Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-, 1651-1715
This extract expresses as well, perhaps, as anything can, the
mainsprings of her personal feeling and the chief substance of her
teaching. She always beheld the hand of God in all things, recognized
practically that God orders and provides every allotment in life, every
situation, however distressing to the flesh or perplexing to the
perceptions. She looked at everything on the side of God, and found Him
always manifested in His providences. She was not merely consecrated
_to_ God’s will, she rested _in_ His will, united to it by a most simple
faith, finding her joy in Jesus. All that had God in it—and that
included everything except sin—was delightful to her. She found the
order of Divine providence a very precious and sufficient rule of
conduct; for she accounted that every successive second, and every
event, however minute, had something about it which made known His will.
Hence, trusting fully, and finding God always everywhere, nothing moved
her. And she came to feel it to be her special mission, since God had
revealed these things to her, as He had not to others, to proclaim this
particular kind of holiness; a holiness which was a present privilege
and possession, based upon and secured by faith. This interior life, or
“inward path,” as she sometimes called it, or state of perfect obedience
to the will of God, had still another name by which it came to be widely
known—the name of _disinterested_ (or pure, perfect, unselfish) _love_.
By this was meant a love which served God for Himself alone,
uninfluenced by fear of punishment or hope of reward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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