begin his course of study by mastering the first eight chapters of _The
Threefold Life_, which appear to have been in great favour with Mr. Law.'

Behmen's next book was a very extraordinary piece of work, and it had a
very extraordinary origin. A certain BALTHAZAR WALTER, who seems to have
been a second Paracelsus in his love of knowledge and in his lifelong
pursuit of knowledge, had, like Paracelsus, travelled east, and west, and
north, and south in search of that ancient and occult wisdom of which so
many men in that day dreamed. But Walter, like his predecessor
Paracelsus, had come home from his travels a humbler man, a wiser man,
and a man more ready to learn and lay to heart the truth that some of his
own countrymen could all the time have taught him. On his return from
the east, Walter found the name of Jacob Behmen in everybody's mouth;
and, on introducing himself to that little shop in Goerlitz out of which
the _Aurora_ and _The Threefold Life_ had come, Walter was wise enough to
see and bold enough to confess that he had found a teacher and a friend
there such as neither Egypt nor India had provided him with. After many
immensely interested visits to Jacob Behmen's workshop, Walter was more
than satisfied that Behmen was all, and more than all, that his most
devoted admirers had said he was. And, accordingly, Walter laid a plan
so as to draw upon Behmen's profound and original mind for a solution of
some of the philosophical and theological problems that were agitating
and dividing the learned men of that day. With that view Walter made a
round of the leading universities of Germany, conversed with the
professors and students, collected a long list of the questions that were
being debated in that day in those seats of learning, and sent the list
to Behmen, asking him to give his mind to them and try to answer them.
'Beloved sir,' wrote Behmen, after three months' meditation and prayer,
'and my good friend: it is impossible for the mind and reason of man to
answer all the questions you have put to me. All those things are known