trines of Joachim were eagerly accepted by vast multitudes of people who looked forward eagerly to the coming of the third period, that of the Holy Ghost, when men should need no more outward religious helps, but the Spirit of God would be among them; and there should be no more sin, no more selfishness, but all men should be bound together by bonds of brotherly kindness and love. These doctrines, spread abroad especially by the " spiritual " faction of the Franciscan Order, penetrated into the farthest recesses of the land, and everywhere aroused an expectation of new and wonderful times to come. The man who possessed in the highest degree true transcendental genius at this time, and whose influence was the widest and most enduring, was Jacob Boehme, the humble shoemaker of Görlitz. Few men in modern history have been so much at home in the eternal world as he,-in the sense of the Infinite, he literally lived and moved and had his being. Long afterwards the Silesian poet Angelus expressed this in the lines: Im Wasser lebt der Fisch, die Pflanze in der Erden, Der Vogel in der Luft, die Sonn' am Firmament; Der Salamander muss im Feuer erhalten werden, Und Gottes Herz ist Jacob Boehmen's Element.1 66 The influence of this extraordinary man can hardly be overestimated. In religion he was followed by John Sparrow, Edward Taylor, William Law, John Pordage, Thomas Bromley, Jane Leade and Henry More in England; and by Gichtel and his angel-brothers," Spener, Arnold and others in Germany. In philosophy he can count among his disciples Schelling and von Baader, and even Kant and Hegel, says Boutroux, "if we consider the subject and the spirit of their doctrine, and not the form under which they express it, are less exempt from mysticism and theosophy than it seems, and than they themselves declare." 1 In the water lives the fish, the plant grows in the earth, The bird flies through the air, the sun shines in the sky; In fire the salamander must exist, And the element of Jacob Boehme, is God's own heart. Even in literature we find his influence flowing down the centuries and reappearing with fresh vigor and power in the German Romantic writers. Tieck was carried away by Boehme, and Novalis especially has expressed this influence in many ways, and in one poem he tells how the old Master appeared to him in a vision and makes himself known as follows: Es sind an mir durch Gottes Gnade, Ich habe treulich aufgeschrieben 1 Through God's own grace to me have come, The secret places of the New Covenant, I have written down in simple truth What ecstasy revealed to me ; And have remained poor and misunderstood, 'Till God has called me to Himself, Even over the sea, in the latter days, the influence of Boehme came, and showed itself in the mystic settlements of Kelpius and of Conrad Beissel in Pennsylvania; and the books of the old shoemaker of Görlitz were the favorite reading of Francis Pastorius, the leader of the first German settlements in Germantown, Philadelphia :— For, by the love of Görlitz' gentle sage, Jacob Boehme, then, may be taken as the typical example of the transcendental spirit in the Reformation period. In him are united the tendencies of cosmology and philosophy on the one hand, and religious mysticism or piety on the other. The life of Boehme is full of romantic interest. Born of humble parents, a poor shoemaker all his life, he was self-taught, and owed to his genius all his success. We are told how a strange man came into his shop, 1 Whittier. and said to him: "Jacob, thou art small, but thou shalt become great, and shalt be so changed that the world will wonder concerning thee. Be devout, then, and fear God and honor His word;" how in the year 1600 when he was twenty-five years old, he was 66 seized by the divine light, and with the starry spirit of his soul, through the sudden sight of a tin vessel, was carried away into the innermost recesses, or center of secret nature;" and how at the hour of his death, he cried out" nun fahr ich hin ins Paradiess;" and calling to those around him asked if they did not hear the beautiful music; and told them to open the doors in order that they might hear it better; "woraus man schliesset," says Gottfried Arnold, in his "Ketzergeschichte" "das ihm Gott einen sonderbaren vorschmack der Herrichkeit gezeiget habe."1 The mind of Boehme during his whole life was set on eternal things. "From my youth up," he says, "I have sought for one thing 1 From which we conclude, that God gave unto him a wonderful foretaste of glory. |