The Birth of Her First Child

Reflections on
the Life of
Madame Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon.

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She had now been married about a year. A number of things occurred about this time, which are worthy of notice. They tend to illustrate what I have remarked, in the preceding chapter, on the operations of grace in connection
with the position in which we are placed in Providence. If it is not strictly true, that God saves us by his providences, a remark which is sometimes made,— I think we may regard it as essentially true, that he saves us by his grace, dispensed and operating in connection with his providences. Providences test the disposition of the mind; they not only test it, but alter it and control it to some extent; and may be the means of placing it in a position the most favorable for the reception of inward divine teaching.

One circumstance, which was calculated to have a favorable effect upon the mind of Madame Guyon, at the time of which we are now speaking, was the birth of her first child. God was pleased to give her a son, to whom she gave the name of Armand Jaques Guyon. This event, appealing so strongly to family sympathies, was naturally calculated to interest and soften the feelings of those who had afflicted her. And we learn from what she has said on the subject, that this was the case. But this was not all. It brought with it such new relations; it opened such new views of employment and happiness, and imposed such increased responsibilities, that it could hardly fail to strengthen the renewed religious tendency, which had already begun to develop itself. Under the responsibility of a new life added to her own, she began to realize that, if it were possible for her not to need God for herself, she might need him for her child.

— edited from The Life of Madam Guyon Volume 1, Chapter 6.

Childlike Confidence in God

Religious faith, like natural faith, has its appropriate objects; objects, which are in some way connected with religious experience. As natural faith is known in part, by attaching itself to natural objects; so one of the marks or characteristics of religious faith is, that it attaches itself to religious objects.

The facts, which we notice in children, furnish an illustration of what has now been said. The life of children, I suppose, may in general be regarded as a life of faith. Not of religious faith, it is true; but still of faith, of natural faith. It is interesting to see, though they know that they are entirely dependent for food, raiment, and a home, what entire confidence they repose in their parents; a confidence, which, in excluding doubt, banishes anxiety. Hence it is that they live in such simplicity and quietness of spirit; and in the language of Scripture, are “careful for nothing.” When the object of this state of mind is changed, and it is transferred from the earthly parent to God, it becomes religious faith. The existence of such faith not only constitutes God our Father; but those who exercise it, become, in the language of the Savior, “like little children.” They have the same simple-hearted confidence. Freed from the anxieties of unbelief, they leave their life and their health, their food and their raiment, their joy and their sorrow, in the divine keeping. The resemblance or analogy between the two states of mind, as represented in these two cases, is essentially complete. And yet one of them is to be regarded and spoken of as an instance of natural faith merely. The other is a religious faith.

I find, in the writings of Richard Cecil, an illustration of the view of the subject just given, which seems to me to be suitable to be introduced here.—

“I imprinted on my daughter,” this devout writer remarks, “the idea of Faith, at a very early age. She was playing one day with a few beads, which seemed to delight her wonderfully. Her whole soul was absorbed in her beads. I said—‘My dear, you have some pretty beads there.’ ‘Yes, Papa!’ ‘And you seem to be vastly pleased with them.’ ‘Yes, Papa!’ ‘Well now, throw them behind the fire.’ The tears started into her eyes. She looked earnestly at me, as though she ought to have a reason for such a cruel sacrifice. ‘Well, my dear, do as you please; but you know I never told you to do any thing, which I did not think would be good for you.’ She looked at me a few moments longer, and then summoning up all her fortitude — her breast heaving with the effort — she dashed them into the fire. ‘Well,’ said I: ‘there let them lie: you shall hear more about them another time; but say no more about them now.’ Some days after, I bought her a box full of larger beads, and toys of the same kind. When I returned home, I opened the treasure and set it before her: she burst into tears with ecstasy. ‘Those, my child,’ said I, ‘are yours, because you believed me, when I told you it would be better for you to throw those two or three paltry beads behind the fire. Now that has brought you this treasure. But now, my dear, remember, as long as you live, what FAITH is. I did all this to teach you the meaning of Faith. You threw your beads away when I bade you, because you had faith in me that I never advised you but for your good. Put the same confidence in God. Believe every thing that he says in his word. Whether you understand it or not, have faith in him that he means your good.”

— edited from The Life of Faith (1852) Part 1, Chapter 3.

The Godhead is the Antetype of the Family

The Godhead itself, mysterious and unsearchable as it is, is the fore-shadowing, the antetype of the family. Man is said to be created in the divine image;  but the combined man, which constitutes the family, far more than the solitary man or woman, is the true image of God. And the reason is, "God is love.” And if he is so, then there must have been an eternal Beloved. Otherwise, he would have been the most miserable of beings. Absolute solitude is inconsistent with happiness. What could be more miserable than a being, the very essence of whose nature is love, without an object to meet and to satisfy its unalienable and mighty tendencies? And that object, to meet the ends for which it exists, must be as infinite as the love of which it is the subject.  And if it must be infinite, because nothing short of infinite would be an appropriate object of the divine affections, it must also have been eternal, because otherwise the divine affection, through countless ages, would have had no object at all. And hence, there is, and must be, innate in the Godhead, the infinitely beloved, the Chosen and Anointed of the Father, the Eternal Word, the Immanuel. But this duality of existence, which is constituted into unity by the unchangeable bond of the affections, cannot be perfectly happy except in some object possessing a like infinity of character, which may be regarded, speaking after the manner of men, as "a procession or emanation" from the two. And this re-production of itself, infinite in its nature, perfect in its love and by "an everlasting generation," constitutes and completes the adorable family of the Trinity.

Man, created in the divine image, is male and female; and these two are one. And their united existence, deriving a new power from their union, multiplies and images itself in a third, which is also a part of itself. It is man, therefore, in his threefold nature, — the father, the mother, and the child,— the beautiful trinity of the family, and yet so constituted that in man's unfallen state it would never have suggested the idea of a weakened or discordant unity, — which may be regarded as the earthly representation, the visible, though dim,  shadowing  forth of the divine personalities existing in the unity of the Godhead. The original type is in the infinite; but it is reproduced and reflected with greater or less degrees of distinctness in all orders of moral beings. 

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 6.