r and better
saw the original plan, constitution, and operation of human nature; its
aboriginal catastrophe; its weakness and openness to all evil; and its
need of constant care, protection, instruction, watchfulness, and Divine
help. Behmen writes on all the four temperaments with the profoundest
insight, and with the fullest sympathy; but over the last of the four he
exclaims: 'O hear me! for I know well myself what melancholy is! I also
have lodged all my days in the melancholy inn!' As I read that light and
elastic book published the other day, _The Life and Letters of Erasmus_,
I came on this sentence, 'Erasmus, like all men of real genius, had a
light and elastic nature.' When I read that, I could not believe my
eyes. I had been used to think of light and elastic natures as being the
antipodes of natures of real genius. And as I stopped my reading for a
little, a procession of men of real and indisputable genius passed before
me, who had all lodged with Behmen in the melancholy inn. Till I
remembered that far deeper and far truer saying, that 'simply to say man
at all is to say melancholy.' No: with all respect, the real fact is
surely as near as possible the exact opposite. A light, elastic, Erasmus-
like nature, is the exception among men of real genius. At any rate,
Jacob Behmen was the exact opposite of Erasmus, and of all such light and
elastic men. Melancholy was Jacob Behmen's special temperament and
peculiar complexion. He had long studied, and watched, and wrestled
with, and prayed over that complexion at home. And thus it is, no doubt,
that he is so full, and so clear, and so sure-footed, and so impressive,
and so full of fellow-feeling in his treatment of this special
complexion. Behmen's greatest disciple has assimilated his master's
teaching in this matter of complexion also, and has given it out again in
his own clear, plain, powerful, classical manner, especially in his
treatise on _Christian Regeneration_. Let all preachers and pastors who
would master the _rationale_ of temptation, and who would ground their
directions and their comforts to their people in the nature of things, as
well as in the word of GOD, make Jacob Behmen and William Law and
Prebendary Clark their constant study. 'I write for no other purpose,'
says Behmen, 'than that men may learn how to know themselves. Seek the
noble knowledge of thyself. Seek it and you will find a heavenly
treasure which will not be eaten b