ring joy.... The Fire is painful and consuming, but the
Light is yielding, friendly, powerful and delightful, a sweet and
amiable Joy."

Pure delight, with no trace of doubt or fear, hope or regret, is the
sign of the presence of Love or Light. So again Behmen says: "The Fire
in the Light is a fire of Love, but the Fire in the Darkness is a fire
of Anguish, and is painful, irksome, and full of contrariety." The end
to which all things tend is the final separation of light from darkness;
the "last day" means this; but the present world is a perpetual mixture
of light and darkness, good and evil, joy and anguish. So, the Cross of
Jesus is at once the highest embodiment of Love and Hate.

It is remarkable that in this doctrine of light and darkness Behmen was
nearly followed by one who had not, I suppose, ever heard of him,
reading as he did little of anything but the Bible, who worked on the
Scriptures with his own powerful and earnest insight, the Christian
hero, Charles Gordon. In his little book called "Reflections in
Palestine" written in that one year, 1883, of unbroken repose from
action spent in the Holy Land, just before his final service at
Khartoom, Gordon dwells upon the repetition, as he calls it, _both in
the individual soul, and in the world's history_ of four processes
constantly recurring,--a state of darkness, a light breaking forth
through darkness, a division of light from darkness or gathering
together of light, a re-dispersion of light into darkness, and then a
renewal of the four processes, ever upon an ascending level of good,
directed towards the final elimination of all light from the darkness.

Fire must have fuel, something on which to feed. It must feed or perish.
But the magic Fire-spirit, the Soul, cannot perish because it is an
eternal Essence. Therefore it must either feed; or _hunger_. It desires
spiritual essence or "virtue" to allay its raging hunger. But, during
the space that it is embodied in this nature, it can feed _either_ on
the Divine Spirit, or upon the Spirit of this World. "Hence," says
Behmen, "we may understand the cause of that infinite variety which is
in the Wills and Actions of Men." For of whatsoever the Soul eateth, and
wherewith its Fire-life becometh kindled; "according to that the Soul's
life is led and governed." You become like to that which you eat. If the
Soul breaks forth out of its Nature-self and enters into "God's
Love-fire," it eats of the Divine Essence