Reflections on
the Life of
Madame Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon.
Renewed consecration, in which she gives up all without reserve.
And here, I think, we may mark a distinct and very important crisis in the history of her spiritual being. Taught by sad experience, she saw the utter impossibility of combining the love of the world with the love of God. "From this day, this hour, if it be possible, I will be wholly the Lord's. The world shall have no portion in me." Such was the language of her heart ; such her solemn determination. She formed her resolution after counting the cost, — a resolution wbich was made in God's strength and not in her own; which, in after life, was often smitten by the storm and tried in the fire; but, from this time onward, so far as we know anything of her history, was never consumed, — was never broken. She gave herself to the Lord, Not only to be his in the ordinary and mitigated sense of the terms, but to be his wholly, and to be his forever; to be his in body and in spirit; to be his in personal efforts and influence; to be his in all that she was and in all that it was possible for her to be. There was no reserve.
Her consecration, made in the spirit of entire self-renouncement, was a consecration to God's will, and not to her own; to be what God would have her to be, and not what her fallen nature would have her to be. Two years after this time, she placed her signature to a written act of Covenant or act of Consecration, (a circumstance which we shall have occasion to mention in its place,) but the act itself, she made previously, made it now, and made it irrevocably. In its substance it was written in the heart, wherever else it might fail for a time to be recorded, and was witnessed by the Holy Ghost. God accepted the offering of herself which she thus made, because, he knew it to be sincere. And perhaps we may properly add, that he knew it to be sincere, because he himself, who is the Author of every good purpose, had inspired it.
Desire, even religious desire, without a strong basis of sincerity, often stops short of affecting the will. But, in religion especially, desire without will is practically of no value. But the error which is alluded to in this statement, did not attach to Madame Guyon at this time. She not only desired to be holy, but she resolved to be holy. Her will was in the thing, — the will, which constitutes in its action the unity of the whole mind's action, and which, is the true and only certain exponent of the inward moral and religious condition.
And perhaps we may be permitted to say, in this connection, that it is here that we find the great difficulty in the position of many religious men at the present time. They profess to desire to be holy; and, perhaps they do desire it. They pray for it, as well as desire it. But after all, it is too often the case that they are not willing to be holy. They are not ready, by a consecrating act, resting on a deliberate and solemn purpose, to place themselves in a position, which they have every reason to think will, by God's grace, result in holiness. This may be regarded, perhaps, as a nice distinction; but when rightly understood, it seems to me to lay deep and unchangeable in the mind. In the cases to which we refer, the desire, whatever may be its strength, is not strong enough to control the volition. The will, therefore, is not brought into the true position. The will, considered in relation to the other powers of the mind, constitutes the mind's unity. The will is wanting. The man, therefore, is wanting.
And in corroboration of these remarks, it may be added further, that in repeated instances individuals have been known frankly to acknowledge, that these statements, or statements the same in effect with these, truly described their position. Whatever may have been their desire to experience the great blessing of inward sanctification, they have said, that the desire was not strong enough to terminate itself in a purpose.
They could not say, or rather they would not say, I will be the Lord's. They had not placed themselves, and in their present state of feeling they would not place themselves by what may be termed a "volitional" act, (an act of the will, representing the whole mind, an act constituting a decisive and irrevocable mental movement,) in a situation in which the Lord could consistently and effectually operate upon them by his Holy Spirit, and thus complete this great work. They had been made willing, as it seemed to them, that God should save them from their past sins in his appointed way; and they did not cease to be willing that their salvation from the penalty of all such sins should continue to be by Christ alone. They had thus died the first death; but they were not willing to die what I think may properly be called, in the progress of inward experience, the second death.
And with many it seems to be an opinion, that there is no second death to die. Already dead to all claims of personal merit in the matter of salvation, and thinking that they may now live on their own stock, and in the strength of their own vitality and power, they do not understand, (alas, how few do understand it!) that they must not only die to their own MERITS, but must die to their own LIFE; that they must not only die to Christ on the cross that they may begin to have the true life; but that they must die to Christ on cross, that they may continue to have life. In other words, they must not only be so broken and humbled as to receive Christ as Savior from hell; but must be willing also, renouncing all natural desire and all human strength, and all of man's wisdom and man's hope, and all self-will to receive him as a Savior, moment by moment, from sin.
And this (perhaps because they do not fully understand the necessity of it) they are not willing to do; and therefore, although they have God's promise to help them, they will not purpose and resolve to do it. Their wills do not correspond with what must be, with what God requires to be, and cannot do otherwise than require to be, just so far as He carries on and completes the work of sanctification in the soul; namely, that God's own hand must lay the axe of inward crucifixion unsparingly at the root of the natural life; that God in Christ, operating in the person of the Holy Ghost, must be the principle of inward inspiration moment by moment, the crucifier of every wrong desire and purpose, the Author of every right and holy purpose, the Light and Life of the soul.
But upon this altar of sacrifice, terrible as it is to the natural mind, Madame Guyon did not hesitate to place herself, believing that God would accomplish his own work in his own time and way. She invited the hand of the destroyer, that she might live again from the ruins of that which should be slain. He, who does not willingly afflict his children, but rather pities them as a father, accepted the work which was thus committed to him. It is sometimes the case, that God subdues and exterminates that inordinate action of the mind, which is conveniently denominated the life of nature by the inward teaching and operation of the Holy Ghost, independently, in a considerable degree, of the agency of any marked providences. Such cases, however, are rare. Much more frequently it is done, by the appropriate application of his providences, in connection with the inward influence.
It was this combined process, to which the subject of this Memoir, in the spirit of a heart that seeks its own destruction, submitted herself. She had given herself to God without reserve; and he did not long withhold, or conceal the evidence of her acceptance. The one followed the other without delay and without misgiving. Knowing that her own resolutions, and her spirit of self-sacrifice, independently of his foresight and assistance, would be of no avail, He arranged a series of physical and moral adjustments, which resulted in blow after blow, till the pride of nature, which sometimes stands like a wall of adamant, was thoroughly broken. It was then, and not till then, that her soul entered into that state of purity and rest, which she has significantly denominated its state of "simplicity;" a state in which the soul has but one motive, that of God's will and but one source of happiness, that of God's glory. It is not merely a state of consecration to God's will; but a state of union and rest in his will.
— from The Life of Madame Guyon (1877), Volume 1, Chapter 10.
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