Fénelon: The Mystic

by James Mudge

“Those in the highest state of religious experience desire nothing except that God may be glorified in them by the accomplishment of His holy will.”

“Their continual life of love, which refers everything to God, and identifies everything with His will, is essentially a life of continual prayer.”

“The will of God is their ultimate and only rule of action.”

“The most advanced souls are those which are most possessed with the thoughts and the presence of Christ.”

“The soul in the state of pure love acts in simplicity. Its inward rule of action is found in the decisions of a sanctified judgment. These decisions, based upon judgments that are free from self-interest, may not always be absolutely right, because our views and judgments, being limited, can extend only to things in part; but they may be said to be relatively right; they conform to things so far as we are permitted to see them and understand them, and convey to the soul a moral assurance that, when we act in accordance with them, we are doing as God would have us do.”

We come now to the “Spiritual Letters,” which have been called, not unadvisedly, “the most perfect things of their kind anywhere to be found.” They were written to a very large number of correspondents, both men and women, on the impulse of the moment, and without the least thought of publication. Hence they become all the more the most authentic revelation of his inmost mind, a necessary and integral part of his character. He wrote as he would have spoken, suiting himself to the knowledge of his hearers, aiming at simplicity rather than ornament, but not disdaining homely similes so far as they will make his meaning plain. He draws freely and constantly upon his own experience, so that the letters are a reflection of himself, as well as a storehouse of practical religion. Helpful counsel may be found in them for nearly all situations in life and on nearly all topics that are most closely connected with Christian living. For though the persons to whom he wrote were usually in the higher circles—dukes, counts, lords, ladies, soldiers, courtiers, and priests—nevertheless, they were always men and women, wives and mothers, with human hearts and much the same temptations to combat that come to common people in the present age. The letters were written to meet the individual needs of very real persons, written out of a warm heart and by a mind stored with the lore of the Church on these subjects, as well as gifted with unusual powers of discernment. Fénelon was a consummate director of consciences; he moved through life heavily incumbered with the wants of others, carrying many burdens and taxing all his great powers to meet the ever-recurring needs of a multitude of perplexed and hungering spirits.

Those who peruse the epistles will readily perceive that they present a very high ideal, yet we do not think they can fairly be pronounced harsh. He does not speak in a tone of asperity. He saw far into the human heart, looked with a piercing eye through the disguises of sin, could follow with unexampled clearness the turnings and twistings and lurkings of selfishness. Though the severest of censors, he is at the same time the most pitying. He regards human error with indulgent tenderness, and weeps over it as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Echoes of the Stoic philosophers—Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca—will undoubtedly be found in these letters. Indeed, a very considerable and rather curious parallel has been drawn between Fénelon and Seneca; which only shows the permanence of the principles that regulate the union between God and the soul under all skies and creeds. There is a close similarity between these letters and those of Francis of Sales, who wrote on the same themes; for the two saw eye to eye. The effusions of either Francis, although adapted primarily to a different communion and time, can be recommended almost unqualifiedly to-day to that small class—it will always be a small class—who set themselves, with an aroused intelligence, a high appreciation of the nature of the task before them, and an intense determination, to realize, through all available and appointed means, the closest possible approximation to perfect union with the Divine.

Our criticisms of Fénelon’s letters are but few, and yet a little note of warning should undoubtedly be sounded. No one should read them who is not prepared to think for himself, to use a vigorous common-sense, and to select for entire observance only those precepts which commend themselves to his mind as being in complete accord with the Scripture and with the most judicious of other spiritual advisers. Almost everything he finds will, we believe, thus commend itself. But there will be an occasional use of language before which he will pause and make a note of question or dissent. There will be unguarded expressions which need explanation. Perhaps the chief words which he will find cause to challenge will be those of most frequent occurrence—self and self-love. Fénelon does not use these terms quite accurately, and whoever takes them literally will be led into trouble. Where he says self-love he almost always means selfishness, which, in our modern nomenclature, is quite a different thing, being the inordinate, excessive, or forbidden love of self, such a regard for the interests and rights of self as disregards the interests and rights of other people. This latter is always wrong, of course. But self-love, strictly speaking, is in itself right, perfectly innocent, and of great importance to retain. It is essential to our preservation and prosperity, one of the most vital ingredients in our constitution. Fénelon, we think, never recognizes this meaning of the word, never seems to know that we have very important, imperative duties to self, as well as to our neighbor and to God. Either he was not familiar with these distinctions so common in ethics now, or he was so profoundly impressed with the danger of overdoing self-love that he did not deem it well to recognize this duty at all. But that surely is a mistake, and with some minds tends to become a very harmful one, leading straight on to fanaticism.

He is never tired of insisting on the absolute necessity for the death of self, the destruction of self. But this phrase will not stand critical examination. The peril which always lurks in figures of speech, and the tendency to exaggerate which so frequently besets devotional writers of the intense mystic type, is very manifest here. Such writers put forward their extreme statements with a laudable desire to make a deep impression on the callous sensibilities of the average reader, and with the idea, perhaps, that large deduction will be made in the practical application of their precepts. But many find in this an excuse for throwing the whole subject impatiently aside. We are convinced that it is better in such things to state the exact truth with all carefulness and with as few misleading figures of speech as possible. There is certainly an ethical limit to our right of self-abnegation and self-impartation. Benevolence has its moral bounds in holiness. A man’s life finds its largest fulfillment, not in weakly assimilating itself to the wishes of those around it, but in giving forth some new and characteristic expression of the life of God. The notions, or even the needs, of one’s neighbors are not the highest standard of right living. Every man holds himself in trust for his Creator, and must do his best to manifest that Creator, not necessarily according to the conception most prevalent in his immediate circle, but according to the mandate which has been laid on him. It is this thought which gives the profoundest value to his existence and lifts him above too great dependence on popular standards. And it is this thought, properly carried out, which shows how much of unreason there is in the declaration that self must be totally forgotten, renounced, annihilated.

No person is justified in doing anything of this sort. Self-preservation and self-protection, self-respect and self-esteem, self-defense and self-development are manifest duties. It may readily be granted that they are not in any great danger of neglect from the ordinary or average individual. But the extraordinary individual, if wrongly instructed, filled with a zeal not according to knowledge, keenly conscientious, morbidly scrupulous, keyed up to an unnatural pitch and straining after an impossible ideal, may do himself much harm and go far astray. To overdo is often as bad as to underdo, and causes undoing.