Reflections on
the Life of
Madame Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon.
Incidents of 1672. Presentiment of her father’s death. A message reaches her soon after with the news of his last sickness. His death. Remarks. Affectionate eulogium on her daughter. Her sickness and death.
Thus passed the year 1671. I am particular in the periods of time, so far as I am able to ascertain them, which is not always easy to be done. And the reason is, that by connecting the dealings of God and the progress of the inward life with specific times and situations, the mental operation is aided, and we can hardly fail to have a clearer idea of the incidents which are narrated. Another year had now opened upon her, and found her renewedly consecrated to God, and growing wiser and holier through the discipline of bitter experience. Her trials had been somewhat less in this year than in the preceding, but still they were not wholly suspended. And as God designed that she should be wholly his, there were other trials in prospect, which were designed to aid in this important result. We proceed, therefore, in our narrative, with such incidents and facts as we are able to gather from the sources of information found in her own writings and in the writings of some of her contemporaries, which remain to us.
It is not always easy to explain the impressions. which exist within us. It is very possible, that some remarkable impressions or presentiments may be explained on natural principles; but there are others, of which it might not be easy to give a satisfactory account in that manner. I have been led to this remark, from an incident which I notice in her history. On a morning of July, in 1672, she awoke very early, with such an impression on her mind. “At four o'clock in the morning,” she says, “I awoke suddenly, with a strong impression or presentiment that my father was dead. And though at that time my soul had been in very great contentment, yet such was my love for him, that the impression I had of his death affected my heart with sorrow, and my body with weakness.”
At the time of which we are now speaking, she was not at her own home. She had been residing some days at a Monastery, the Prioress of which was a personal friend. It was some leagues distant from her usual place of residence. She had gone there for religious purposes, as the place was favorable to retirement and to religious contemplation. At the time she left home, her father was residing at her house. It was on the afternoon of the same day in which she experienced the strong presentiment or impression of which we have spoken, that a man arrived at the Monastery in great haste. He brought a letter from her husband, in which he informed her of her father’s dangerous illness. Prompted by affection, as well as by duty, she immediately set out to visit him; but on arriving at her residence, she found him dead.
To her father she was tenderly attached. And it would seem, from what we learn of him, that she had reason to be so. “His virtues,” she says, “were so generally known that it is unnecessary to speak of them. I pass them in silence; or only with the simple remark, that as he passed through the scenes and trials of his closing days, he exhibited great reliance on God. His patience and faith were wonderful.” It was thus that another tie to the earth was sundered; and the freedom of the soul, which is liable to be contracted and shackled even by the domestic affections, when they are but partially sanctified, grew wider and stronger from the bonds that were broken.
She had a daughter, an only daughter; young it is true, only three years of age, or but a little more than three years of age; and yet, in her own language, “as dearly beloved as she was truly lovely.”
“This little daughter,” says the mother, “had great beauty of person; and the graces of the body, which distinguished her; were equalled by those of the mind; so that a person must have been insensible both to beauty and to merit, not to have loved her. Young as she was, she had a perception of religious things; and seems to have loved God in an extraordinary manner. Often I found her in some retired place, in some corner, praying. It was her habit, whenever she saw me at prayer, to come and join with me. And if, at any time, she discovered that I had been praying without her, feeling that something was wrong, or that something was lost, she would weep bitterly, and exclaim in her sorrow, ‘Ah, mother, you pray, but I do not pray.’ When we were alone, if she saw my eyes closed, as would naturally be the case in my seasons of in- ward recollection, she would whisper, ‘Are you asleep?’ and then would cry out, ‘Ah, no? You are praying to our dear Jesus;’ and dropping on her knees before me, she would begin to pray too.
“So strongly did she express her desire and her determination to give herself to the Lord, and to be one with him in spirit, that it gave occasion for reproof on the part of her grandmother. But still she could not be prevailed upon to alter her expressions. She was very dutiful; many were her endearments; and she was innocent and modest as a little angel. Her father doted on her. To her mother she was endeared much more by the qualities of her heart, than by those of her beautiful person. I looked upon her as my great, and almost my only consolation on earth; for she had as much affection for me as her surviving brother, who had been subjected to the most unhappy influences, had aversion and contempt. She died of an unseasonable bleeding. But what shall I say, she died by the hands of Him, who was pleased to strip me of all.”
Both her father and daughter died in July, 1672.
— from The Life of Madame Guyon (1877), Volume 1, Chapter 12.
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