And although the theme is as great as Fate and as serious as Death, one can not suppress a smile to think how the fear of losing their jobs has ever caused men to run violently to and fro and up and down in the earth, crying peace, peace, when there is no peace.

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.