Santa Teresa

Santa Teresa, by Alexander
Whyte, et al

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Title: Santa Teresa an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of
the Saint's Writings
Author: Alexander Whyte

Release Date: September 5, 2006 [eBook #19185]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SANTA
TERESA***

Transcribed from the 1900 Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier edition by
David Price, email [email protected]

THEODIDACTA
AFFICIENS
INFLAMMANS

Santa Teresa: an Appreciation
With some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings Selected Adapted
and Arranged by Alexander Whyte D.D.
Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier Saint Mary Street, Edinburgh, and 21
Paternoster Square, London 1900
Third Edition Completing 6000 copies
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to her Majesty

APPRECIATION AND INTRODUCTION
With a view to the work of my classes this session, I took old Abraham
Woodhead's two black-letter quartos with me to the Engadine last July.
And I spent every rainy morning and every tired evening of that
memorable holiday month in the society of Santa Teresa and her
excellent old-English translator. Till, ever, as I crossed the Morteratch
and the Roseg, and climbed the hills around Maloggia and Pontresina, a
voice would come after me, saying to me, Why should you not share all
this spiritual profit and intellectual delight with your Sabbath evening
congregations, and with your young men's and young women's classes?
Why should you not introduce Santa Teresa to her daughters in
Edinburgh? For her daughters they are, so soon and as long as they live
in self-knowledge and in self-denial, in humility and in meekness, and
especially in unceasing prayer for themselves and for others. And I am
not without some assurance that in this present lecture I am both
hearing and obeying one of those same locutions that Teresa heard so

frequently, and obeyed with such instancy and fidelity and fruitfulness.
* * * * *
Luther was born in 1483, and he nailed his ninety-five theses to the
door of the University Church of Wittenberg on the 31st October 1517.
Loyola was born in 1491, and Xavier in 1506, and the Society of Jesus
was established in 1534. Isabella the Catholic was born in 1451, and
our own Protestant Elizabeth in 1533. The Spanish Inquisition began to
sit in 1483, the Breviary was finally settled in 1568, and the Armada
was destroyed in 1588. Columbus was born in 1446, and he set out on
his great enterprise in 1492. Cervantes was born in 1547, and the First
Part of his immortal work was published in 1605. And it is to be read in
Santa Teresa's Breviary to this day that Teresa the Sinner was born on
the 29th day of March 1515, at five o'clock in the morning. She died in
1582, and in 1622 she was publicly canonised at Rome along with
Loyola and Xavier and two other Spanish saints.
Teresa was greatly blessed in both her parents. 'It helped me much that
I never saw my father or my mother respect anything in any one but
goodness.' Her father was a great reader of the best books, and he took
great pains that his children should form the same happy habit and
should carefully cultivate the same excellent taste. Her mother, while a
Christian gentlewoman of the first social standing, did not share her
husband's love of serious literature. She passed far too much of her
short lifetime among the romances of the day, till her daughter has to
confess that she took no little harm from the books that did her mother
no harm but pastime to read. As for other things, her father's house was
a perfect model of the very best morals and the very best manners.
Alonso de Cepeda was a well-born and a well-bred Spanish gentleman.
He came of an ancient and an illustrious Castilian stock; and, though
not a rich man, his household enjoyed all the nobility of breeding and
all the culture of mind and all the refinement of taste for which Spain
was so famous in that great age. All her days, and in all her ups and
downs in life, we continually trace back to Teresa's noble birth and
noble upbringing no little of her supreme stateliness of deportment and
serenity of manner and chivalry of character. Teresa was a perfect

Spanish lady, as well as a mother in Israel, and no one who ever
conversed with her could for a moment fail to observe that the