At that time regular societies of Behmenists, embracing not only the cultivated but the vulgar, existed in England and in Holland. ”

“ Jacob brought out.
"Urbane" on the lips of Jacob had mysteriously all the shapeliness of a character which Bonamy thought daily more sublime, devastating, terrific than ever, though he was still, and perhaps would be for ever, barbaric, obscure.
What superlatives! What adjectives! How acquit Bonamy of sentimentality of the grossest sort; of being tossed like a cork on the waves; of having no steady insight into character; of being unsupported by reason, and of drawing no comfort whatever from the works of the classics?
"The height of civilization," said Jacob. ”

“ It is hot work walking up Greek hills at midday. The wild red cyclamen was out; he had seen the little tortoises hobbling from clump to clump; the air smelt strong and suddenly sweet, and the sun, striking on jagged splinters of marble, was very dazzling to the eyes. Composed, commanding, contemptuous, a little melancholy, and bored with an august kind of boredom, there he sat smoking his pipe.
Bonamy would have said that this was the sort of thing that made him uneasy—when Jacob got into the doldrums, looked like a Margate fisherman out of a job, or a British Admiral. ”

“ He was sarcastic because of Clara Durrant; because Jacob had come back from Greece very brown and lean, with his pockets full of Greek notes, which he pulled out when the chair man came for pence; because Jacob was silent.
"He has not said a word to show that he is glad to see me," thought
Bonamy bitterly.
The motor cars passed incessantly over the bridge of the Serpentine; the upper classes walked upright, or bent themselves gracefully over the palings; the lower classes lay with their knees cocked up, flat on their backs; the sheep grazed on pointed wooden legs ”

“ Jacob never asked himself any such questions, to judge by the way he laced his boots; shaved himself; to judge by the depth of his sleep that night, with the wind fidgeting at the shutters, and half-a-dozen mosquitoes singing in his ears. He was young—a man. And then Sandra was right when she judged him to be credulous as yet. ”

“ Jacob Bohme (born 1575) , the sweet, pure spirit of Christian mysticism, "The Voice of Heaven," than whom none stood higher in true alchemy, was a Christian, alchemist, theosophist; Robert Boyle, a conspicuous alchemical philosopher, in 1662 published his "Defense of the Doctrine touching the Spring and Weight of the Air," and illustrated his arguments by a series of ingenious and beautiful experiments, that stand to-day so high in the estimation of scientific men, that his remarks are copied verbatim by our highest authorities, and his apparatus is the best yet devised for the purpose. ”

“ Instead of standing up for the frivolous son, the pastor would now become his censor, which was all the easier for him as he had known him from his childhood. Moreover, he had now recovered his spectacles and his balance of mind.
Adler was leaning back with his hands clasped behind his head, looking at the ceiling. Boehme put his hand on his knee and began:
"My dear Gottlieb, your Christian submission in misfortune sets an excellent example; but as we are very imperfect in the sight of God, it is our duty not only to be resigned, but to be active. ”

“ Then there she was herself, whirling across the stage in white flounces, and the music was the dance and fling of her own soul, and the whole machinery, rock and gear of the world was spun smoothly into those swift eddies and falls, she felt, as she stood rigid leaning over the barrier two feet from Jacob Flanders.
Her screwed-up black glove dropped to the floor. When Jacob gave it her, she started angrily. For never was there a more irrational passion. And Jacob was afraid of her for a moment—so violent, so dangerous is it when young women stand rigid; grasp the barrier; fall in love. ”

“ Do you see how Jacob begins to reap the harvest of the sins of his early days? For twenty long years he mourned that beloved boy. He deceived his own father, and his own sons, in turn, deceived him.
What a bitter life! What was Jacob’s dying testimony to Pharaoh? It would take ten thousand Jacobs to get one convert like Pharaoh. “Few and evil,” said [67] Jacob, “have my days been.” He started with a lie in his mouth. He died in exile. He died in Egypt—not in the land which God had promised him. He would not let God choose for him. ”

“ With quiet Jacob he goes round the farm, among the quiet sheep; and yet he ranges with wild Esau over battle-field, and desert, and far unknown seas. With the mourner he weeps for ever; and yet he will sit as of old—if he be but invited—and bless the marriage-feast. For the penitent he hangs for ever on the cross; and yet with the man who works for God his Father he stands for ever in his glory, his eyes like a flame of fire, and out of his mouth a two-edged sword, judging the nations of the earth. ”

“ It's evidently the other way with Jacob. He is precisely the young man to fall headlong in love and repent it for the rest of his life."
"Oh, Mr. Bowley," said Mrs. Durrant, sweeping down upon them in her imperious manner, "you remember Mrs. Adams? Well, that is her niece." And Mr. Bowley, getting up, bowed politely and fetched strawberries.
So we are driven back to see what the other side means—the men in clubs and Cabinets—when they say that character-drawing is a frivolous fireside art, a matter of pins and needles, exquisite outlines enclosing vacancy, flourishes, and mere scrawls. ”

“ That is the difficulty with the people at the present time. If God will bless us in our basket and store, we shall have Him for our God. We find Jacob after this in Haran, driving bargains all the time, and the worst of it is he gets beat every time. He had to work seven years for his wife, and then gets another woman in her place. He is paid back in his own coin. We must not think that God will allow us to deceive without punishing us for it. Jacob forgot all the vows which he made at Bethel, but God did not forget His. ”

“ Coming under the influence, probably through William Law, of the writings of Jacob Böhme, the marvellous shoemaker of Görlitz in Silesia, who lived in the time of our Shakspere, and heartily adopting many of his views, he has left us a number of religious poems, which are seldom so sweet in music as they are profound in the metaphysics of religion. ”

“ The practical and ethical result of this living unity of nature is the side which most attracted Law, and it is one which is as simple to state as it is difficult to apply. Boehme's philosophy is one which can only be apprehended by living it. Will, or desire, is the radical force in man as it is in nature and in the Godhead, and until that is turned towards the light, any purely historical or intellectual knowledge of these things is as useless as if hydrogen were to expect to become water by study of the qualities of oxygen, whereas what is needed is the actual union of the elements. ”

“ But though all this may very well be true—so Jacob thought and spoke—so he crossed his legs—filled his pipe—sipped his whisky, and once looked at his pocket-book, rumpling his hair as he did so, there remains over something which can never be conveyed to a second person save by Jacob himself. Moreover, part of this is not Jacob but Richard Bonamy—the room; the market carts; the hour; the very moment of history. Then consider the effect of sex—how between man and woman it hangs wavy, tremulous, so that here's a valley, there's a peak, when in truth, perhaps, all's as flat as my hand. ”

“ The temple of the gulls is now thronged with votaries as much as that of superstition formerly was; human reason is still a slave to the most tyrannical prejudices; and certainly, there is no ready way to excite general attention and admiration, than to deal in the mysterious and the marvellous. The visionary system of Jacob Böhman has latterly been revived in some parts of Germany. The ghosts and apparitions which had disappeared from the times of Thomasius and Swedenborg, have again left their graves, to the great terror of fanaticism. ”