Jansenist school of divines known otherwise as the Port Royalists, of whom we gave some account a few months ago. But she was still unhappy; for still, according to her own imperfect views, she was not consistent. She made a vow, in imitation of Madame de Chantal, of aiming at the highest perfection, and of doing the will of God in everything; but her vow brought no peace. She would have entered a conventshe would have become a nun-but her father interfered. She was introduced into the world of fashion, and for a time her serious thoughts vanished. It was in this state of mind she married, and of course was wretched.

We have now before us the causes which explain, to some extent, the peculiarities of Madame Guyon's piety. A noble mind, a beautiful person, a senseless husband, a miserable home, her best affections blighted, and every prospect of earthly joy apparently cut off. In this state religion visited her soul; pure religion, but not undefiled; a flood of light was poured in, but it came through painted glass, coloured with Romish superstitions, and it fell upon a soul morbid with the disease which follows when the tenderest sentiments of the heart must be suppressed as a guilty passion.

Thus several pernicious influences were brought to bear at once upon the excitable temperament of a young and brokenhearted bride. The result appears in the peculiar character which her piety assumed. The asceticism she learned from De Sales broke out in acts of unnatural mortification. The blight in her affections broke out in her doctrine of " pure love." She learned "to hate her own flesh," as though it had been the sinful cause of all her misery. She transferred her passions, as well as her affections, to spiritual objects; and she often merely fed a morbid imagination when she thought she had risen to some hitherto unattained degree of holiness. Her system of religion, so far as it was peculiar, was unnatural. Her personal piety, so far as it was untinctured with Guyonism, was elevated and spiritual. Strangely was the composition blended; and we shall render some service to the cause of spiritual religion if we succeed in displaying before our readers the work of divine grace in her soul, as distinguished from the human, or, rather, though we are reluctant to employ the term, the animal ingredient with which it was so strangely interwoven, and mark the lines which separate the two.

She dates her conversion from a period about two years subsequent to her marriage. The birth of her first child led her, as it has led many a thoughtless mother, to reflect that she wanted a heavenly guardian for her infant as well as for herself. Another year passed, and she vainly sought peace in the attempt to "establish her own righteousness." A humble Franciscan first taught her something of "the righteousness

of God by faith." "Your efforts have been unsuccessful, madame," he said, "because you have sought without what you can only find within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and you will not fail to find him." The instructions were imperfect, and the conversion which followed was defective. We will give the account of it in her own words:

"Having said these words,' she says, 'the Franciscan left me. They were to me like the stroke of a dart which pierced my heart asunder. I felt at this instant deeply wounded with the love of God;

a wound so delightful, that I desired it never might be healed. These words brought into my heart what I had been seeking so many years; or rather they made me discover what was there, which I did not enjoy for want of knowing it. Oh, my Lord! thou wast in my heart, and demanded only the turning of my mind inward, to make me feel thy presence. Oh, infinite Goodness! thou wast so near, and I ran hither and thither seeking thee, and yet found thee not. My life was a burden to me, and my happiness was within myself. I was poor in the midst of riches, and ready to perish with hunger near a table plentifully spread and a continual feast. Oh Beauty, ancient and new! Why have I known thee so late? Alas, I sought thee where thou wast not, and did not seek thee where thou wast! It was for want of understanding these words of thy gospel: The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, neither shall they say, Lo, here! or lo, there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.' This I now experienced, since thou didst become my King, and my heart thy kingdom, where thou dost reign a Sovereign, and dost all thy will.

666

"I told this good man, that I did not know what he had done to me; that my heart was quite changed; that God was there; for from that moment He had given me an experience of His presence in my soul,--not merely as an object intellectually perceived, but as a thing really possessed after the sweetest manner. I experienced those words in the Canticles: Thy name is as precious ointment poured forth; therefore do the virgins love thee.' For I felt in my soul an unction, which healed in a moment all my wounds. I slept not all that night, because thy love, O my God! flowed in me like delicious oil, and burned as a fire which was going to destroy all that was left of self in an instant. I was all on a sudden so altered, that I was hardly to be known either by myself or others. I found no more those troublesome faults, or that reluctance to duty, which formerly characterized me. They all disappeared, as being consumed like chaff in a great fire.'" (pp. 36, 37.)

She desired the assistance of a spiritual "director;" officer in the church of Rome whose business it was not so much to hear confessions as to give spiritual counsel. Her Franciscan friend was a cautious and, no doubt, a good man; and he was unwilling to charge himself with the spiritual care of a young lady of twenty years of age. She overcame his reluctance, having full confidence in his discretion. Yet he unintentionally fanned the flame he should have quenched. He

told her it was revealed to him in prayer that he ought to undertake the task. A voice had said, "Fear not that charge: she is my spouse."

"What!" (said I to myself,) a frightful monster of iniquity, who have done so much to offend my God, in abusing His favours, and requiting them with ingratitude, and now, thus to be declared His spouse! After this he consented to my request.

"Nothing was more easy to me now than to practise prayer. Hours passed away like moments, while I could hardly do anything else but pray. The fervency of my love allowed me no intermission. It was a prayer of rejoicing and of possession, wherein the taste of God was so great, so pure, unblended and uninterrupted, that it drew and absorbed the powers of the soul into a profound recollection, a state of confiding and affectionate rest in God, existing without intellectual effort. For I had now no sight but of Jesus Christ alone. All else was excluded, in order to love with greater purity and energy, without any motives or reasons for loving which were of a selfish nature." (p, 38.)

tion of her conversion; its simplicity, and its transparent sinThe exquisite glow of feeling which flushes over this descripcerity, must not be allowed to blind us.

Here is the doctrine

of "pure love," the grand distinction of Madame Guyon's school of piety. We object to it strongly, on the twofold ground that it is neither pure nor scriptural. The director certainly heard no voice from heaven when he was told that Madame Guyon was the spouse of Christ; nor was she herself under the divine teaching of the Holy Spirit when she vainly thought herself capable of loving God" without any motives or reasons for loving which are of a selfish nature." These are two of many great errors which blemish the entire system she taught and practised: a refined sensualism, over which is thrown the veil of a Platonic Christianity. The most gire no sanction to the practice which became from this time glowing passages in Holy Writ, whether in prose or poetry, habitual to the school of which Madame Guyon must be considered as the founder. The whole church collectively is no doubt designated the bride of Christ, but never any single

member of it.

distinction.

Son of man bestowed upon the church; "the bride the Lamb's wife," but It belongs only to body;"-The body corporate, of which he is the Head. It is "the church which is His enough for the members individually to be "the friends" of Christ; "the brethren" of Christ; and even these titles, conceded to them by the Lord himself, seem to have been felt by

It is a glorious title the highest which the

His own disciples

Master might henceforth, in His amazing condescension, call them friends; they loved Him in return with an adoring love,

as if too exalted for common use. The

a love which language labours to express; but they never presume to call Him friend. Much less does any one of the holy women of Scripture presume to call herself His spouse.

The wisdom of Holy Scripture is apparent in this reserve. The instance of Madame Guyon is sufficient to bring it out before us in very strong relief. The "grace" whereby "we serve God with reverence and godly fear," is exchanged for a passionate excitement, false while it continues, and when age has cooled the temperament, impossible to be revived. Dejection follows; the failure of youthful affections is regarded as the sign of a decaying faith, and religion bears through the remainder of life a needless burden, cruelly imposed in youth. Not unfrequently the supposed convert finds that the work has, in fact, to be begun anew. A merely natural affection has been mistaken for the love which the Spirit of God introduces. There has been no real change of heart, It was all along the imagination and the passions. And when the first burst is over and temptation comes in, the soul returns to its former abode, finds it swept and garnished, and sinks down into an apathetic state, or even descends to a lower depth of sin.

We are not carping idly at a few unguarded expressions. Madame Guyon introduced a sensual element, captivating in the highest degree to minds constituted like hers, and perilous in the same degree, wanting in reverence and holy fear, and injurious to that purity, after which, we doubt not, she sincerely longed; and which, under a gross delusion, she thought she had attained. We are by no means disposed to dwell upon the subject; but before we leave it, we must be allowed to make two quotations, which will sufficiently substantiate our charge.

The 22nd of July, 1668, was the day on which, she tells us, she first knew the blessedness of believing, and she never permitted it to pass without an especial observance. The special observance, four years afterwards, was "an act or covenant of consecration drawn up," her biographer says, "in accordance with those expressions of Scripture which speak of the church as the bride, or spouse of God;" he has overlooked the distinction on which we insist. The Scriptures do not sanction private acts of dedication expressed in language such as this:

"I henceforth take Jesus Christ to be mine. I promise to receive Him as a husband to me. And I give myself to Him, unworthy though I am, to be His spouse. I ask of Him, in this marriage of spirit with spirit, that I may be of the same mind with Him,-meek, pure, nothing in myself, and united in God's will. And, pledged as I am to be His, I accept, as a part of my marriage portion, the temptations and sorrows, the crosses and the contempt which fell to Him. Jeanne M. B. de la Mothe Guyon." (p. 95.)

"Sealed with her ring."

This notion of spiritual marriage had taken full possession of her mind, and it accompanied her through life. Nine years afterwards, namely, July 2nd, 1681, she writes thus

:-

"It was there, at the tomb of St. Francis de Sales, that I renewed my spiritual marriage with my Redeemer, as I did every year on this day. She was refreshed by the recollection of the striking passage in the prophet Hosea, ' And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in

faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord." (p. 152.)

The reader will have observed that it was at the tomb of St. Francis de Sales that this vow of spiritual marriage was annually repeated. Mystic piety and superstition always go on happily hand in hand. Madame Guyon never freed herself from some of the most galling trammels of the church of Rome. Surrounded by French Protestants, some of them of high rank and great mental cultivation, as well as fervent piety, she seems to have paid little attention to the subject of the reformation; and, indeed, never to have permitted herself seriously to ask what were the grounds of their secession, or whether the church of Rome was indeed tainted with the impurities they alleged against it. She could not possibly worship images after the fashion which prevailed then, as now, in every parish church in France; nor could she bow her really spiritual mind, or even her penetrating intellect, to receive in their literal forms many of its coarser dogmas. Yet she could remain at ease in its communion, for she had a ready method of solving difficulties of this description. She spiritualized the dogma which insulted her reason and contradicted Scripture, evaporating its grosser particles by a mental chemistry of which she was a perfect mistress. Thus, though she could not invoke the intercession of St. Francis, she paid her annual visit to his tomb, for "she seemed to feel a special union with him," and to hold, as she said, "with his departed spirit, the holy intercourse of friend with friend; united with him in Christ, and with Christ in God, who binds all his people, both the dead and the living, in one immortal tie." Hard words will not assist us, especially when we comment upon the infirmities of a youthful lady. But truth is truth; and this mode of reasoning is precisely that by which the wiser Brahmins of our own age, and the philosophers of Greece and Italy in past ages, have always defended the vilest idolatries. The formula is precisely the same: "they behold all things in the Divine union." This is the last stronghold into which idolatry retires.

"This immersion in God absorbed all things; that is to say, seemed to place all things in a new position relatively to God. Formerly I had contemplated things as dissociated from God; but now I beheld