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.