Santa Teresa | Page 5

the existing monastic system, and
the multiplication and extension of Religious Houses of the strictest,
severest, most secluded, most prayerful, and most saintly life. She had
been told by those she too much trusted, that the Church of Christ was
being torn in pieces in Germany, and in Switzerland, and in France, and
in England by a great outbreak of heretical error; and, while the Society
of Jesus and the Secret Inquisition were established to cope with all
such heresy, Teresa set herself to counteract it by a widespread
combination of unceasing penance and intercessory prayer. It was a
zeal without knowledge; but there can be no doubt about the sincerity,
the single-mindedness, and the strength of the zeal. For forty as

hard-working years as ever any woman spent in this world, Teresa
laboured according to her best light to preserve the purity and the unity
of the Church of Christ. And the strength and the sagacity of mind, the
tact, the business talents, the tenacity of will, the patience, the
endurance, the perseverance, the sleepless watchfulness, and the
abounding prayerfulness that she brought to bear on the reformation
and multiplication of her fortresses of defence and attack in that holy
war, all taken together, make up one of the most remarkable pages in
the whole history of the Church of Christ. Her difficulties with Rome,
with the Inquisition, with her more immediate superiors, confessors,
and censors, and, most of all, with the ignorance, the stupidity, the
laziness, the malice, and the lies of those monks and nuns whose
reformation she was determined on: her endless journeys: her
negotiations with church-leaders, landowners, and tradesmen in
selecting and securing sites, and in erecting new religious houses: the
adventures, the accidents, the entertainments she met with: and the fine
temper, the good humour, the fascinating character, the winning
manners she everywhere exhibited; and, withal, her incomparable faith
in the Living God, and the exquisite inwardness, unconquerable
assurance, and abounding fruitfulness of her own and unshared method
and secret of prayer,--had Teresa not lived and died in Spain, and had
she not spent her life and done her work under the Roman obedience,
her name would have been a household word in Scotland. As it is, she
is not wholly unknown or unloved. And as knowledge extends, and
love, and good-will; and as suspicion, and fear, and retaliation, and
party-spirit die out among us, the truth about Teresa and multitudes
more will become established on clearer and deeper and broader
foundations; and we shall be able to hail both her and multitudes more
like her as our brothers and sisters in Christ, whom hitherto we have
hated and despised because we did not know them, and had been
poisoned against them. I am a conspicuous case in point myself. And
when I have been conquered by a little desultory reading and by a little
effort after love no man need despair. And if you will listen to this
lecture with a good and honest heart: with a heart that delights to hear
all this good report about a fellow-believer: then He who has begun that
good work in you will perfect it by books and by lectures like this, and
far better than this, till you are taken absolutely captive to that charity

which rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth: and which
beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things. Follow after charity, and begin with Santa Teresa.
Forbid it, mighty Love, let no fond hate Of names or words so far
prejudicate; Souls are not Spaniards too; one friendly flood Of baptism
blends them all into one blood. What soul soe'er in any language can
Speak heaven like hers, is my soul's countryman.
But the greatest and the best talent that God gives to any man or
woman in this world is the talent of prayer. And the best usury that any
man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with
them at the end of this world is a life of prayer. And those servants best
put their Lord's money to the exchangers who rise early and sit late, as
long as they are in this world, ever finding out and ever following after
better and better methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret,
more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer: till they
literally pray without ceasing, and till they continually strike out into
new enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrichments.
It was this that first drew me to Teresa. It was her singular originality in
prayer and her complete captivity to prayer. It was the time she spent in
prayer, and the refuge, and the peace, and the sanctification, and the
power for carrying on