CHAPTER IV.

I would willingly suppress what I am now about to
write if anything of it were my own, as well on account
of the difficulty of expressing myself thereon, as because
few souls are capable of understanding divine leadings
which are so little known, and so little comprehended.
I have myself never read of anything like it. I shall
say something of the interior dispositions I was then
in, and I shall think my time well employed, if it serves
you who are willing to be of the number of my chil¬
dren, and if it serves such as are already my children,
to induce them to let God glorify himseli in them after
his manner, and not after their own. If there be any¬
thing which they do not comprehend, let them die to
themselves, and they will find it much easier to learn
by experience than from anything I could say; for
expression never equals experience.

After I had come out of the trying condition I have
spoken of, I found it had purified my soul, instead of
blackening it as I had feared. I possessed God after a
manner so pure, and so immense, as nothing else could
equal. In regard to thoughts or desires, all was so
clean, so naked, so lost in the divinity, that the soul
had no selfish movement, however plausible or delicate;
both the powers of the mind and the very senses being
wonderfully purified. Sometimes I was surprised to
find that there appeared not one selfish thought. The
imagination, formerly so restless, now no more troubled

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me. I had no more perplexity or uneasy reflections.
The will, being perfectly dead to all its own appetites,
was become void of every human inclination, both nat¬
ural and spiritual, and only inclined to whatever God
pleased, and to whatever manner he pleased. This
vastness or enlargedness, which is not bounded by any¬
thing, however plain or simple it may be, increases
every day; so that my soul in partaking of the quali¬
ties of her Spouse, seems also to partake of his immen¬
sity. My prayer was in an openness and singleness
inconceivable. I was, as it were, borne up on high,
out of myself. I believe God was pleased to bless me
with this experience, at the beginning of the new life,
to make me comprehend, for the good of other souls,
the simplicity and desirableness of this passage of the
soul into God.

When I went to confess, I felt such an immersion
of the soul into him, that I could scarcely speak. This
ascension of the spirit, wherein God draws the soul so
powerfully, not into its own inmost recess, but into
himself, is not operated till after the death of self,
wherein the soul actually comes out of itself to pass
into its divine object. I call it death, that is to say, a
passage from one thing to another; and it is truly a
happy passover for the soul, and its passage into the
promised land. The spirit which is created to be
united to its divine Origin, has so powerful a tendency
to him, that if it were not stopped by a continual mira¬
cle, its moving quality would cause the body to be
drawn after it whithersoever it would, by reason of its
impetuosity and noble ascent. But God has given it a
terrestrial body to serve for a counterpoise. This
spirit then, created to be united to its Origin, without

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211

any medium or interstice, feeling itself drawn by its
divine object, tends to it with an extreme violence; in
such sort that God, suspending for sometime the
power which the body has to hold back the spirit, it
follows with ardency; but when it is not sufficiently
purified to pass into God, it gradually returns back to
itself; and as the body resumes its own quality, it turns
to the earth. The saints who have been the most per¬
fect have advanced to that degree, as to have nothing
of all this; and some have lost it toward the end of
their lives, becoming single and pure as the others,
because they then had in reality and permanence, what
they had at first only as transient fruitions, in the time
of the prevalence or dominion of the body. It is cer¬
tain then that the soul, by death to itself, passes into
its divine Object; and this is what I then experienced.
I found, the farther I went, the more my spirit was
lost in its Sovereign, who attracted it more and more
to himself. And he was pleased at first that I should
know this for the sake of others, and not for myself.
Indeed he drew my soul more and more into himself,
till it lost itself entirely out of sight, and could perceive
itself no more. It seemed at first to pass into him. As
one sees a river pass into the ocean, lose itself in it, its
water for a time distinguished from that of the sea, till
it gradually becomes transformed into the same sea,
and possesses all its qualities; so was my soul 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 are still shut up in themselves or only
live for themselves.

The joy which such a soul possesses in its God is so

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THE LIFE OF MADAME GTJYON.

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 he addressed, “Your
joy no man shall take from you.” John xvi. 22. It is
as it were plunged in a river of peace. Its prayer is
continual. Nothing can hinder it from praying to God,
or from loving him. It amply verifies these words in
the Canticles, “I sleep hut my heart waketh;” for it
finds that even sleep itself does not hinder it from pray¬
ing. Oh unutterable happiness ! Who could ever have
thought that a soul, which seemed to he in the utmost
misery, should ever find a happiness equal to this? Oh
happy poverty, happy loss, happy nothingness, 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 own divine essence.

Then the soul knows that all the states of self-pleas¬
ing visions, openings, ecstasies and raptures, are rather
obstacles; that they do not serve this state which is far
above them; because the state which has supports, has
pain to lose them; and yet cannot arrive at this without
such loss. In this are verified the words of an experi¬
enced saint; “When I would,” says he, “possess nothing
through self-love, 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 passive, so equally disposed to receive from the
hand of God either good or evil, as is astonishing. It
receives both the one and the other without any selfish
emotions, letting them flow and be lost as they come.
They pass away as if they did not touch.

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213

After I finished my retreat with the Ursulines at
Tonon, I returned through Geneva; and, having found
no other means of conveyance, the French resident lent
me a horse. As I knew not how to ride on horseback,
I made some difficulty of doing it; but as he assured
me that it was a very quiet horse, I ventured to mount
him. There was a sort of a smith, who looking at me
with a wild haggard look, struck the horse a blow on
the back, just as I had got upon him, which made him
give a leap. He threw me on the ground with such
force that they thought I was killed. I fell on my tem¬
ple. My cheek-bone and two of my teeth were broken.
I was supported by an invisible hand; and in a little
time I mounted as well as I could on another horse
and had a man by my side to keep me up.

My relations left me in peace at Gex, testifying
their esteem for me; and as they had heard at Paris of
my miraculous cure, it made a great noise there. Many
persons in reputation for sanctity then wrote to me. I
received letters from Madamoiselle De Lamoignon, and
another young lady, who was so moved with my answer,
that she sent me a hundred pistoles for our house, and
let me know beside, “ that, when we wanted money, I
had only to write to her; and that she would send me
all I could desire.” They talked in Paris of printing an
account of the sacrifice I had made, and inserting in it
the miracle of my sudden recovery. I don’t know
what prevented it; but such is the inconstancy of the
creature, that this journey, which drew upon me at
that time so much applause, has served for a pretext
for the strange condemnation which has since passed
upon me.

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THE LIFE OF MADAME GUYON.