Letters of Madam GuyonGuyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte
Religion
Letters of Madam Guyon
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte, 1648-1717
When the soul becomes one with God by the loss of its own will and
life, it has purposes, and it is important to follow them; but they are
purposes in God, and have in them nothing of self. All that has
rapport to self is no more, and God is all. Being passed into God, the
soul is changed and transformed in him. This is what the mystics call
_Resurrection_. But the word used in this way, does not bear its usual
signification. To resuscitate is to revive the former life. But in
this case, the will, or natural life is consumed, and gives place to
the will or life of God. Thus the Holy Spirit operates effectively in
the soul, transforming it into the likeness of the Son of God.
Now the soul participates in the qualities of God, one of which
qualities, is that of communicating itself to other souls. Or rather,
it is as a stream, which, being lost in a large river, follows the
course of the river, communicating itself where the river communicates,
watering where it waters, drawing into itself all the smaller rivers,
which are destined alike to lose themselves in the great ocean of Love.
These streams have no independent life, but proceed from, and flow back
into their origin. Here is the consummation of souls in oneness, as
Jesus Christ has expressed it,--"_One in us_."
There is divine reality in this truth. Blessed are those who
comprehend it! How many walk side by side along these rivers, and yet
never mingle their waters! And many there are, also, who haste with
eagerness, to precipitate themselves into this divine stream, and flow
together, as the souls of the celestial ones, in the fulness of divine
love.
This is not a chimera of the fancy; it is the wonderful economy of
divinity. It is the end and object of the creation of the soul--the
end and compass of all the efforts of God, regarding his creatures.
Here is consummated all the glory, God derives from their existence.
All beside are only the means approaching this final end, this glorious
termination, and absorption of the soul in Deity. Here is the light
which ravishes the soul. A light which does not precede, but follows
the soul in its progress; unfolding more and more, as a man in a dark
cavern, discovers the concealed places, only when he has remained in it
for some time.
This is the pure Theology in which God instructs the angels and the
saints. It is the Theology of Experience, that God teaches only to his
children, who having abandoned their own wisdom, he has himself become
their wisdom and their life. This is the law of wisdom, my friend, for
us,--the way of the Lord in us. In him we are one.
NO UNION WITH SELFISH SOULS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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