LAST YEARS.
She was confined in the Bastille for four years, and when at last, in 1702, she was released, her health was completely ruined by the privations she had suffered, the bitter cold of winter, and in the warmer weather the poisonous exhalations from the stagnant waters of the moat. When once more she issued into the sweet air of liberty, "My afflicted spirit," she says, "began to breathe and recover itself; but my body was from that time sick and borne down with all sorts of infirmities." Even now, however, she was not free to go where she liked. After a brief visit to her daughter in Paris, she was required to take up her residence at Blois, a hundred miles south-west, and there, in complete retirement, she spent her remaining days, still writing cheery words of counsel to her disciples in France and other lands, and enjoying spells of happy converse with the steadfast friends who sought her out in her exile.
She lived on in peace and quiet, though often in pain and weakness, for fifteen years after her release from the Bastille. Her final release from all earthly trials and sorrows took place on June 9, 1717, when she had entered about three months into her seventieth year. That her beautiful spirit of resignation was maintained to the last, and that her faith was pure and steadfast, we have proof in these expressions in her will, written a short time before her death: "Thou knowest that there is nothing in heaven or in earth that I desire but Thee alone. In Thy hands, O God, I leave my soul, not relying for my salvation on any good that is in me, but solely on Thy mercies and the merits and sufferings of my Lord Jesus Christ."
We find here no trace of that reliance on the Virgin Mary, or that frequent clamouring for her interest and intercession, which then formed and still forms so integral a portion of the daily routine of Romish worship. It is a remarkable feature of Madame Guyon's religious life that, in an idolatrous age, her faith constantly soared straight up to God, ignoring the mediation of the Virgin and the saints, and regarding the priests themselves, not as intermediaries between Christ and her soul, but simply as her appointed counsellors and guides on the road to heaven. We need not wonder that such bitterness was shown towards her, and that no effort was spared to suppress teaching so dangerous to the very foundations of the ancient edifice of error.
VIII.
HER TEACHING.
On a previous page I have given extracts from her autobiography which show pretty plainly the mistakes into which Madame Guyon fell at the outset of her Christian career. They had their root in the idea that her communion with God was so close and intimate that all her thoughts were not merely devout and God-ward, but even Divine, coming direct from God. So she fell into the Quietist error of intense introspection, looking for guidance, not solely to the written Word, but chiefly to her own inward impressions, or "inspirations," as she considered them to be.
But was it at all wonderful that this good woman, brought up in the bondage of corrupt doctrine and deeply-incrusted prejudices, should entertain some theological errors? The only wonder is that she attained so much of the truth, and, in that age of mingled intolerance and licentiousness, lived a life of purity and charity, of holy aspirations and devout performance. And though her excessive introspection is not at all to be imitated, and many of her views are such as we with our greater light cannot, of course, endorse, yet her mistakes in metaphysics and in theology did not affect the beauty of her life, which was chiefly spent in acts of charity and earnest endeavours to spread the knowledge of her Lord and Saviour. If her benevolent efforts at evangelisation did not always show the successful results she desired, if disappointments crowded some of her later years, yet to her case we can rightly apply the words of the poet:
"Yet to the faithful there is no such thing
As disappointment; failures only bring
A gentle pang, as peacefully they say,
'His purpose stands, though mine has passed away.'"
Her Works, amounting in all to forty volumes, were published in Paris in several editions. Her Poems and Spiritual Songs occupy four volumes. Some of these simple utterances of a devout heart were beautifully translated by Cowper, and with one of the most characteristic of these renderings this sketch may fitly be concluded:—