tude of will shapes the destiny, forms
the fundamental disposition, and builds the life of every man into
heaven or into hell--"a man puts on a garment of light or a garment of
wrath as he puts on clothes."[8] To consent to false desire, to turn
toward objects that feed only the particular selfish will, to live in
the lower "qualities" of dark-fire is to {192} form a soul _tinctured_
with darkness and sundered from the eternal root of Life. Lucifer went
the whole way in his consent to false and evil desire. He said, "Evil
be thou my good!" and formed his entire nature out of the
dark-principle, and "his Light went out." Adam and his offspring after
him, however, only dimmed the native Light and deadened the original
power that belongs to one who comes from God, to live in heavenly
harmony and joy. Man has fallen indeed, but he is not hopelessly lost,
he is "forever seeking his native country," and he forever bears within
himself an immortal seed which may burst into Life--into a
"Lily-blossom."[9] The way of salvation for Boehme is the _process_ by
which this original Light and power, dimmed and deadened by sin, are
restored to the soul.

He never tires of insisting that the restoration can come only by a
_process of Life_, not by a "scheme" of theology. Like the early
prophets of Israel, in their sweeping attacks on the ritual and
sacrificial systems that were being substituted for moral and spiritual
life, Boehme flings himself with holy passion against the substitution
of doctrines of salvation for a real life-process of salvation,
personally experienced in the soul. "Cain" and "Babel" are his two
favourite types of the prevailing substitute-religion which he calls
"verbal," or "historical," or "titular" Christianity.[10] "Whatever
Babel teaches," he says, "of external imputed righteousness, or of
external assumed adoption is without foundation or footing."[11] He is
still only a follower of "Cain" who tries to cover his old, evil,
unchanged self "with the purple mantle of Christ's death."[12] The
"opinion" that the old man of evil-will can be "covered" with Christ's
merit, the "faith" that His death pays off for us the debt of our sin
is only "a supposed religion."[13] "Christianity," he says again,
"does not consist in the mere knowing of history and applying the
history-knowledge to ourselves, {193} saying: 'Christ died for us; He
hath paid the ransom for us, so that we need do nothing but comfort
our