The only way to heaven.... by Jeanne Guyon

Jeanne Guyon 1648-1717
Quoted from “Jeanne Guyon An Autobiography”

The only way to heaven is prayer, a prayer of the heart, of which everyone is capable, and not by reasoning, which is the fruit of study, or by exercise of the imagination, which, in filling the mind with wandering objects, rarely settles it; instead of warming the heart with love to God, they leave it cold and languishing. Let the poor come; let the ignorant and carnal come; let the children without reason or knowledge come; let the dull or hard hearts that can retain nothing come to the practice of prayer, and they shall become wise.

Oh you who are great, wise, and rich. Do you not have a heart capable of loving what is proper for you and of hating what is destructive? Love the sovereign good, hate all evil, and you will be truly wise. When you love anyone, is it because you know the reasons of love and its definitions? No, certainly....
None can exempt himself from loving, for none can live without a heart, nor the heart without love.

Why should any amuse themselves in seeking reasons for loving love itself? Let us love without reasoning about it, and we will find ourselves filled with love before the others have learned the reasons that let to it. Make a trial of this love and you will be wiser in it than the most skilled philosophers. In love, as in everything else, experience instructs better than reasoning. Come, then, drink at this Fountain of living waters instead of the broken cisterns of created beings, which, far from allaying your thirst, only tend to continually augment it. IF you could drink once at this Fountain, you would not seek elsewhere for anything to quench your thirst. While you still continue to draw from this Source, you will thrist no longer after the world. But if you quit it, alas! The Enemy has the dominance. He will give you a portion of his poisoned drink, which may have an apparent sweetness, but will assuredly rob you of life.

I forsook the Fountain of living water when I left off prayer. I became like a vineyard exposed to pillage, hedges torn down with liberty for all the passengers to ravage it. I began to seek the creature what I had found in God. He left me to myself, because I first left Him. It was His will, by permitting me to sink into the horrible pit, to make me feel the necessity of approaching Him in prayer.