The beauty of Madame Guyon had cost her tender conscience many a pang. She had wept and prayed over that secret love of display which had repeatedly induced her to mingle with the thoughtless amusements of the world. At four-and-twenty the virulence of the small-pox released her from that snare. M. Guyon was laid up with the gout. She was left, when the disorder seized her, to the tender mercies of her mother-in-law. That inhuman woman refused to allow any but her own physician to attend her, yet for him she would not send. The disease, unchecked, had reached its height, when a medical man, passing that way, happened to call at the house. Shocked at the spectacle Madame Guyon presented, he was proceeding at once to bleed her, expressing, in no measured terms, his indignation at the barbarity of such neglect. The mother-in-law would not hear of such a thing. He performed the operation in spite of her threats and invectives, leaving her almost beside herself with rage. That lancet saved the life of Madame Guyon, and disappointed the relative who had hoped to see her die. When at length she recovered, she refused to avail herself of the cosmetics generally used to conceal the ravages of the disorder. Throughout her suffering she had never uttered a murmur, or felt a fear. She had even concealed the cruelty of her mother-in-law. She said, that if God had designed her to retain her beauty, He would not have sent the scourge to remove it. Her friends expected to find her inconsolable—they heard her speak only of thankfulness and joy. Her confessor reproached her with spiritual pride. The affection of her husband was visibly diminished; yet the heart of Madame Guyon overflowed with joy. It appeared to her, that the God to whom she longed to be wholly given up had accepted her surrender, and was removing everything that might interpose between Himself and her.[[326]]
VII.
The experience of Madame Guyon, hitherto, had been such as to teach her the surrender of every earthly source of gratification or ground of confidence. Yet one more painful stage on the road to self-annihilation remained to be traversed. She must learn to give up cheerfully even spiritual pleasures. In the year 1674, according to the probable calculation of Mr. Upham, she was made to enter what she terms a state of desolation, which lasted, with little intermission, for nearly seven years.[[327]] All was emptiness, darkness, sorrow. She describes herself as cast down, like Nebuchadnezzar, from a throne of enjoyment, to live among the beasts. ‘Alas!’ she exclaimed, ‘is it possible that this heart, formerly all on fire, should now become like ice?’ The heavens were as brass, and shut out her prayers; horror and trembling took the place of tranquillity; hopelessly oppressed with guilt, she saw herself a victim destined for hell. In vain for her did the church doors open, the holy bells ring, the deep-voiced intonations of the priest arise and fall, the chanted psalm ascend through clouds of azure wandering incense. The power and the charm of the service had departed. Of what avail was music to a burning wilderness athirst for rain? Gladly would she have had recourse to the vow, to the pilgrimage, to the penance, to any extremity of self-torture. She felt the impotence of such remedies for such anguish. She had no ear for comfort, no eye for hope, not even a voice for complaint.
During this period the emotional element of religion in her mind appears to have suffered an almost entire suspension. Regarding the loss of certain feelings of delight as the loss of the divine favour, she naturally sank deeper and deeper in despondency. A condition by no means uncommon in ordinary Christian experience assumed, in her case, a morbid character. Our emotions may be chilled, or kindled, in ever-varying degrees, from innumerable causes. We must accustom ourselves to the habitual performance of duty, whether attended or not with feelings of a pleasurable nature. It is generally found that those powerful emotions of joy which attend, at first, the new and exalting consciousness of peace with God, subside after awhile. As we grow in religious strength and knowledge, a steady principle supplies their place. We are refreshed, from time to time, by seasons of heightened joy and confidence, but we cease to be dependent upon feeling. At the same time, there is nothing in Scripture to check our desire for retaining as constantly as possible a sober gladness, for finding duty delightful, and the ‘joy of the Lord’ our strength. These are the truths which the one-sided and unqualified expressions of Madame Guyon at once exaggerate and obscure.
During this dark interval M. Guyon died. His widow undertook the formidable task of settling his disordered affairs. Her brother gave her no assistance; her mother-in-law harassed and hindered to her utmost; yet Madame Guyon succeeded in arranging a chaos of papers, and bringing a hopeless imbroglio of business matters into order, with an integrity and a skill which excited universal admiration. She felt it was her duty; she believed that Divine assistance was vouchsafed for its discharge. Of business, she says, she knew as little as of Arabic; but she knew not what she could accomplish till she tried. Minds far more visionary than hers have evinced a still greater aptitude for practical affairs.
The 22nd of July, 1680, is celebrated by Madame Guyon as the happy era of her deliverance. A letter from La Combe was the instrument of a restoration as wonderful, in her eyes, as the bondage. This ecclesiastic had been first introduced by Madame Guyon into the path of mystical perfection. His name is associated with her own in the early history of the Quietist movement. He subsequently became her Director, but was always more her disciple than her guide. His admiration for her amounted to a passion. Incessant persecution and long solitary imprisonment combined, with devotional extravagance, to cloud with insanity at last an intellect never powerful. This feeble and affectionate soul perished, the victim of Quietism, and perhaps of love. It should not be forgotten, that before the inward condition of Madame Guyon changed thus remarkably for the better, her outward circumstances had undergone a similar improvement. She lived now in her own house, with her children about her. That Sycorax, her mother-in-law, dropped gall no longer into her daily cup of life. Domestic tormentors, worse than the goblins which buffeted St. Antony, assailed her peace no more. An outer sky grown thus serene, an air thus purified, may well have contributed to chase away the night of the soul, and to give to a few words of kindly counsel from La Combe the brightness of the day-star. Our simple-hearted enthusiast was not so absolutely indifferent as she thought herself to the changes of this transitory world.
VIII.
Madame Guyon had now triumphantly sustained the last of those trials, which, like the probation of the ancient mysteries, made the porch of mystical initiation a passage terrible with pain and peril. Henceforward, she is the finished Quietist: henceforward, when she relates her own experience, she describes Quietism. At times, when the children did not require her care, she would walk out into a neighbouring wood, and there, under the shade of the trees, amidst the singing of the birds, she now passed as many happy hours as she had known months of sorrow. Her own language will best indicate the thoughts which occupied this peaceful retirement, and exhibit the principle there deepened and matured. She says here in her Autobiography—
‘When I had lost all created supports, and even divine ones, I then found myself happily necessitated to fall into the pure divine, and to fall into it through all which seemed to remove me farther from it. In losing all the gifts, with all their supports, I found the Giver. Oh, poor creatures, who pass along all your time in feeding on the gifts of God, and think therein to be most favoured and happy, how I pity you if ye stop here, short of the true rest, and cease to go forward to God, through resignation of the same gifts! How many pass all their lives this way, and think highly of themselves therein! There are others who, being designed of God to die to themselves, yet pass all their time in a dying life, and in inward agonies, without ever entering into God through death and total loss, because they are always willing to retain something under plausible pretexts, and so never lose self to the whole extent of the designs of God. Wherefore, they never enjoy God in his fulness,—a loss that will not perfectly be known until another life.’[[328]]
She describes herself as having ceased from all self-originated action and choice. To her amazement and unspeakable happiness, it appeared as though all such natural movement existed no longer,—a higher power had displaced and occupied its room. ‘I even perceived no more (she continues) the soul which He had formerly conducted by His rod and His staff, because now He alone appeared to me, my soul having given up its place to Him. It seemed to me as if it was wholly and altogether passed into its God, to make but one and the same thing with Him; even as a little drop of water cast into the sea receives the qualities of the sea.’ She speaks of herself as now practising the virtues no longer as virtues—that is, not by separate and constrained efforts. It would have required effort not to practise them.[[329]]