jangle instead about the mere husk,
about the written word and letter while they miss the living Word."[52]

The divisions of Christendom are due to the fact that its
"master-builders" are of the Babel-type. They always follow the line
of _opinion_; their basis is "the letter"; their method of approach is
_external_. They build "stone houses in which they read the writings
which the Apostles left behind them," while they themselves dispute and
contend about "mental idols and {170} opinions."[53] The true Church
of Christ, on the contrary, is the living Temple of the Spirit. It is
built up of men made wholly new by the inward power of the Divine
Spirit and made _one_ by an inward unity of heart and life with
Christ--as "a living Twig of our Life-Tree Jesus Christ." Nobody can
belong to this Church unless "he puts on the shirt of a little child,"
dies to selfishness and hypocrisy, rises again in a new will and
obedience, and forms his life in its inmost ground according to Christ,
the Life.[54] "The wise world," he declares, "will not believe in the
true inward work of Christ in the heart; it will have only an external
washing away of sins in Grace," but the ABC of true religion is far
different.[55] He only is a Christian in fact in whom Christ dwelleth,
liveth and hath His being, in whom Christ hath arisen as the eternal
ground of the soul. He only is a Christian who has this high title in
himself, and has entered with mind and soul into that Eternal Word
which has manifested itself as the life of our humanity.[56] He wrote
near the end of his life to Balthazar Tilken: "If I had no other book
except the book which I myself am, I should have books enough. The
entire Bible lies in me if I have Christ's Spirit in me. What do I
need of more books? Shall I quarrel over what is outside me before I
have learned what is within me?"[57] "What would it profit me if I
were continually quoting the Bible and knew the whole book by heart but
did not know the Spirit that inspired the holy men who wrote that book,
nor the source from which they received their knowledge? How can I
expect to understand them in truth, if I have not the same Spirit they
had?"[58]

This insistence on personal, first-hand experience and practice of the
Christ-Life, as the ground of true religion, {171} is the fundamental
feature of Boehme's Christianity. He travels, as we shall see, through
immense heights and deeps. Like Dante, who immeasur