There are, again, in his Universe, as in the other occult systems, three elemental worlds--the spiritual or intellectual world, the astral world or universal Soul, and the terrestrial world; and all three worlds are man's "mothers." Man is a quintessence of all the elements, visible and invisible. He has a spiritual essence within him which is an emanation of God; he has an astral-soul essence, from the Soul of the world; and he partakes, too, of the material and earthly world. His supreme aim in life should be to establish, or rather re-establish, a harmony between his own little world and the great Universe, so that all the worlds have their right proportions in him, and so that through his highest essence he can win the secrets of the lower worlds--the astral and the material. To accomplish _that_ is to be spiritual, to become like Adam, {139} a paradisaical Man, or like Christ the new Adam. Even the lowest world is penetrated with the spiritual "seed" or "element." The very basic substances of which it is composed--sulphur, mercury, and salt--are in essence spiritual principles, elemental forces, rather than crude matter, and the lower world is written over, like a palimpsest, with "signatures" of the divine world to which it belongs. All doors into all the worlds of God open to faith and prayer, and he who subordinates lower elements in himself to higher has power and potency in all realms. But far more important for the development of spiritual religion, and far more important as a living link between Reformers like Denck, Schwenckfeld, and Franck of the sixteenth century, and Jacob Boehme and the spiritual interpreters of the English Commonwealth, was Valentine Weigel, Pastor of Zschopau. Like so many of the men who figure in these chapters, he is little known, seldom read, not a quick and powerful name in the world, but he is worth knowing, and he was the bearer of a burning and kindling torch of truth. He was born at Naundorf, a suburb of Grossenhain, District of Meissen, in 1533. He received the Bachelor's and Master's degree of the University of Leipzig, and he pursued his studies still further in the University of Wittenberg, his study-period having continued until 1567. In the autumn of that year he was ordained and called to be Pastor of Zschopau, where he passed as a minister his entire public life, which came to a peaceful end in 1588. He was an ideal pastor and true shepherd of his flock--loving them and being beloved by them. His ministry was fresh and vital, and made his hearers _feel_ the presence and the power of the Spirit of God.