ng success to his momentous quest. No great mystic
since St. Augustine has made more of the will in spiritual matters than
he does. We have seen how the doors to both world-kingdoms stand
before the soul, and how "free-will," "earnest purpose," "decisive
endeavour" settle for each soul which door shall open and which shall
shut, and so determine its eternal destiny. "Election" is, for Boehme,
a fiction of the false imagination, a "Babel-opinion," a perverse
invention of "the Church of Cain." Christ never says "thou couldst
not," but rather "thou wouldst not."[62]

Not only does he, in a general way, thus make the will the decisive
element in human destiny, he also implies that the creative "flash" of
spiritual insight, "the innermost birth" which brings the soul into
living union with its source is due, on the human side, to
"resolution," to "earnestness," to "valiant wrestling," to a brave
venture of faith that risks everything. It requires "mighty
endurance," "hard labour," "stoutness of spirit," and "a great storm,
assault, and onset" to open the Gate. In a word, the key to any
important spiritual experience is _intention_, inward pre-perception,
that holds the mind intently focussed in expectation, without which the
"flash" of spiritual vision is not likely to come.

But on the other hand Boehme is a powerful exponent of the idea that
desire and will must utterly, absolutely die before God can come to
birth in the soul--"Christ is born and lives in our Nothingness."[63] A
man, he says, must die wholly to self-hood, forsake it and enter again
into the original Nothing,--the eternal Unity in which nothing is
willed in particular,--before God can have His way with him; all sin
arises from self-hood, from desire.[64] "How," asks a disciple in one
of Boehme's imaginary dialogues, "shall I come to the hidden centre
where God dwelleth and not man? Tell me plainly, loving sir, how it is
to be found and entered into?"

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_The Master_: "There where the soul hath slain its own will and willeth
no more anything of itself." . . .

_The Disciple_: "But how shall I comprehend it?"

_The Master_: "If thou goest about to comprehend in thy own will, it
flieth from thee, but if thou dost surrender thyself wholly, then thou
art dead to thy own will, and Love will be the Life of thy nature."[65]
He seems to go as far in this direction toward the annihilation of
desire, negation of the finite, and loss of self-hood as