come home from his travels a humbler man, a wiser man,
and a man more ready to learn and lay to heart the truth that some of his
own countrymen could all the time have taught him. On his return from
the east, Walter found the name of Jacob Behmen in everybody's mouth;
and, on introducing himself to that little shop in Goerlitz out of which
the _Aurora_ and _The Threefold Life_ had come, Walter was wise enough to
see and bold enough to confess that he had found a teacher and a friend
there such as neither Egypt nor India had provided him with. After many
immensely interested visits to Jacob Behmen's workshop, Walter was more
than satisfied that Behmen was all, and more than all, that his most
devoted admirers had said he was. And, accordingly, Walter laid a plan
so as to draw upon Behmen's profound and original mind for a solution of
some of the philosophical and theological problems that were agitating
and dividing the learned men of that day. With that view Walter made a
round of the leading universities of Germany, conversed with the
professors and students, collected a long list of the questions that were
being debated in that day in those seats of learning, and sent the list
to Behmen, asking him to give his mind to them and try to answer them.
'Beloved sir,' wrote Behmen, after three months' meditation and prayer,
'and my good friend: it is impossible for the mind and reason of man to
answer all the questions you have put to me. All those things are known
to GOD alone. But, that no man may boast, He sometimes makes use of very
mean men to make known His truth, that it may be seen and acknowledged to
come from His own hand alone.' It is told that when Charles the First
read the English translation of Behmen's answers to the _Forty
Questions_, he wrote to the publisher that if Jacob Behmen was no
scholar, then the Holy Ghost was still with men; and, if he was a learned
man, then his book was one of the best inventions that had ever been
written. The _Forty Questions_ ran through many editions both on the
Continent and in England, and it was this book that gained for Jacob
Behmen the denomination of the Teutonic Philosopher, a name by which he
is distinguished among authors to this day. The following are some of
the university questions that Balthazar Walter took down and sent to
Jacob Behmen for his answer: 'What is the soul of man in its innermost
essence, and how is it created, soul by soul, in the image of