which is eternal, and place side by side things which are in reality interdependent and joined with one another in perfect unity.

This contrariety upon which the self-manifestation of God depends Boehme takes from the scriptural divine elements of Love and Wrath. All further development and creation result from this contrariety. Thus the object of all manifested nature is to follow the path of the assimilation of the two opposing wills, the transforming of the "No" into the "Yes." This is brought about by seven organizing spirits or forms. The first three of these, representing God's wrath, bring nature out of Chaos and darkness to the point where contact with light is possible. Boehme calls them harshness, attraction, and anguish; in modern terms, contraction, expansion, and rotation. The first two are absolutely antagonistic forces; brought into collision, they form an endless whirling movement. They represent, in fact, the three laws of motion, centripetal and centrifugal force resulting in rotation. They are the basis of the manifestation of nature, the power of God without the love. The last three of the seven organizing spirits represent God's love. Boehme calls them light or love, sound and substance. They are spiritual forces and in them contraction, expansion, and rotation are repeated on a different plane. The first three forms give the material or strength of being, the last three, the quality; while the central or fourth form constitutes the pivot-point of both realms, common to the wrath or darkness and to the love or light. Thus there are these three omnipotent principles of life in the two forces and their resultant effect. They are often called by different names, as light, darkness, and their union which is the visible world, or good, evil, and life, or God, the devil, and the world. A continuous uniting and

separating, an eternal attraction and repulsion, an everlasting love and wrath is necessary to life. This is the law of opposites.

The practical and ethical character of Boehme's teachings is shown in what seems his attempt to harmonize the unde- · niable claim of pantheism that God is not to be known out of and apart from nature but in it and through it, with the equally undeniable fact of the evident opposition in this divine world of good and evil. He cannot make light of the fact of evil and explain it away as merely negative, as the unavoidable shadow to the light, for it is vastly more than that. For him the solution of the problem lies very deep and becomes only possible by looking upon the human soul not as a mode of divine substance, nor as the work of the Creator merely, but rather as absolutely self-existent. In other words, good and evil, heaven and hell, are to be looked upon as opposed possibilities within the soul, in relation to which the soul possesses perfect liberty of choice and full independence from any external influence and from any predetermined inherent condition; for even this is the deep meaning of the word free-will.

The possible good and evil latent in God and therefore in the human soul, become actual only when the soul in its pri- · mal freedom chooses the one or the other. The soul is not a being different from God, but, on the contrary, is fundamentally the divine substance itself, inasmuch as it brings into reality the possible opposition between good and evil. Therefore our rebirth and salvation through the Christ within us are but a return to our own primal divine being, but it must come as an act of the will. Will or desire is, in fact, the root of all manifestation, of all life, the radical force in man as in nature and in the Godhead. Ever-continuing creation is expressed in the human soul through

thought or imagination; out of these is born will and from will, actions. The state of our will makes the state of our life. Man as manifestation of God bears the seal of the Trinity in his three-fold nature; his soul from God, his spirit from the stars, his body from the elements. In his own realm he is the microcosm. Evil is any assertion of self, a turning away from God to independence apart from Him. It appears first as pride in the archangel Lucifer, in his selfish desire to be more than others. Man, created as a perfect being, was higher than the angels and greater than the fallen Lucifer, because he was complete. But he lost the inner divine wisdom from his nature by imitating Lucifer in his desire for separateness from his origin, lost therefore his completeness and was separated into the two sexes, under the forms of Adam and Eve. Hence marriage is holy, since only through union with his complementary nature can the individual hope to gain in part his birthright of harmonious completeness.

The relation to his own times comes out clearly in Boehme's teachings regarding freedom of conscience, preference for Christ's church invisible to churches "made of. stone" with their learned but uninspired clergy, and expectation of the speedy appearance of peace and harmony throughout the whole earth. He did not condemn the sacraments, but considered them simply outward symbols of the inner Christ, helpful according to the measure of our faith. He upheld the necessity of government until all men return to full freedom in God, but hoped for reform along many lines. War was for him an abomination. His obscure language and difficult symbolism, also a mark of his age, have always made him extremely difficult to interpret. Readers of all times have been seriously disturbed by the prevalence of the confusing cabalistic and alchemical im

agery which is the result of his acquaintance with the works of Paracelsus. Troeltsch definitely states 1 that his system is founded upon impressions from Paracelsus, Schwenkfeld, and Weigel. He might well mention Sebastian Franck also. But whether because Boehme was a theoretical alchemist 2 or because of the curious fascination, particularly at that time, of his mysterious language and the vagueness of his directions regarding the search for the philosopher's stone, certain it is that many alchemists read his works with sincere and eager devotion and that this aspect of his writings is thoroughly in accord with van Helmont and Robert Fludd. To us now it is beyond measure strange, the profound influence of this simple peasant upon such varied types of individuality as may be met in his train,-alchemists and lawyers, learned educators and simple tradesmen, peasants and poets, preachers and philosophers.

'Troeltsch: Soziallehren der Christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, in Gesammelte Schriften, I, p. 898.

'Adolf v. Harless: Jakob Boehme und die Alchymisten.

II

ENGLISH MYSTICISM BEFORE BOEHME

Of the three great factors uniting to bring about the sixteenth-century reformation, fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury England had developed only one. After King John paid homage to Pope Innocent III as his liege lord, parliamentary legislation had been directed toward separating England from Rome. Opposition to the Pope was in England naturally enough political rather than religious. It is true that on the continent likewise the idea of an independent state had been taking definite form perhaps ever since the fall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty; it had been strengthened by the opposition to the popes at Avignon; at the same time the great church councils of the fifteenth century had everywhere fostered the growing desire for national churches. But only in England was this shaking off of the foreign yoke and this subordination of church to state at all complete. This was Henry VIII's great reformation and England's first contribution to the reformation as a whole.

But the other two great factors, the mystical and humanistic contributions to the reformation, were in England of minor importance. England had had no Meister Eckhart, no Tauler, no Thomas à Kempis, no Theologia Germanica with their sincere and heartfelt teachings preparing the hearts of the people for a radical change in their religious life. They had had no Luther, a leader of the people whose personality had been steeped in the devout and popular ele