of the processes
and evolution of the universe. Boehme {184} is no scientific genius
and he did not dream that every item and event of the world of
phenomena could be causally explained, without reference to any deeper
abysmal world of Spirit. His mission is rather that of the prophet who
"has eyes of his own." He is endeavouring to tell us, often no doubt
in very laborious fashion, sometimes as "one who is tunnelling through
long tracts of darkness," that this outside world which we see and
describe is a parable, a pictorial drama, suggesting, hinting,
revealing an inside world of Spirit and Will; that every slightest
fragment of the seen is big with significance as a revelation of an
unseen realm, which again is an egress from the unimaginable Splendour
of God. He believes, like Paracelsus, that everything in
Nature--plants, metals, and stars--"can be fundamentally searched out
and comprehended" by the inward way of approach, can be read like an
open book by the children of the Spirit who have caught the secret clue
that leads in, and who have the key that unlocks the inner realm.[31]

Obviously his "inner way of approach" works more successfully when
applied to _man_ than when applied to plants and metals and stars--and
when he writes of man, whether in the first or in the third person, he
does often seem to have "eyes of his own," and to "hold the key that
unlocks."

It is an elemental idea with him that man is "a little world"--a
microcosm--and expresses in himself all the properties of the great
world--the macrocosm.[32] "As you find man to be," he writes, "just so
is eternity. Consider man in body and soul, in good and evil, in light
and darkness, in joy and sorrow, in power and weakness, in life and
death--all is in man, both heaven and earth, stars and elements.
Nothing can be named that is not man."[33] Every man's life is
inwardly bottomless and opens from within into all the immeasurable
depth of God. Eternity springs through time and reveals itself in
every person, for the foundation property of the soul {185} of every
man is essentially eternal, spiritual, and abysmal--it is a little drop
out of the Fountain of the Life of God, it is a little sparkle of the
Divine Splendour.[34] God is spoken of again and again as "man's
native country," his true "origin and home"--"The soul of man is always
seeking after its native country, out of which it has wandered, seeking
to return home again to its rest