In the nineteenth chapter of the _Aurora_ there occurs a very important passage of this autobiographic nature. In that famous passage Behmen tells his readers that when his eyes first began to be opened, the sight of this world completely overwhelmed him. ASAPH'S experiences, so powerfully set before us in the seventy-third Psalm, will best convey, to those who do not know Behmen, what Behmen also passed through before he drew near to GOD. Like that so thoughtful Psalmist, Behmen's steps had well-nigh slipped when he saw the prosperity of the wicked, and when he saw how waters of a full cup were so often wrung out to the people of GOD. The mystery of life, the sin and misery of life, cast Behmen into a deep and inconsolable melancholy. No Scripture could comfort him. His thoughts of GOD were such that he will not allow himself, even after they are long past, to put them down on paper. In this terrible trouble he lifted up his heart to GOD, little knowing, as yet, what GOD was, or what his own heart was. Only, he wrapped up his whole heart, and mind, and will, and desire in the love and the mercy of GOD: determined not to give over till GOD had heard him and had helped him. 'And then, when I had wholly hazarded my life upon what I was doing, my whole spirit seemed to me suddenly to break through the gates of hell, and to be taken up into the arms and the heart of GOD. I can compare it to nothing else but the resurrection at the last day. For then, with all reverence I say it, with the eyes of my spirit I saw GOD. I saw both what GOD is, and I saw how GOD is what He is. And with that there came a mighty and an incontrollable impulse to set it down, so as to preserve what I had seen. Some men will mock me, and will tell me to stick to my proper trade, and not trouble my mind with philosophy and theology. Let these high matters alone. Leave them to those who have both the time and the talent for them, they will say. So I have often said to myself, but the truth of GOD did burn in my bones till I took pen and ink and began to set down what I had seen. All this time do not mistake me for a saint or an angel. My heart also is full of all evil. In malice, and in hatred, and in lack of brotherly love, after all I have seen and experienced, I am like all other men. I am surely the fullest of all men of all manner of infirmity and malignity.' Behmen protests in every book of his that what he has written he has received immediately from GOD. 'Let it never be imagined that I am any greater or any better than other men. When the Spirit of GOD is taken away from me I cannot even read so as to understand what I have myself written. I have every day to wrestle with the devil and with my own heart, no man in all the world more. Oh no! thou must not for one moment think of me as if I had by my own power or holiness climbed up into heaven or descended into the abyss. Oh no! hear me. I am as thou art.