60 OUK HYMNS :
health prevented him" from ministering to her wants. In this illness, which happened to her at the age of twenty-two, her heauty was taken away by small-pox, and she was left disfigured.
These trials brought with them those deep religious expe riences which resulted in her becoming a prominent advocate of quietism a mystic system characterized by the importance it attaches to the peaceful prospei ity of the personal spiritual life, and by the meditative means it takes to promote that prosperity. In order to propagate her views, Madame Guyon travelled for some years, and to aid in her missionary work she wrote books explanatory of her new doctrines and new methods. One of her works was entitled, " A short and easy method of Prayer." It contains her account of the " prayer of silence," in which not only is there no utterance by the voice, but even the mind, instead of turning from one request to another, willingly con centrates its whole energy in the one desire, " Thy will be done." This work was feared by the Romanists, who collected it by hundreds, and burnt it. Another of her principal works was "The Song of Songs, interpreted according to the mystic meaning." She treats the Scripture Book as a conversation between the truly sanctified soul and Christ, and uses it for the unfolding of her own peculiar religious views. Words in the French Bible describing the torrents rising in the hills, sug gested to her the title of one of her most characteristic works. She called it " The Torrents." It is believed to be partly auto biographical, and describes the long and devious course of the soul in its progress towards God.
On her return to Paris in 1686, Madame Guyon s views excited the opposition of the dignitaries of the Romish Church. She was put into a convent, and her confessor, La Combe, was sent to the Bastile. Bossuet especially opposed the new doctrine, seeing in it only a revival of Gnostic heresy. Upham, in his invaluable memoir of Madame Guyon, has preserved a detailed record of the intensely interesting controversial interviews of the pious enthusiast and the powerful logician.
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