A severe illness brought her more than once to the brink of the grave. She heard of her danger with indifference, for life had no attraction. Heavy losses befel the family—she could feel no concern. To end her days in a hospital was even an agreeable anticipation. Poverty and disgrace could bring no change which would not be more tolerable than her present suffering. She laboured, with little success, to find comfort in religious exercises. She examined herself rigidly, confessed with frequency, strove to subdue all care about her personal appearance, and while her maid arranged her hair—how, she cared not—was lost in the study of Thomas à Kempis. At length she consulted a Franciscan, a holy man, who had just emerged from a five years’ solitude. ‘Madame,’ said he, ‘you are disappointed and perplexed because you seek without what you have within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and you will find Him.’
II.
These words of the old Franciscan embody the response which has been uttered in every age by the oracle of mysticism. It has its truth and its falsehood, as men understand it. There is a legend of an artist, who was about to carve from a piece of costly sandal-wood an image of the Madonna; but the material was intractable—his hand seemed to have lost its skill—he could not approach his ideal. When about to relinquish his efforts in despair, a voice in a dream bade him shape the figure from the oak-block which was about to feed his hearth. He obeyed, and produced a masterpiece. This story represents the truth which mysticism upholds when it appears as the antagonist of superstitious externalism. The materials of religious happiness lie, as it were, near at hand—among affections and desires which are homely, common, and of the fireside. Let the right direction, the heavenly influence, be received from without; and heaven is regarded with the love of home, and home sanctified by the hope of heaven. The far-fetched costliness of outward works—the restless, selfish bargaining with asceticism and with priestcraft for a priceless heaven, can never redeem and renew a soul to peace. But mysticism has not stopped here; it takes a step farther, and that step is false. It would seclude the soul too much from the external; and, to free it from a snare, removes a necessary help. Like some overshadowing tree, it hides the rising plant from the force of storms, but it also intercepts the appointed sunshine—it protects, but it deprives—and beneath its boughs hardy weeds have grown more vigorously than precious grain. Removing, more or less, the counterpoise of the letter, in its zeal for the spirit, it promotes an intense and morbid self-consciousness. Roger North tells us that when he and his brother stood on the top of the Monument, it was difficult for them to persuade themselves that their weight would not throw down the building. The dizzy elevation of the mystic produces sometimes a similar overweaning sense of personality.
Often instead of rising above the infirmities of our nature, and the common laws of life, the mystic becomes the sport of the idlest phantasy, the victim of the most humiliating reaction. The excited and overwrought temperament mistakes every vibration of the fevered nerves for a manifestation from without; as in the solitude, the silence, and the glare of a great desert, travellers have seemed to hear distinctly the church bells of their native village. In such cases an extreme susceptibility of the organ, induced by peculiarities of climate, gives to a mere conception or memory the power of an actual sound; and, in a similar way, the mystic has often both tempted and enraptured himself—his own breath has made both the ‘airs from heaven,’ and the ‘blasts from hell;’ and the attempt to annihilate Self has ended at last in leaving nothing but Self behind. When the tide of enthusiasm has ebbed, and the channel has become dry, simply because humanity cannot long endure a strain so excessive, then that magician and master of legerdemain, the Fancy, is summoned to recal, to eke out, or to interpret the mystical experience; then that fantastic acrobat, Affectation, is admitted to play its tricks—just as, when the waters of the Nile are withdrawn, the canals of Cairo are made the stage on which the jugglers exhibit their feats of skill to the crowds on either bank.
III.
To return to Madame Guyon. From the hour of that interview with the Franciscan she was a mystic. The secret of the interior life flashed upon her in a moment. She had been starving in the midst of fulness; God was near, not far off; the kingdom of heaven was within her. The love of God took possession of her soul with an inexpressible happiness. Beyond question, her heart apprehended, in that joy, the great truth that God is love—that He is more ready to forgive, than we to ask forgiveness—that He is not an austere being whose regard is to be purchased by rich gifts, tears, and penance. This emancipating, sanctifying belief became the foundation of her religion. She raised on this basis of true spirituality a mystical superstructure, in which there was some hay and stubble, but the corner stone had first been rightly laid, never to be removed from its place.
Prayer, which had before been so difficult, was now delightful and indispensable; hours passed away like moments—she could scarcely cease from praying. Her trials seemed great no longer; her inward joy consumed, like a fire, the reluctance, the murmur, and the sorrow, which had their birth in self. A spirit of confiding peace, a sense of rejoicing possession, pervaded all her days. God was continually present with her, and she seemed completely yielded up to God. She appeared to feel herself, and to behold all creatures, as immersed in the gracious omnipresence of the Most High. In her adoring contemplation of the Divine presence, she found herself frequently unable to employ any words, or to pray for any particular blessings.[[316]] She was then little more than twenty years of age. The ardour of her devotion would not suffer her to rest even here. It appeared to her that self was not yet sufficiently suppressed. There were some things she chose as pleasant, other things she avoided as painful. She was possessed with the notion that every choice which can be referred to self is selfish, and therefore criminal.
On this principle, Æsop’s traveller, who gathered his cloak about him in the storm, and relinquished it in the sunshine, should be stigmatized as a selfish man, because he thought only of his own comfort, and did not remember at the moment his family, his country, or his Maker. It is not regard for self which makes us selfish, but regard for self to the exclusion of due regard for others. But the zeal of Madame Guyon blinded her to distinctions such as these. She became filled with an insatiable desire of suffering.[[317]] She resolved to force herself to what she disliked, and deny herself what was gratifying, that the mortified senses might at last have no choice whatever. She displayed the most extraordinary power of will in her efforts to annihilate her will. Every day she took the discipline with scourges pointed with iron. She tore her flesh with brambles, thorns, and nettles. Her rest was almost destroyed by the pain she endured. She was in very delicate health, continually falling ill, and could eat scarcely anything. Yet she forced herself to eat what was most nauseous to her; she often kept wormwood in her mouth, and put coloquintida in her food, and when she walked she placed stones in her shoes. If a tooth ached she would bear it without seeking a remedy; when it ached no longer, she would go and have it extracted. She imitated Madame Chantal in dressing the sores of the poor, and ministering to the wants of the sick. On one occasion she found that she could not seek the indulgence offered by her Church for remitting some of the pains of purgatory. At that time she felt no doubt concerning the power of the priest to grant such absolution, but she thought it wrong to desire to escape any suffering. She was afraid of resembling those mercenary souls, who are afraid not so much of displeasing God, as of the penalties attached to sin. She was too much in earnest for visionary sentimentalism. Her efforts manifest a serious practical endeavour after that absolute disinterestedness which she erroneously thought both attainable and enjoined. She was far from attaching any expiatory value to these acts of voluntary mortification, they were a means to an end. When she believed that end attained, in the entire death of self, she relinquished them.
IV.
Situated as Madame Guyon was now, her mind had no resource but to collapse upon itself, and the feelings so painfully pent up became proportionately vehement. She found a friend in one Mère Granger; but her she could see seldom, mostly by stealth. An ignorant confessor joined her mother-in-law and husband in the attempt to hinder her from prayer and religious exercises. She endeavoured in everything to please her husband, but he complained that she loved God so much she had no love left for him. She was watched day and night; she dared not stir from her mother-in-law’s chamber or her husband’s bedside. If she took her work apart to the window, they followed her there, to see that she was not in prayer. When her husband went abroad, he forbade her to pray in his absence. The affections even of her child were taken from her, and the boy was taught to disobey and insult his mother. Thus utterly alone, Madame Guyon, while apparently engaged in ordinary matters, was constantly in a state of abstraction; her mind was elsewhere, rapt in devout contemplation. She was in company without hearing a word that was said. She went out into the garden to look at the flowers, and could bring back no account of them, the eye of her reverie could mark nothing actually visible. When playing at piquet, to oblige her husband, this ‘interior attraction’ was often more powerfully felt than even when at church. In her Autobiography she describes her experience as follows:—