Christian Experience and Present Duty

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

---

Discharge of domestic and other duties. Trials in relation to her seasons of prayer. Of the faults of which she considered herself guilty at this period. Remarks on a regard for God's providences.

---

 

She thought, therefore, with some reason, that at this period of her life she might have failed, in some degree, in her duty to her husband and her family, in consequence of not fully understanding the will of God as developed in his providences. And this view of things perhaps gives a significancy to a remark, which her husband once made, that "she loved God so much that she had no love left for him." It will help to illustrate the source of error and trouble which we are now trying to explain, if we give one or two other facts, which involve the same principle. She had a beautiful garden. And in the time of fruits and flowers, she often walked there. But such was the intensity of her contemplations on God, such "her inward attraction," as she expresses it, that her eye seemed to be closed, and she knew nothing, comparatively speaking, of the outward beauty which surrounded her. And when she went into the house, and her husband asked her how the fruits were, and how the flowers grew, she knew but little about it. And it was not surprising, I think, that it gave him considerable offense.

Prayer — But, Without God's Favor

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

---

Discharge of domestic and other duties. Trials in relation to her seasons of prayer. Of the faults of which she considered herself guilty at this period. Remarks on a regard for God's providences.

---

 Undoubtedly, in an important sense of the terms, the religious man's place is his closet. "Enter into thy closet" says the Saviour, "and pray to thy Father, who seeth in secret." The closet is an indispensable place to him. But whenever he goes there in violation of God's providence. it ceases to be a place of God's appointment, and he goes  there without God, It should never be forgotten, therefore, that it is God himself, who consecrates the place, and makes it a profitable one. And He will never consent to be jostled out of his true locality, which is always ascertained and designated by His providences, by means of any merely human arrangements. And accordingly we may lay it down as an important practical principle, that the times and places which are erected within the sphere of God's providences, and are in harmony with them, are right and well; and that all other times and places are wrong.

Learning to Pray Anywhere

Often amid the duties and distractions of the day, it is impossible for us to visit our usual place of retirement. It is important, therefore, if we would realize the benefits of closet worship when our closets are necessarily closed to us, that we should form the habit of interior retirement and of recollection in God. Can it be doubted, that it is our privilege by means of suitable religious training, accompanied with divine assistance, to remove in a moment every troublesome thought; and retiring inward, to hold communion with God in the secret chamber of the soul? Thus in everyplace, however disturbed by noise and perplexed by business, we may find a place of inward seclusion, a spiritual closet,  where God will meet us with his heavenly visitations.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CIV.