De Marsay did not always remain in their hut at Schwartzenau; he journeyed to Switzerland to visit his mother, and again to Paris to see his brother, passing through Blois with letters to Madame Guyon, who died shortly before he reached that city. He travelled also repeatedly, in company with his wife, everywhere finding little circles of devout persons who received them with open arms. His narrative is full of the difficulties he found in ascertaining the divine will. Again and again does he discover, after an interval of years, that steps taken in the full persuasion that they were divinely directed, were, in reality, self-moved and erroneous. He fears to relax a severity, lest it should be self-indulgence; he fears to prolong it, lest it should be self-righteousness. After making one sacrifice, an additional one suggests itself as possible, and the longer the thought is entertained, the more hopeless is peace of mind, till conscience has compelled that also; and all this, sometimes from first to last, in fear and darkness. After dividing most of their little store among the poor, and selling their cottage as too large, Madame de Marsay can know no rest from her fears till the greater part of the money received has been also given away,—that the command may be obeyed, ‘Sell all that thou hast.’ Yet, through all self-made troubles, the genuineness of their religion shines out. He is ever humble, thankful, trustful. The reading of Madame Guyon weans him still farther from ‘sensible religious delights;’ he enters calmly into the state of ‘dark faith;’ begins to attach less importance to austerities; loses much of his stiffness; will attend public worship, and commune.

It is instructive to mark how few of those concerning whom he writes as having entered on the higher religious life, are found holding on in that course. After an interval of absence, he returns to a neighbourhood where he had known several such. He finds most of them in darkness and disappointment. They know not where their souls are, or what has come to them. Some are sunk in apathy. There are those who retain the form, though their fire has gone out long ago. Others have plunged from high profession into vices the most shameless. Yet a remnant are preserved through all the dangers of the way. Those perplexities and doubts which so frequently clouded the pathway of De Marsay, were probably his safeguard. In a life of such excessive introspection, a proper self-distrust must almost necessarily take the form of morbid scrupulosity. Even he had some narrow escapes, for which he does well to sing his lowly Non nobis Domine! He came afterwards to see how injurious was that withdrawment from all public worship (habitual with himself and his wife), in the case of those who had children. The offspring of such parents either grew up with a contempt for the ordinances of religion, or, finding their position as separatists hurtful to their advancement in the world, conformed, from interested motives.

In 1731, Count Zinzendorf came to Schwartzenau, and fascinated the De Marsays for a time. But De Marsay—so melancholy, and so given to solitude—was not one long ‘to find good for his soul’ in connexion with any religious community whatever. The Moravian converts met at first at his house, and he preached to them two or three times, with remarkable acceptance. But he detected pleasure to sense and self in such exercise of his gifts, and left them, resolving to yield himself up to the way of dark faith—to ‘die off from all the creatures’—to be as one excommunicate, and perishing in the wilderness of spiritual desertion for his unfaithfulness.

His difficulties were not diminished by mystical metaphysics. There is the Ground of his soul, and its inward attraction, to be followed, whatever reason, prudence, reflection, and even that which seems conscience, may urge or thunder against it. Whether the attraction be false or true, is exceedingly hard to determine;—the issue frequently proves it the former, and that the common-sense folk about him were right after all. He arrives at a state—the wished-for state, in fact—free from all form, image, object of hope, &c.—a total blank of the senses and powers, and yet complains bitterly of the misery of that condition. Reason, internal sense, hope,—all have been abandoned, and yet, out of the internal ground there arises nothing in the shape of light or encouragement. The most harassing secular life, in which he would have been driven to look out of himself to Christ, had been truer and happier than this morbid introversion.

A single passage in his history (and there are several like it) is better than a treatise in illustration of the dangers which beset the notion of perceptible spiritual guidance. He is at Berleberg (1726), and hears of emigration thence to Pennsylvania. As he lies awake one night, it is strongly impressed upon his mind that he ought to go: he and his wife might realize a complete solitude in that land of cheapness and freedom. For there was too much of the creature for him, even at Schwartzenau. They resolve, despite the earnest dissuasion of their friends, to join the next band of emigrants. News arrives that the greater part of those who last went out, died on the voyage, of disease or want. De Marsay finds nothing here to stagger him—for should he shrink from any such hazard? Again, it is shown him clearly that his wife will die if they sail—he seems to see her dead. They resolve, nevertheless, to yield themselves up to death; and spend wretched tearful days, nerved to that determination. At last, when again alone and in stillness, he receives an impression that it is not the will of God that he should go. He communicates the joyful tidings to his wife. She replies that she will go without him, unless she also receives a similar inward monition for herself. Such impression she happily obtains, and they remain. The sacrifice had been made, however, said De Marsay, the Isaac offered—but the victim was not to be actually slain. Finally, he discovers that his original impulse to go to America was ‘muddy and impure,’ arising from his excessive attachment to seclusion. So is it continually where men’s whims and fancies are identified with the oracles of an imagined perceptible guidance.

After many alternations—now rising to a love that casts out fear, and anon receding into gloom—his mind is mellowed and liberalized with advancing years. He no longer conceives it necessary to die to the creature by forsaking his religious friends. He lives at Wolfenbüttel, with Major Botticher, the husband of his niece, and has abandoned every ascetic singularity. He believes in the mystical states (for he has lived them), but he is no longer in any one of them. He looks away from himself only to Christ. He no longer identifies the mysteries of the interior way with spirituality. He has friendly intercourse with ministers—attends church—rejoices in the good work doing among Reformed and Lutherans everywhere.

Madame de Marsay died in 1742, in great mental distress; throughout several weeks previously having imagined herself abandoned and condemned. But her husband rejoiced in his assurance of her glorious rest. His end was a contrast to his distressful life. ‘I swim and bathe in joy,’ said he, ‘that I shall now soon obtain what, through the grace of our Saviour, I have so long and ardently wished and hoped for.’

BOOK THE ELEVENTH
MYSTICISM IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER I.

Is virtue then, unless of Christian growth,