Adieu! ye vain delights of earth, The Cross! Oh, ravishment and bliss- Its bitterness how sweet! There every sense, and all the mind, Taste happiness complete. Souls, once enabled to disdain The fever of desire is passed, And love has all its genuine taste, Self-love no grace in Sorrow sees, In suffering her repose. Sorrow and Love go side by side; Jesus, avenger of our fall, The cross have ever borne! And sloth and ease thy scorn! Thy choice and mine shall be the same, Inspirer of that holy flame, Which must forever blaze! To take the cross and follow Thee, CHAPTER XVIII. Temporary uncertainty in regard to her future course of action. Had thoughts of entering into a Nunnery. Decides not to take this course. Proposals of marriage. All such propositions and views decided against. Remains still uncertain what course to take. Has a short season of comparative retirement and peace. Extract from one of her Poems. In this new and encouraging state of her feelings, the question now pressed upon the mind of Madame Guyon, What course should she take during the remainder of her life? When the probabilities of a course of action were so balanced that she knew not what to do, it seems to have been a principle with her to remain patiently in her present position, and not to do anything. She believed, and she had some support for her belief, in the scriptures, that inaction, or rather a suspension of action, until Providence indicates the course to be taken, with some degree of clearness, is the only true and safe action. At such times, Providence, for reasons perhaps known only to itself, requires no other kind of action than that of waiting. 2. And this action, if such it may be called,-when it is such as it ought to be, is far from being unimportant, because it implies a resigned and submissive spirit, a rejection of all unholy motives and impulses, a sincere desire to know the truth, and a recognition of God's ability and readiness to impart it. Indeed, to make men wait, to make them wait submissively and patiently, until he sees fit to permit and authorize their action in subordination to his own time and manner of action, is a part, and a merciful and important part, of God's discipline of his children here on earth. 3. The first plan which suggested itself to her mind, and which occupied, for a time, more or less of her thoughts, was to arrange her affairs in such a manner as to relieve her from the personal care of them, and to go into a nunnery. There, in retirement and silence, it seemed to her, as she looked at the subject on its first being presented to her consideration, that she might serve God and benefit her fellow creatures, without the hazards to which she had formerly been exposed. Many were the names which she cherished in her own personal recollections, many were the names celebrated in history, of those, worn out with the cares and sorrows of the world, who had thus sought God and that peace of God which passes understanding, in places of religious seclusion. She thought of Genevieve Granger, her associate and adviser in religion; she thought of her own sainted sister, who first watched over and instructed her in the Ursuline seminary; the Marys and the Catharines of other times, the De Chantals and the St. Theresas, came to recollection. But she had already learned, that God moves in his providences. His providences are his home; his loved, his chosen home. And it required no great reach of thought to come to the conclusion, that those who go to the convent, or to any other place, without being led there by the wisdom and signature of an overruling providence, will fail to find God, whatever may be the professed object of their search, either as the guide or the end of their journey. She had religion enough, and of course religious wisdom enough, to know, that there was another and a higher question first to be answered. And that question was, What is God's will? Looking at this proposed course in the light of the divine will, and, in order to know that will, considering it in its connection with what she owed to her family and the world, she decided against it. 4. The situation of her children, in particular, had weight in this decision. The two youngest were of an age which seemed to demand an oversight from her, if it did not especially require her personal attention. She intimates, soon after the death of her husband, that his death did not leave her entirely at liberty to pursue what course she might choose. She was still the head of a family, and could not disregard the claims and duties which that responsible relation imposed upon her. "I was still restricted in my movements," she says, "in having two children given me in so short a time before my husband's death. If it had been otherwise, if I had been left with my eldest son alone, I might have been justified in adopting some plans in accordance with my ideas and wishes of religious retirement. I should probably have placed him at some college, and have gone myself into the Convent of the Benedictines. But the situation of my younger children precluded all thoughts of this kind. God had other designs upon me." * 5. Among other things, which were presented for her consideration, and which had a connection with her future life, was the question of a second marriage. Propositions of that nature were made to her, which brought the subject before her in such a manner, that she could not, as a woman, and still more as a Christian, pass them by without some attention. Proposals of marriage, as she herself states, were made to her by three different persons. At the middle age of life, possessed of great wealth, with a high reputation for intelligence and refined culture, and entitled, on these and on other accounts, to move in the leading circles of society, the question was one which brought itself home to her * La Vie de Madame Guyon, Pt. I. chap. 22. |