t
love--fell in with some of her own favorite views of the Christian
life. In the study of Fenelon, as of Madame Guyon, her aim was a purely
practical one; it was not to establish, or verify, a theory, but to get
aid and comfort in her daily course heavenward. What Fenelon was to her
in this respect she has herself recorded in the following lines, found,
after her death, written on a blank page of her "Spiritual Progress":

Oh wise and thoughtful words! oh counsel sweet,
Guide in my wanderings, spurs unto my feet,
How often you have met me on the way,
And turned me from the path that led astray;
Teaching that fault and folly, sin and fall,
Need not the weary pilgrim's heart appall;
Yea more, instructing how to snatch the sting
From timid conscience, how to stretch the wing
From the low plane, the level dead of sin,
And mount immortal, mystic joys to win.
One hour with Jesus! How its peace outweighs
The ravishment of earthly love and praise;
How dearer far, emptied of self to lie
Low at His feet, and catch, perchance, His eye,
Alike content when He may give or take,
The sweet, the bitter, welcome for His sake!

[1] John Wesley, after having pointed out what he considered the
grand source of all her mistakes; namely, the being guided by inward
impressions and the light of her own spirit rather than by the written
Word, and also her error in teaching that God never purifies a soul but
by inward and outward suffering--then adds: "And yet with all this dross
how much pure gold is mixed! So did God wink at involuntary ignorance.
What a depth of religion did she enjoy! How much of the mind that was in
Christ Jesus! What heights of righteousness, and peace, and joy in the
Holy Ghost! How few such instances do we find of exalted love to God,
and our neighbor; of genuine humility; of invincible meekness and
unbounded resignation! So that, upon the whole, I know not whether we
may not search many centuries to find another woman who was such a
pattern of true holiness."

[2] See the lines MY CUP RUNNETH OVER, _Golden Hours_, p. 43.

[3] "I know of no book, the Bible excepted as above all comparison,
which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely
recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to
the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is, in
my conviction, incomparably the best _summa theologiae evangelicae_ ever
produced by