Consecration and Our Initial Faith

I think we may regard it as one of the established principles, having relation to the origin and the operations of faith, and which may properly be included under the denomination of the doctrines of faith, that our faith in God will be in proportion, or nearly in proportion, to our consecration to God. In other words, just in proportion as we give ourselves to God to do and to suffer his will without reserve, just in that proportion or degree we shall be likely to have confidence in him; a confidence, which will receive him not only in his more general character as God, but as the God of providence and the God of the promises. It is especially obvious, I think, and beyond all question, that the highest results of faith, Assurance of Faith for instance, cannot be experienced, without a personal and specific consecration; a consecration which is entire and without reserve. The Savior himself may be regarded as fully implying all that has now been said in the instructive and interesting passage, where he says, addressing himself to the Jews, “How can ye believe, who receive honor one from another, and seek not that honor, which cometh from God only?” John 5:44.

How Much it Costs to Bring a Soul to the Knowledge of God

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

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In narrating the  various  providential dispensations and instrumentalities, which resulted in the spiritual renovation of Madame Guyon, we cannot well avoid noticing how much it costs to bring a soul to the knowledge of God.

This recital of instrumentalities and influences does not; as I suppose, present anything peculiarly new; — anything which does not occur in many other cases. The human mind is so wedded to its natural perverseness, that, generally speaking, it is not brought into harmony with God at once. Even those conversions, which appear to be especially prompt and sudden, have in many cases been preceded by a long preparatory training, which is not the less real, because it has been unseen and unknown. Generally speaking, we see efforts frequently renewed, resolves made and resolves broken, alternations of penitential tears and of worldly joys, advice and warning received to-day and rejected to-morrow, and very frequently a long series of disappointments and sorrows, before the mind is so humbled and instructed, as to renounce its earthly hopes, and to possess all things in God by becoming nothing in itself. But this state of things, which so frequently happens, and which is really so afflicting, teaches us the lesson of patience and of hope. Tears may have been wiped away, and resolutions may have been broken; and yet those tears, which seemed to have been in vain, and those resolutions which seemed to have been worse than in vain, may have been important and even indispensable links in the chain of providential occurrences. We repeat, therefore, that conversions long delayed, although they are calculated to try and purify our patience, ought not to extinguish our hope. "In due season we shall reap, if we faint not."

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

A False Estimate of Human Knowledge

When I witness the erroneous estimate which men often place on certain kinds of human knowledge, I am reminded of one of the remarkable sayings which abound in the practical writings of St. Augustine. "Unhappy is he who knows everything else, and does not know God. Happy is he who knows God, though he should be ignorant of every thing else."

— Religious Maxims (1846), LXXVIII.