take
Behmen and Law together, as they meet together in _The Supersensual
Life_, and not A Kempis himself comes near them even in his own proper
field, or in his immense service in that field. There is all the
reality, inwardness, and spirituality of _The Imitation_ in _The
Supersensual Life_, together with a sweep of imagination, and a grasp of
understanding, as well as with both a sweetness and a bitterness of heart
that even A Kempis never comes near. _The Supersensual Life_ of Jacob
Behmen, in the English of William Law, is a superb piece of spiritual
work, and a treasure-house of masculine English. (If Christopher Walton
is right, we must read 'Lee' for 'Law' in this passage. If Walton is
right, then there was a master of English in those days we had not before
been told of.)

_A Treatise of the Four Complexions_, or _A Consolatory Instruction for a
Sad and Assaulted Heart_, was Behmen's next book. The four complexions
are the four temperaments--the choleric, the sanguine, the phlegmatic,
and the melancholy. Behmen's treatise has been well described by Walton
as containing the philosophy of temptation; and by Martensen as
displaying a most profound knowledge of the human heart. Behmen sets
about his task as a _ductor dubitantium_ in a masterly manner. He takes
in hand the comfort and direction of sin-distressed souls in a
characteristically deep, inward, and thorough-going way. The book is
full of Behmen's observation of men. It is the outcome of a close and
long-continued study of character and conduct. Every page of _The Four
Complexions_ gleams with a keen but tender and wistful insight into our
poor human nature. As his customers came and gave their orders in his
shop; as his neighbours collected, and gossiped, and debated, and
quarrelled around his shop window; as his minister fumed and raged
against him in the pulpit; as the Council of Goerlitz sat and swayed,
passed sentence upon him, retracted their sentence, and again gave way
under the pressure of their minister, and pronounced another
sentence,--all this time Behmen was having poor human nature, to all its
joints and marrow, and to all the thoughts and instincts of its heart,
laid naked and open before him, both in other men and in himself. And
then, as always with Behmen, all this observation of men, all this
discovery and self-discovery, ran up into philosophy, into theology, into
personal and evangelical religion. In all that Behmen bette