Letters of Madam Guyon

by Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

SECRET OF DIVINE OPERATIONS UPON THE SOUL.

Do not suppose, Dear Sir, that you are to be purified by great trials and extraordinary events. All is accomplished in you by the suppleness of your will,—by the state of infancy. It must be so on account of the pride of your natural reason. God conducts the soul in a way opposed to human philosophy. Hence the necessity of being reduced to the state of infancy, and to the subjection of the will. What we call the death of the will, is the passage of our will into the will of God. This change implies not only a change in externals, but the inward subjection of the desires and sentiments of the heart. Here most persons, who commence the religious life, stop short. They cannot submit to the interior crucifixion, which lays prostrate the whole of the natural carnal life, and consequently there follows a mingling of the spirit of the flesh with grace, and it is this which produces such monsters in the religious world. Do we not read in Scripture, that in consequence of the alliance of the sons of God with the daughters of men, giants were born, who so filled the earth with wickedness, they drew down a deluge of wrath upon the world? It is from this abominable alliance of the flesh with the spirit, that all those who appear in the world, as "mighty men, men of renown," are produced and sustained. One may be full of the natural life, while apparently dead to the external things of the world. Thus they are dead to inferior things, and alive in the most essential points—dead in name, but not in reality.

By an authority as gentle as efficacious, God accomplishes his will in us, when we have surrendered our souls to him. The consent we give to his operations, and our relish of them, is sweet and sustaining, in proportion to the perfection of our abandonment. God does not arrest the soul with violence. He adjusts all things in such a manner, that we follow him happily, even across dangerous precipices. So good is this Divine Master, so well does he understand the methods of conducting the soul, that it runs after him, and makes haste to walk in the path he orders.

Suppleness of soul is, therefore, of vital consequence to its progress. It is the work of God to effect this. Happy are the souls, who yield to his discipline. God renders the soul, in the commencement, supple to follow illuminated reason; afterwards to follow the way of faith. He then conducts the soul by unknown steps, causing it to enter into the wisdom of Jesus Christ which is so different from all its former experience, that without the testimony of divine filiation, which remains in the soul in a manner hidden, and the ease and liberty the soul finds in this unknown way, it would consider itself as being separated continually from God, being left, as it were, to act of itself. Human wisdom being here lost, and the powers of the soul controlled by the wisdom of Jesus Christ, born in the soul, it increases in its proportions, even unto the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus.

The soul, having now passed into God, is in its proper place, and will be happy, provided it remains fixed and separate from its former manner of acting.

Reason may at times oppose with all its strength, and cause some fears, some hesitations; but, being fixed in God, it is impossible for the soul to change its course; and, after the experience of many useless sufferings, having their origin in self, it suffers itself to be drawn in the current of love. There is now no more of violence to nature. The soul is in its natural state. The ease and naturalness of this state causes, at times, some fear, some anxiety. It is as much the nature of man, originally, and in his new creation in the likeness of Christ, to be in God, and to be there in perfect enlargement, simplicity, and innocence, as it is the nature of water to flow in its channel. When man is as he should be, his state is one of infinite ease and without limitations, because he is created sovereign, or master of himself, and cannot be subjected by anything created, although he is subjected to God, if that may be called subjection, which brings the soul into affinity with God, and makes it partaker of his nature.

Be therefore persuaded, that God uses no violence in dealing with the soul. This commotion in the soul, arises from the resistance of man's will to divine operations. When the soul is disenfranchised of all that is opposed to the will of God; when it is not arrested either by desires or repugnancies, it runs without stopping or weariness in the way. This is what is called death,—death to self; but the soul was never so much alive; it now lives the true life, the life of God.

When the soul becomes one with God by the loss of its own will and life, it has purposes, and it is important to follow them; but they are purposes in God, and have in them nothing of self. All that has rapport to self is no more, and God is all. Being passed into God, the soul is changed and transformed in him. This is what the mystics call Resurrection. But the word used in this way, does not bear its usual signification. To resuscitate is to revive the former life. But in this case, the will, or natural life is consumed, and gives place to the will or life of God. Thus the Holy Spirit operates effectively in the soul, transforming it into the likeness of the Son of God.

Now the soul participates in the qualities of God, one of which qualities, is that of communicating itself to other souls. Or rather, it is as a stream, which, being lost in a large river, follows the course of the river, communicating itself where the river communicates, watering where it waters, drawing into itself all the smaller rivers, which are destined alike to lose themselves in the great ocean of Love. These streams have no independent life, but proceed from, and flow back into their origin. Here is the consummation of souls in oneness, as Jesus Christ has expressed it,—"One in us."

There is divine reality in this truth. Blessed are those who comprehend it! How many walk side by side along these rivers, and yet never mingle their waters! And many there are, also, who haste with eagerness, to precipitate themselves into this divine stream, and flow together, as the souls of the celestial ones, in the fulness of divine love.

This is not a chimera of the fancy; it is the wonderful economy of divinity. It is the end and object of the creation of the soul—the end and compass of all the efforts of God, regarding his creatures. Here is consummated all the glory, God derives from their existence. All beside are only the means approaching this final end, this glorious termination, and absorption of the soul in Deity. Here is the light which ravishes the soul. A light which does not precede, but follows the soul in its progress; unfolding more and more, as a man in a dark cavern, discovers the concealed places, only when he has remained in it for some time.

This is the pure Theology in which God instructs the angels and the saints. It is the Theology of Experience, that God teaches only to his children, who having abandoned their own wisdom, he has himself become their wisdom and their life. This is the law of wisdom, my friend, for us,—the way of the Lord in us. In him we are one.