GOD? Is
the soul propagated from father to son like the body? or is it every time
new created and breathed in from GOD? How comes original sin into each
several soul? How does the soul of the saint feed and grow upon the word
of GOD? Whence comes the deadly contrariety between the flesh and the
spirit? Whither goes the soul when it at death departs from the body? In
what does its rest, its awakening, and its glorification consist? What
kind of body shall the glorified body be? The soul and spirit of CHRIST,
what are they? and are they the same as ours? What and where is
Paradise?' Through a hundred and fourteen large quarto pages Behmen's
astonishing answers to the forty questions run; after which he adds this:
'Thus, my beloved friend, we have set down, according to our gifts, a
round answer to your questions, and we exhort you as a brother not to
despise us. For we are not born of art, but of simplicity. We
acknowledge all who love such knowledge as our brethren in CHRIST, with
whom we hope to rejoice eternally in the heavenly school. For our best
knowledge here is but in part, but when we shall attain to perfection,
then we shall see what GOD is, and what He can do. Amen.'

_A Treatise of the Incarnation of the Son of God_ comes next, and then we
have three smaller works written to clear up and to establish several
difficult and disputed matters in it and in some of his former works. To
write on the Incarnation of the Son of GOD would need, says Behmen, an
angel's pen; but his defence is that his is better than any angel's pen,
because it is the pen of a sinner's love. The year 1621 saw one of
Behmen's most original and most powerful books finished,--the _Signatura
Rerum_. In this remarkable book Behmen teaches us that all things have
two worlds in which they live,--an inward world and an outward. All
created things have an inner and an invisible essence, and an outer and a
visible form. And the outward form is always more or less the key to the
inward character. This whole world that we see around us, and of which
we ourselves are the soul,--it is all a symbol, a 'signature,' of an
invisible world. This deep principle runs through the whole of
creation. The Creator went upon this principle in all His work; and the
thoughtful mind can see that principle coming out in all His work,--in
plants, and trees, and beasts.

As German Boehme never cared for plants
Until it happed, a-walking in th