Madame Guyon

Now, it was the denunciation and wild demonstration of her fearing foes that advertised the labors of Madame Guyon. For strong people are not so much advertised by their loving friends as by their rabid enemies.

This happened quite a while ago; but as mankind moves in a circle (and not always a spiral, either) it might have happened yesterday. Make the scene Ohio: slip Bossuet out and Doctor Buckley in; condense the virtues of Miss Frances E. Willard and Miss Susan B. Anthony into one, and let this one stand for Madame Guyon; call it New Transcendentalism, dub the Madame a New Woman, and there you have it!

But with this difference: petitions to the President of the United States to arrest this female offender and shut her up in the Chicago jail, indefinitely, after a mock trial, would avail not. Yet persecution has its compensation, and the treatment that Madame Guyon received emphasized the truths she taught and sent them ringing through the schools and salons and wherever thinking people gathered themselves together. Yes, persecution has its compensation. In its state of persecution a religion is pure, if ever; its decline begins when its prosperity commences. Prosperous men are never wise and seldom good. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!

Surely, persecution has its compensation! When Madame Guyon was sick and in prison, was she not visited by Fenelon? Ah, 'twas worth the cost. Sympathy is the first attribute of love as well as its last. And I am not sure but that sympathy is love's own self, vitalized mayhap by some divine actinic ray. Only a thorn-crowned, bleeding Christ could win the adoration of the world. Only the souls who have suffered are well loved. Thus does Golgotha find its recompense. Hark ye and take courage, ye who are in bonds! Gracious spirits, seen or unseen, will minister to you now, where otherwise they would have passed without a sign! But from the day Fenelon met Madame Guyon his fortune began to decline. People looked at him askance. By a grim chance he was made one of a committee of three to investigate the charges brought against the woman. The court took a year for its task. Fenelon read everything that Madame Guyon had published, conversed much with her, inquired into her history and when asked for his verdict said, "I find no fault in her."

He talked with Madame de Maintenon, and Madame de Maintenon talked with the King, and the offender was released.

Soon Fenelon began to utter in his sermons the truths he had learned from Madame Guyon. And he gave her due credit. He explained that she was a good Catholic—that she loved the Church—that she lived up to all the Church taught, and besides knowing all that Churchmen knew she knew many things beside.

Have a care, Archbishop of Cambrai! Enemies are upon thy track. Defend not defenseless womanhood: knowest thou not what they have said of her? Speak what thou art taught and keep thy inmost thoughts for thyself alone. Have a care, Fenelon! thy bishopric hangs by a spider's thread.

The years kept slipping past as the years will. Twelve summers had come, and twelve times had autumn leaves known their time to fall. Madame Guyon was again in prison. A stranger was Archbishop of Cambrai: Fenelon no longer a counselor of kings—a tutor of royalty. His voice was silenced, his pen chained. He was allowed to retire to a rural parish. There he lived with the peasants—revered, beloved. The country where he dwelt was battle-scarred and bleeding; the smoke of devastation still hung over it. Not a family but had been robbed of its best. Death had stalked rampant. Fenelon shared the poverty of the people, their lowliness, their sorrows. All the tragedy of their life was his; he said to them, "I know, I know!"

Twelve years of Madame Guyon's life were spent in prison. Toward the last she was allowed to live in nominal freedom. But despotism, with savage leer and stealthy step, saw that Fenelon was kept far away. In those declining days, when the shadows were lengthening toward the east, her time and talents were given to teaching the simple rudiments of knowledge to the peasantry, to alleviating their material wants and to ministering to the sick. It was a forced retirement, and yet it was a retirement that was in every way in accord with her desires. But in spite of the persecution that followed her, and the obloquy heaped upon her name, and the bribe of pardon if she would but recant, she never retracted nor wavered in her inward or outward faith, even in the estimation of a hair. The firm reticence as to the supreme secrets of her life, and her steadfast loyalty to that which she honestly believed was truth, must ever command the affectionate admiration of all those who prize integrity of mind and purity of purpose, who hold fast to the divinity of love, and who believe in the things unseen which are eternal.

The town of Montargis is one day's bicycle journey from Paris. As for the road, though one be a wayfaring man and from the States he could not err therein. You simply follow the Seine as if you were intent on discovering its source, keeping to the beautiful highway that follows the winding stream. And what a beautiful, clear, clean bit of water it is! In Paris, your washerwoman takes your linen to the river, just as they did in the days of Pharaoh, and the bundle comes back sweet as the breath of June. Imagine the result of such recklessness in Chicago!

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