was good enough to say, "This woman may teach primitive Christianity--but
if people find God everywhere, what's to become of us!"

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!