awake me; but at such times I felt, even in my sleep, a singular possession of God. He loved me so much, that he seemed to pervade my being, at a time when I could be only imperfectly conscious of his presence. My sleep is sometimes broken, a sort of half sleep; but my soul seems to be awake enough to know God, when it is hardly capable of knowing any thing else."

23. "The Lord," she adds, "made it known also to many persons, that he designed me for a mother of a numerous people, but a people simple and childlike. The persons to whom these intimations were given, coming, as they supposed from a divine source, took them in a literal sense; and accordingly thought that I should be called in providence to take the charge, in the capacity of superior or prioress, of some Religious House. But to me the matter appeared differently. I had reason to think, (and such was the interpretation which I gave to these intimations,) that God would make me an instrument, in his hands, of spiritual good to many persons. To these persons, in some instances at least, I supposed that God might give the same union of affection towards myself as that of children for a parent, and perhaps deeper and stronger."

The results seem to have justified this view. Many were the persons for whom, with God's blessing, she labored not in vain. Many were the persons who looked to her with affection and confidence, as their spiritual mother and guide.

24. "The soul," she remarks further, "passing out of itself by dying to itself, necessarily passes into its divine object. This is the law of its transition. When it passes out of self, which is limited and therefore is not God, and consequently is evil, it necessarily passes into the Unlimited and Universal, which is God, and therefore is the true Good. My own experience seemed to me to be a verification of this. My spirit, disenthralled from selfishness, became

united with and lost in God, its Sovereign, who attracted it more and more to himself. And this was so much the case, that I could seem to see and know God only, and not myself. My soul at first seemed to pass into him, and then to be lost in him; like the waters of a river, which pass into the ocean, and after a short time are so entirely united as to become one with it. It was thus that my soul was lost in God, who communicated to it his qualities, having drawn it out of all that it had of its own. Its life is an inconceivable innocence, not known or comprehended of those, who, still remaining in the life of nature, are shut up in themselves.

25. "The joy, which such a soul possesses in God, is so great, that it experiences the truth of those words of the royal prophet, All they, who are in thee, O Lord, are like persons ravished with joy. To such a soul the words of our Lord seem to be addressed: Your joy no man shall take from you.' It is, as it were, plunged into a river of peace. Its prayer is continual. Nothing can hinder it from praying to God, or from loving him. It amply verifies those words in the Canticles, 'I sleep but my heart waketh;' for it finds that even sleep does not hinder it from praying. Oh, unutterable happiness! Who could ever have thought that a soul, which seemed to be in the utmost misery, should ever find a happiness equal to this? Oh, happy poverty, happy loss, happy nothing, which gives no less than God himself in his own immensity, no more circumscribed to the limited manner of the creature, but always drawing it out of that, to plunge it wholly into his divine essence.

26. "Then the soul knows that all the states of selfpleasing visions, of intellectual illuminations, of ecstasies and raptures, of whatever value they might once have been, are now rather obstacles than advancements; and that they are not of service in this state of experience, which is far above them; because the state which has props or supports, which

is the case with the merely illuminated and ecstatic state, rests in them in some degree, and has pain to lose them. But the soul cannot arrive at the state of which I am now speaking, without the loss of all such supports or helps. In this are verified the words of an experienced saint: When I would,' says he, 'possess nothing through selfishness, everything was given me without going after it.' Oh, happy dying of the grain of wheat, which makes it produce an hundred fold! The soul is then so submissive, and perhaps we may say so passive, that is to say, is so disposed equally to receive from the hand of God either good or evil,—as is truly astonishing. It receives both the one and the other without any selfish emotions, letting them flow and be lost as they came. They come, and do their office, and pass by, as if they did not touch us; because the soul takes nothing except what God brings, and with equal readiness and happiness leaves or loses it, when God sees fit to take it away. Its life is in God's life; and God's life is in his WILL, because his will is not only the development, but is the completion, the unity, and the full realization of himself."

CHAPTER XXIII.

Approaching trials. Consolations from Scripture. A dream. Some of the causes of the opposition which existed against her. She frustrates the wicked designs of an ecclesiastic upon an unprotected girl. The opposition and ill treatment which arose from this source. A party formed against her at Gex. In consequence of the persecutions of this party, she leaves Gex, after having resided there about eight months. Crosses the Genevan or Leman Lake to Thonon. A poem.

Ir was now fully evident, that trials, which would be likely to be very severe, awaited Madame Guyon. The sacrifices she had made and the benevolence of her mission, were no security against them. Such was the view which she herself took of the state of things. "I saw," she says, "that crosses in abundance were likely to fall to my lot. The sky gradually thickened; the storm gathered darkness on every side. But I found support and consolation in God and his Word. A passage in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews was particularly blessed to me. 'Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him, who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.' Affected with a sense of my situation, I had no sooner read

this consoling passage, than I prostrated myself, for a long time, with my face on the floor. I offered myself to God, to receive at his hand all the strokes which his providence might see fit to inflict. I said to him, Thou didst not spare thine own beloved son. It was thy holy one, thy loved one, that thou didst account worthy to suffer. And in such as most fully bear his image, thou dost still find those who are most fitted to bear the heaviest burden of the cross."

2. Even her dreams, which by a natural law of the mind's action repeat, although they sometimes greatly diversify, our waking perceptions and thoughts, seemed mysteriously to confirm her forebodings of sorrows to come; - sorrows, which would not be likely to be limited to herself, but threatened all who sympathized in her doctrines and in her holiness of life. "I saw," she says, “in a sacred and mysterious dream, (for such I may very well describe it,) Father La Combe fastened to an enormous cross, deprived of clothing, in the manner in which they paint our Saviour. I saw around him, while hanging and suffering in this manner, a frightful crowd; which had the effect to cover me with confusion, and threw back upon myself the ignominy of a punishment, which at first seemed designed for him alone. So that, although he appeared to suffer the most pain, it fell to my lot to bear the heaviest reproaches. I have since beheld the intimations of this dream fully accomplished."

3. Her doctrine was unpopular. The unpopularity of her doctrine rendered her personally less acceptable in some quarters than she had been. Her refusal to give up the remains of her property to the Religious House in Gex, and to defeat the obvious designs of providence, by becoming the prioress of it, was another source of trouble. The alienation of the feelings of Bishop d'Aranthon, which could not long be kept secret, had its influence. But still it was her faithfulness in proclaiming salvation by the cross of Christ,