admonish the other journeymen on the work-bench when they spoke lightly
of sacred things. His master disliked this and dismissed him, saying
that he would have no "house-prophet" to bring trouble into his house.
Thus Jacob was forced to go forth into the world as a travelling
journeyman, and, as he wandered about in that time of fierce religious
discord, the world appeared to him to be a "Babel." He was himself
afflicted by troubles and doubts, but clave to prayer and to Scripture,
and especially to the words in Luke xi.; "How much more shall your
heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." And once,
when he was again engaged for a time by a master, he was lifted into a
state of blessed peace, a Sabbath of the Soul, that lasted for seven
days, during which he was, as it were, inwardly surrounded by a Divine
Light. "The triumph that was then in my soul I can neither tell nor
describe. I can only liken it to a resurrection from the dead."

Jacob returned in 1594 to Goerlitz, became a master shoemaker in 1599,
married a tradesman's daughter, and had four children. In the year 1600
"sitting one day in his room, his eye fell upon a burnished pewter dish
which reflected the sunshine with such marvellous splendour that he fell
into a deep inward ecstasy and it seemed to him as if he could now look
into the principles and deepest foundations of things. He believed that
it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out
upon the green. But here he remarked that he gazed into the very heart
of things; the very herbs and grass, and that Nature harmonised with
what he had inwardly seen. He said nothing about this to any one, but
praised and thanked God in silence. He continued in the honest practice
of his craft, was attentive to his domestic affairs, and was on terms of
goodwill with all men."[A]

At the age of thirty-five, in the year 1610, Jacob Behmen suddenly
perceived that all which he had seen in a fragmentary way was forming
itself into a coherent whole, and felt a "fire-like" impulse, a yearning
to write it down, as a "Memorial," not for publication, but lest he
should forget it himself. He wrote it early in the morning before work,
and late in the evening after work. This was his "Morning Redness" or
"Aurora."

A nobleman of the country, called Carl von Endern, happened to see the
MS. at the shoemaker's house, was struck by it, and had some copies
made. One of these fell into the h