eemed immediately to reply: Yes, a thousand years, and a thousand in
horror, if it be most for the honor of God, the torment of my body
being so great, awful, and overwhelming that none could bear to live in
the country where the spectacle was seen, and the torment of my mind
being vastly greater. And it seemed to me that I found a perfect
willingness, quietness, and alacrity of soul in consenting that it
should be so, if it were most for the glory of God, so that there was
no hesitation, doubt, or darkness in my mind. The glory of God seemed
to overcome me and swallow me up, and every conceivable suffering, and
everything that was terrible to my nature, seemed to shrink to nothing
before it. This resignation continued in its clearness and brightness
the rest of the night, and all the next day, and the night following,
and on Monday in the forenoon, without interruption or abatement."[160]

[159] Compare Madame Guyon: "It was my practice to arise at midnight
for purposes of devotion.... It seemed to me that God came at the
precise time and woke me from sleep in order that I might enjoy him.
When I was out of health or greatly fatigued, he did not awake me, but
at such times I felt, even in my sleep, a singular possession of God.
He loved me so much that he seemed to pervade my being, at a time when
I could be only imperfectly conscious of his presence. My sleep is
sometimes broken--a sort of half sleep; but my soul seems to be awake
enough to know God, when it is hardly capable of knowing anything
else." T. C. Upham: The Life and Religious Experiences of Madame de
la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, vol. i. p. 260.

[160] I have considerably abridged the words of the original, which is
given in Edwards's Narrative of the Revival in New England.

The annals of Catholic saintship abound in records as ecstatic or more
ecstatic than this. "Often the assaults of the divine love," it is
said of the Sister Seraphique de la Martiniere, "reduced her almost to
the point of death. She used tenderly to complain of this to God. 'I
cannot support it,' she used to say.

'Bear gently with my weakness, or I shall expire under the violence of
your love.'"[161]

[161] Bougaud: Hist. de la Bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, 1894, p. 125.

Let me pass next to the Charity and Brotherly Love which are a usual
fruit of saintliness, and have always been reckoned essential
theological virtues, however limited may have been the k