lunder of supposing that Boehme means
that _before_ God expressed Himself and unfolded Himself in the
infinite processes of revelation and creation, He existed apart, as
this undifferentiated One, this unknowable Abyss, this incomprehensible
Matrix. There is no "before." Creation, revelation, manifestation is
a dateless and eternal fact. God to be a personal God must go out of
Himself and find Himself in something that mirrors Him. He must have a
Son. He must pour His Life and Love through a universe. What Boehme
means, then, is that no manifestation, no created universe, no
expression, is the ultimate Reality itself. The manifested universe
has come out of More than itself. The Abyss is more than anything, or
all, that comes out of it, or can come out of it, and it lies with its
infinite depth beneath everything which appears, as a man's entire
life, conscious and unconscious, is in and yet lies behind every act of
will, though we can "talk about" only what is voiced or expressed.

Even within this Abysmal Depth, that underlies all that comes to being,
there is eternal process--eternal movement toward Personality and
Character: "God is the eternal Seeker and Finder of Himself."[11] "In
the {176} Stillness an eternal Will arises, a longing desire for
manifestation, the eye of eternity turns upon itself and discovers
itself"[12]--in a word there is within the infinite Divine Deep an
eternal process of self-consciousness and personality, which Boehme
expresses in the words, "The Father eternally generates the Son." "God
hath no beginning and there is nothing sooner than He, but His Word
hath a bottomless, unfathomable origin in Him and an eternal end: which
is not rightly called _end_, but Person, _i.e._ the Heart of the
Father, for it is generated in the eternal Centre."[13] This inner
process toward Personality is often called by Boehme "the eternal
Virgin" who brings to birth God as Person, or sometimes "the Mirror,"
in which God sees Himself revealed as will and wisdom and goodness.

In the greatest artistic creation of the modern world--"The Sistine
Madonna"--Raphael has with almost infinite pictorial power of genius
tried to express in visible form this Birth of God. Behind curtains
which hang suspended from nowhere and stretch across the universe,
dividing the visible from the invisible, the world of Nature from the
world of holy mystery, the infinite, immeasurable and abysmal God is
pictured as define