are distinguished by quotation marks, and we only regret to learn from the Preface, what many readers may not observe, and would not suppose, that these passages, presented as quotations, are not in the precise words of the writer, but an "interpreted translation; a translation of the spirit rather than the letter." This may have been necessary in order to condense so much within so small a space, and to connect and illustrate the many facts and opinions which are loosely thrown together in the original Life. We believe the work has been done as thoroughly and as candidly as it could well be. Still it is a difficult and a hazardous task. Every writer would prefer to speak in his own words, when he is represented as speaking in the first person, and explaining his own views; and every reader would prefer that he should. This is the only objection that we think will be made, or can fairly be made, to the present work. With our knowledge of the author, it does not lessen our confidence or our interest. We reserve, of course, the right to translate or interpret for ourselves, and we do not forget either the vagueness of words, or the unconscious and unavoidable bias of an interpreter's doctrinal views; especially as we have one or two strong intimations of these views. But these intimations are altogether fewer than we should, have expected from any one. We regard the work as not only honorable to the writer, but every way valuable, a work demanded by the greatness of the subject, and sure to be useful to all earnest readers. We have read it with intense interest. We cannot conceive that any one can read it without religious instruction and_impression. It compels the mind to turn in upon itself. It brings out our own secret or slighted errors and sins. It kindles pure and very high aspirations. It gives a better view than has been commonly entertained, and yet we think a correct view, of one of the most remarkable women of her own or any age. And we shall be greatly surprised, if it do not aid the spiritual life of multitudes, irrespectively of opinions, and quicken the desire, too low and languid in the Christian Church, of rising nearer the Christian mark of true spirituality and pure love.

That the doctrine of "Pure Love," as held by Madame Guyon and Fenelon, has been much misapprehended, we have always thought, but never saw so clearly as in this work. Rightly viewed, and as these writers themselves seem to us to have really regarded it, with all their exaggeration of

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phrase, it is no other than the doctrine of Christ and the Gospel, given in the two great laws of loving God with all the heart, and loving our neighbour as ourselves. It is easy to call this enthusiasm, and when expressed in any other language than that of the Gospel, or even then, if urged and carried out in any practical application, it always has been called enthusiasm, or worse. In Madame Guyon, it has been considered fanaticism, but never, we believe, in Fenelon. Yet Fenelon was almost her disciple in this doctrine, he was her avowed defender through life, he suffered with her for the reputed heresy, and differed from her in no essential that we can find. Why, then, the wide difference in popular estimation? Partly, perhaps, from the natural difference of the sexes in the indulgence and expression of sentiment, partly from the unwillingness of every Church, not least the Roman, to be reproved or instructed by a woman, and partly from admitted errors and extravagances in this particular case. Every one sees that Madame Guyon made mistakes and fell into extravagance in her early period of emotion and instruction, as seen particularly in her Autobiography. It is unfortunate that this work, from which most opinions have been and will be formed of her, was written at the suggestion and direction of her spiritual counsellor, not from her own desire; and that she was induced to write down every thing that occurred to her mind or experience, contrary to her own wishes, and with no idea that the record thus made would ever be given to the public. It is, in fact, a mere diary, written hastily, and exhibiting all her weaknesses. That those weaknesses have been marked and magnified, we are not surprised. They are of a kind to incite unfair notice. A natural vanity, which once spent itself upon personal charms, was not soon or ever wholly destroyed. Traces of it may be seen in her recital of peculiar mental and spiritual experiences, of remarkable success in all attempts to convince and convert others, and even of unaccountable business powers given her whenever wanted. This form of self-complacency, so common to such temperaments, and running often into a superstitious faith in a personal providence, may account for the prevailing idea of her character as that of a mere visionary. But the weakness, though real, has been greatly exaggerated. Her enemies would of course make the most and the worst of it. They seized upon every unguarded expression or unwise illustration which her free thought and fertile fancy suggested.

Some of these were ludicrous, and have been repeated and enlarged in every sketch we have seen of her life, to the exclusion of all that would explain or redeem.

Other extenuating facts are to be remembered, if we would do her common justice. Before she was sixteen, this enthusiastic girl, whose powers and appearance had made a sensation in the best circles of Paris, was married, by her father's choice, not her own, to a man of thirty-eight, whom she had seen but a few days, and between whom and herself there were no affinities. With this man, M. Guyon, and his vulgar, tyrannical mother, who succeeded in alienating first the husband and afterward the children, she lived twelve years in constant suffering. A portion of this suffering she undoubtedly induced or increased, by an undue devotion of her time and affections to formal religion and lonely meditation, to the neglect of domestic duty. But such neglect, besides being provoked and almost forced upon her, was but temporary. She soon saw and corrected the error on her own part. On the other, it was never corrected; and few there are, we apprehend, who could bear this perpetual, galling, and often bitter trial, with greater patience, or a more Christian return of good for evil, than did she until her husband's death. The rest of her life was devoted to the culture and communication of religious affections, with an ever-active benevolence; and during most of this period she was subjected to various forms of obloquy and persecution for opinion's sake. This trial, also, she bore cheerfully and nobly. A more striking instance of the union of gentleness with firmness, patience in hearing and intelligence in answering all questions and cavils, we do not remember. Taking her own exposition of the opinions considered most heretical and dangerous, as in her first remarkable and trying interview with Bossuet, the most powerful ecclesiastic of the age, and the most implacable of enemies, it is impossible not to respect the powers of her intellect, or not to admire the elevation of her spiritual aims. Compare them as we may in learning or in logic, the Bishop of Meaux can boast nothing over his feminine opponent in moral aspiration. It is something, that he who had assailed, and, as was thought by the whole Church, had conquered, the leading reformers and highest theologians, was willing to contend with a woman for days and months, that he joined two other heads of the Church as a commission appointed by the king to examine her, passed no act of condemnation even of her

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Persecution.

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doctrines then, and gave her a paper favorable to her conduct and character, in his own name. This paper Bossuet attempted afterwards to withdraw, instigated and wearied, as he confesses, by her many opposers, and he changed at last into a vindictive and successful foe, both of her and her defender, the high-minded Fenelon.

We attempt not the full enumeration of facts, most of which are probably known to our readers. The place which Madame Guyon occupied in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth; the position she assumed as in some sense a reformer of the Church, to whose service she was always devoted, but whose proneness to formal religion she deplored and declared; the persecutions to which this subjected her, from petty vexations, vulgar abuse, brutal assault, and attempts at poisoning, up to imprisonment by the royal edict in a convent for eight months, afterward repeated, and ending in four years' confinement to the Bastile without favor of any kind, and banishment for the rest of her life to the city of Blois; the sympathy and support which she yet received from very many in common and exalted stations; the concessions which her conduct extorted from her most virulent opposers; the long and able controversies of which she was the occasion, dividing almost equally the dignitaries and judges at Rome, and holding the Pope long in suspense, unwilling to condemn until Louis required it; most of all, the enlightened approval and self-sacrificing fidelity of one of the highest minds and most perfect men that Christianity itself has produced, whose name is now known and revered by millions who never heard of Bossuet, these are some of the facts which clothe this narrative with singular interest. It makes an instructive and melancholy chapter in human story, not the only one, but the more melancholy for that. If it may be taken as a specimen of Christians' treatment of one another, who can wonder that this religion finds obstacles and infidels? What had Madame Guyon said or done, what had Fenelon said or done, that they should be followed by suspicion and malediction, and in the end be visited with all the punishment that a powerful but politic hierarchy dared to inflict?

This is to us the most important point, and the only one on which we can at all enlarge ;—not the fact of persecution only, but the cause; the nature of the offence, and the truth it teaches as to men's views of religion, and their low attainment. Let us look at this for a moment. The boldest and

most exceptionable form in which we find Madame Guyon's views expressed are in the Act of Consecration which the Prioress of the Benedictines drew up for her, and which she signed at the age of twenty-two, in which she pledges herself to be the spouse of Jesus Christ," taking him as her husband, and accepting "as a part of my marriage portion the temptations and sorrows, the crosses and contempt, which fell to him." This is not language that we should use; but it is the language of that Church and age; it is authorized, almost to the letter, by the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testaments; and we see nothing in it to condemn her, more than many others. Again, when Bossuet went to interrogate her, before he brought his terrible power to bear upon the heretic, his chief charge seems to have been, that her doctrines involved the assertion of "an inward experience above the common experience of Christians, even those who have a high reputation for piety"! To his question about her favorite and offensive phrase, the "fixed state," she mildly replied, -"All that is meant by the fixed state is a state which is established, which is comparatively firm, which is based more upon principle than upon feeling, and lives more by faith than by emotion." She was constantly accused of undervaluing, if not scorning, the austerities and mortifications of the Church; but she only insisted, that, while physical sufferings are clearly a part of God's discipline, and highly salutary, they are not to be sought or self-inflicted, but only received as God may appoint them. So in regard to Christ, and the great doctrine of sanctification by faith; the chief and offending difference between her and the Church was, that Christ, when received by faith, "can save not only from the penalty of past sins, but from the polluting and condemning power of present sins; that he has power not only to make us holy, but to keep us holy." In fine, her crime, for which she suffered more than death, was, that she made it practicable, and therefore a duty, to be always "pure," striving to be always "perfect" in faith and love. As she says in the beginning of one of the simple sonnets which she wrote in the prison to which the doctrine doomed her, "Love constitutes my crime." What a crime for a Christian tribunal, and a Bastile !

The life of Madame Guyon was a life of active charity, as well as inward rest. That unfortunate word, Quietism, which images to most minds a state of indolent inaction or