into which Lutheranism, soon after the death of its great founder, had degenerated. He was thirsting for the living water of an inward, heart-regenerating religion, and he therefore turned from the dead stone churches of the acknowledged creed to the living Spirit's Temple of the Mystic. With a godly daring, he plunged himself into the dark deep of a Tauler, Eckard, Suso, Ruysbroek, Schwenkfeld, and, above all, Jacob Boehme, and lo! the darkness became light to him, and many a pearl of priceless value brought he up with him from the bottom. He had been studying Medicine. As soon as he had taken the Doctor's degree, he went to Holland, where Mysticism had found a more genial soil than even in Germany, and where particularly the writings of Jacob Boehme had gathered around them a number of fervent and enthusiastic disciples. Angelus was here in his element, and it was with the greatest regret he tore himself away from so congenial a circle when his circumstances required his return home. Had he before been dissatisfied with Lutheranism, he became a thousand times more so when his experience in the liberal Holland enabled him to form a contrast. He was sick of the dryness, heartlessness, and inconsistency of Protestant theology, and of the arrogance, petulance, and intolerance of the Protestant clergy. When, shortly after his return, he became physician in ordinary to the duke of Wurtemberg-Oels, he began to give a public expression to his sentiments. This brought him in violent collision with the clergy of Oels, and a quarrel arose, which was carried on with such bitterness that Angelus, led by his exasperation, was induced to take a step that decided his course for life, and which, though we may be able to account for, we can by no means approve of. He turned Catholic. For a spirit who had stood on the height which some of his poems evince, this was indeed a lamentable fall. We should be grossly misunderstood if we were thought to mean by this that Catholicism is worse than Protestantism, - very far from that; but Angelus had known something which was infinitely better than either. However, we have all had our hours of weakness, when many a divine word, addressed to us from within or without, seems to us "a hard saying, who can bear it?" and when the "worship of God in spirit and in truth" seemed too high and transcendental for the slave of custom and the creature of flesh; we might pardon poor Angelus, had he only found in the bosom of Mater Ecclesia that peace and rest which he had vainly sought for amongst the Protestant sects. But alas! we have but too much reason to doubt it. The intolerant and fanatic tone which embitters his polemical tracts written after he joined the church, exhibit a sad contrast with the heavenly peace and cheerfulness that breathe through his poesies which were composed a long time before, and shows what so often since has been shown by similar cases that the best heart and the strongest head are not proof against the baneful influence of a heart-chilling, mindnarrowing church creed. - After many vicissitudes, which carried him at last to the court of Emperor Ferdinand the Third in Vienna, he took priest's orders, and toward the end of his life, he sought a retirement in the convent of Saint Mathias, where he changed this world of strife and doubt for the better one, July 9th, 1677. All the really valuable works of Angelus had been written, as above said, before he joined the Church of Rome; that is, when he was neither Catholic nor Protestant, but Christian. It is true, we use the latter word in a sense in which hardly any established church ever either claimed or deserved the title. We have several collections of religious poetry by him which, for the most part, are tainted with the same defects which disfigured the religious poetry of that age, no more in Germany than elsewhere, (that of the English Quarles, Crashaw, and even the excellent George Herbert,) but particularly in the Catholic countries of Spain and Italy-quaintness of tone, wit, and expression, a sickly sentimentality, and a childish toying with symbols. However, his defects he shared with his times, his excellences were his own. Even in those collections we spoke of there are some which, in the intenseness of a pure and heavenly love, and in the sweet and melodious flow of the versification, are only rivalled by the spiritual songs of Luis Ponce de Leon and Novalis. But the chief work of Angelus, that in which he laid down the law of all his deepest living and thinking, and on which his fame as a theosophical Poet is mainly founded, is a collection of rhymed epigrams in six books, which bears this title: "Johannis Angeli Silesii Cherubinischer Wandersmann, oder geistreiche Sinn-und Schlussreime zur göttlichen Beschaulich keit anleitende;" that is-The Cherubic Pilgrim, or spiritual Rhymes and Epigrams, teaching a life of Divine Contemplation. We venture to say that there are but few volumes in any language, particularly in rhyme, which contain within so short a compass such a number of thoughts, the deepest, wisest, and holiest, expressed in a form so concise, so transparent, and unavoidable. Many a one of them might be fitly called nardi parvus onyx, containing the quintessence of a thousand leaves written with theology and philosophy; they are all "apples of gold in dishes of silver." The religion preached therein is indeed not that of Protestantism or Catholicism, of Bible or Tradition, but that of the Everlasting Gospel, preached and confirmed by that divine and humane Spirit of Wisdom which in all ages, entering into holy souls, made them friends of Gods and prophets. The preaching of Angelus, in common with that of all his brother Mystics, is distinguished by the following characteristics : 1. Rejection of all outward authority, be it that of men or books, of bibles or councils, of popes or reformers. The Jewish bibliolatry of the Protestant churches was no less an abomination to them than the heathenish idolatry of the Catholics and their belief in the infallibility of councils and popes. They acknowledged no authority but that of the Holy Spirit revealing himself in the hearts of men. Novalis says: "The Holy Ghost must be our teacher of Christianity, not a dead, earthly, equivocal letter." And Jacob Boehme: "The written word is but an instrument whereby the Spirit leadeth us to itself within us." "Your councils and synods, (speaking to the priests,) your canons and articles, your laws and ordinances, are all mere devilish presumption. The spirit of God in Christ will not be bound to any laws of men." 2. Rejection of all mere historical belief in the great facts of Christianity. The life of Christ, according to them, has symbolical meaning, and only when thus understood and applied, does it become of value and benefit to us. Our belief must wear itself out in a faithful reproduction; that is, imitation of Christ's life. Jacob Boehme says: "Christianity doth not consist in the mere knowing of the history and applying the knowledge thereof, saying that Christ died for us and hath paid the ransom for us, so that we need do nothing but comfort ourselves therewith and steadfastly believe that it is so. Christianity is no such cheap and comfortable thing. Only he is a true Christian who is born of Christ." Our Angelus expresses but the mind of all his brethren. when he says: "The cross on Golgotha can never save thy soul, The cross in thine own heart alone can make thee whole." Regeneration that supernatural new birth of the inner man which has been a mystery to all Pharisees, Priests, and Levites, ever since the days of Nicodemus down to their lastfashioned representative in a New England pulpit, that miraculous transubstantiation of the earthly into the heavenly through the all-melting power of a divine love-is the char acteristic centre-doctrine of all Christian Mystics, from Saint John and Saint Paul to Jacob Boehme and Angelus. Let me quote once more Jacob Boehme: "Ye need not ask, Where is Christ? Is he in the baptism or in the supper? Is he in the reading of the Bible or in the hearing of the minister? Do but bend your heart, soul, and mind with all their strength unto Christ, that Christ may be born in you, and then ye have baptism and supper, Bible and minister within you in all places wheresoever ye are. Men tie us in these days to the history and to the material churches of stone, which are indeed good in their kind if men did also bring the temple of Christ into the Churches. But many a man goeth to church twenty or thirty years, heareth sermons and receiveth the sacraments, and yet is as much a beast of the devil at the last as at the first: a beast he goeth into the church, and a beast he cometh out from thence again. What good end doth it answer for me to go to the material churches of stone, and there to fill my ears with empty breath? Or to go to the supper, and feed nothing but the earthly mouth, which is mortal and corruptible? Cannot I feed and satisfy that with a piece of bread at home? What good doth it do the soul, which is an immortal life, to have the bestial man observe the form and venerate the shell of Christ's Institutions, if it cannot obtain the kernel thereof? Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. "But the holy man, I mean the man who is born again, hath his church, wherein he heareth and teacheth, about him everywhere, even in himself: for he always standeth and walketh, sitteth and lyeth down in his church. He liveth in the pure Christian Church, yea, in the true Temple of Christ. The Holy Ghost preacheth to him out of every creature. Whatsoever he looketh upon, he seeth a preacher of God therein." 3. Another characteristic in the preaching of the Mystics is their yearning for rest. God, according to them, is a blessed stillness. Angelus dwells upon this in several of his Epigrams, as, for instance, "Rest is the highest good, and if God was not rest, Then heaven would not be heaven, and angels not be blest." 4. And lastly, they lay a great stress upon a perfect union with God. This, which at first sight seems merely an explication of what was already implied in the doctrine of regeneration, they carry sometimes so far as to destroy all individual distinction, and utterly to annihilate every thing human in the all-absorbing fire-ocean of divinity. The last two characteristics the Christian Mystics have in common with the Persian Mystics, particularly with the greatest of them, Dschelaleddin Pumi. No one, however, went further than Angelus, who in some of his epigrams carries this pantheistic confounding of the human with the divine to such a pitch as appears to us absolutely sinful and blasphemous. A single glance upwards to the stormy sky might have confounded such arrogance, and brought our philosopher on his knees. For the love we bear him we have suppressed the worst of these stains in his otherwise pure and shining wings, and lest they might hold back from him the love which it is our wish to gain for him on this his first introduction to an English and American public. Let the reader judge him for the present only by the following specimens of his poetry and theosophy. [FROM THE CHERUBIC PILGRIM.] 1. What I am and what I shall be. I am a stream of Time, running to God my sea, 2. The Dew and the Rose. God's Spirit falls on me as dew drops on a rose, 3. The highest good. Rest is the highest good; and if God was not Rest Then Heaven would not be Heaven, and Angels not be blest. 4. The Tabernacle. The soul wherein God dwells-what church can holier be? |