CHAPTER XVII.

Remarks on sanctification as compared with justification. On the

importance of striving after sanctification. Madame Guyon at this time.

On the state of

Her work, entitled the Torrents.

Some sentiments given from it as descriptive of her own experience. Singular illustration, by which she shows the difference between common Christians and others. Of the depth of the experience which is implied in true sanctification. On the question whether all must endure the same amount of suffering in experiencing sanctification. Her poem on the joy of the cross.

THEOLOGIANS very properly make a distinction between justification and sanctification. The two great moral and religious elements, namely, entire self-renunciation and entire faith in God through Jesus Christ, are involved in both of these religious experiences, and give to them a close relationship; without, however, confounding them and making them one. They are related to each other, without ceasing to be separate.

2. Justification, while it does not exclude the present, has special reference to the past. Sanctification, which is subsequent to justification in the order of nature, has exclusive reference to the present and future. Justification inquires, How shall the sin, which is past, be forgiven? Sanctification inquires, How shall we be kept from sin at the present time and in time to come? Justification, in its result upon individuals, removes the condemnatory power or guilt

of sin; while sanctification removes the power of sin itself.*

3. No man can be a Christian, who is not justified. But no intelligent Christian can rest satisfied with justification alone. He earnestly desires, not only that his sins may be forgiven, but that they may be removed — taken away. "He hungers and thirsts after righteousness." He, who professes to be a Christian, and yet has not this hungering and thirsting after a heart that is sanctified, has no good reason to believe that he has ever known the blessedness of a heart that is justified. "By their fruits," says the Saviour, "ye shall know them." Sanctification is the fruit.

4. A sanctified heart is only another expression for a holy heart. A holy heart, whatever other expressions may apply to it and describe it, may be described, I think, as a heart from which selfishness is excluded, and which loves God with all its power of love. From this time onward, Madame Guyon, who had been cut off from every other resource, and had learned the great lesson of living by faith alone, professed to love God with such love.

Whether we call this state of experience pure love or perfect love, whether we denominate it sanctification or assurance of faith, is perhaps not very essential. Certain it is, that it seemed to her, without professing or presuming to be beyond the possibility of mistake, that she loved her heavenly Father, in accordance with what the Saviour requires of us, with her whole power of loving. And accordingly she could no longer hesitate to apply to herself some of the strongest expressions, descriptive of the inward life, which are found in the Scriptures. She could say, with the apostle, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the

* For some remarks on this subject, see the Interior or Hidden Life.

life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."* She understood, as she never did before, the import of what the same apostle says in the eighth chapter of Romans. "There is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit; for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."† She, who a short time before believed herself outcast and lost forever, had now the faith and the courage a courage based upon faith and adorned with the deepest humility to appropriate the beautiful conclusion of the same chapter; "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

5. We have already alluded to the book, entitled The Torrents. It is obviously a work drawn chiefly from her own experience. In the latter part of it, she describes the state of her mind, as it was at this period; without, however, making any distinct reference to herself, except that she occasionally speaks in the first person, as if forgetting for a moment the style of narration which she had adopted. I will give here some parts of what I understand her to say of herself; substituting the first person for the third person, and translating not merely her words, which, taken as they stand, would convey but very imperfect and perhaps false ideas to an English reader, but what I suppose her to mean by them. This is the import of some of her remarks.

6. "Great was the change, which I had now experienced; but still in my exterior life, that part of my life which came under the observation of others, I appeared to them quite

* Gal. ii. 20.

† Rom. viii. 1, 2, 38, 39.

simple, unobtrusive, and common. And the reason was, that my soul was not only brought into harmony with itself and with God, but with God's providences. In the exercise of faith and love, I endured and performed whatever came in God's providence, in submission, in thankfulness, and silence. I was now in God and God in me; and where God is, there is as much simplicity as power. And what I did was done in such simplicity and childlikeness of spirit, that the world did not observe anything which was much calculated to attract notice.

7. “I had a deep peace; a peace which seemed to pervade the whole soul. A peace which resulted from the fact, that all my desires were fulfilled in God. I desired nothing; feared nothing; willed nothing. I feared nothing; that is to say, I feared nothing, considered in its ultimate results and relations, because my strong faith placed God at the head of all perplexities and all events. I desired nothing but what I now had, because I had a full belief, that in my present state of mind the results of each moment, considered in relation to myself, constituted the fulfilment of the divine purposes. I willed nothing; meaning in the statement that I had no will of my own. As a sanctified heart is always in harmony with the divine providences, I had no will but the divine will, of which such providences are the true and appropriate expression. How could such a soul have other than a deep peace, -a peace which was not limited to the uncertainties of the emotional part of our nature, but which pervaded and blessed the whole mind! Nothing seemed to diminish it; nothing troubled it.

8. "I do not mean to say, that I was in a state in which I could not be afflicted. My physical system, my senses, had not lost the power of suffering. My natural sensibilities were susceptible of being pained. Oftentimes I suffered much. But interiorly, in the centre of the soul, if I may so

express it, there was divine and supreme peace. The lower soul, or the soul considered in its connection with the objects immediately around it, might at times be troubled and afflicted; but the higher or central soul, or the soul considered in its relation to God and the divine will, was entirely calm, trustful, and happy. The trouble at the circumference, originating in part from a disordered physical constitution, did not affect and disturb the divine peace of the centre.

9. "One characteristic of this higher degree of experience was a sense of inward purity. My mind had such a oneness with God, such a unity with the divine nature, that nothing seemed to have power to soil it and to diminish its purity. It experienced the truth of that declaration of Scripture, that to the pure all things are pure. As God is present to sinners in the matter of instructing and reproving them, and also in that of physically upholding and sustaining them, even in the very act of sin, and yet without being rendered sinful or contracting any moral evil, so the person who is truly pure, may see sinful acts, may hear impure and sinful conversation, or may otherwise be brought, providentially and in the discharge of duty, into connection with impurities without contracting any stain from them. Such stains have no affinity with the pure mind. The pollution which surrounds it, has no power upon it; as the dark and impure mud does not defile the sunbeams that shine upon it, which rather appear brighter and purer from the contrast. The soul, bright with the brightness which comes from God, seems to have no knowledge of any darkness or evil in itself.

10. "But, though I was so much blessed, I was not conscious of any merit, nor tempted by any suggestions of merit in myself. Indeed, I seemed to be so united with God, so made one with the centre and sum of all good, that my thoughts did not easily turn upon myself as a distinct object of reflection; and, consequently, it would not have been an