tions may reward it for all the labors undergone in
its life--even were they numberless. Invested with an invincible
courage, filled with an impassioned desire to suffer for its God, the
soul then is seized with a strange torment--that of not being allowed
to suffer enough."[260]

[260] Oeuvres, ii. 320.

Saint Teresa is as emphatic, and much more detailed. You may perhaps
remember a passage I quoted from her in my first lecture.[261] There
are many similar pages in her autobiography. Where in literature is a
more evidently veracious account of the formation of a new centre of
spiritual energy, than is given in her description of the effects of
certain ecstasies which in departing leave the soul upon a higher level
of emotional excitement?

[261] Above, p. 22.

"Often, infirm and wrought upon with dreadful pains before the ecstasy,
the soul emerges from it full of health and admirably disposed for
action ... as if God had willed that the body itself, already obedient
to the soul's desires, should share in the soul's happiness.... The
soul after such a favor is animated with a degree of courage so great
that if at that moment its body should be torn to pieces for the cause
of God, it would feel nothing but the liveliest comfort. Then it is
that promises and heroic resolutions spring up in profusion in us,
soaring desires, horror of the world, and the clear perception of our
proper nothingness.... What empire is comparable to that of a soul
who, from this sublime summit to which God has raised her, sees all the
things of earth beneath her feet, and is captivated by no one of them?
How ashamed she is of her former attachments! How amazed at her
blindness! What lively pity she feels for those whom she recognizes
still shrouded in the darkness! ... She groans at having ever been
sensitive to points of honor, at the illusion that made her ever see as
honor what the world calls by that name. Now she sees in this name
nothing more than an immense lie of which the world remains a victim.
She discovers, in the new light from above, that in genuine honor there
is nothing spurious, that to be faithful to this honor is to give our
respect to what deserves to be respected really, and to consider as
nothing, or as less than nothing, whatsoever perishes and is not
agreeable to God.... She laughs when she sees grave persons, persons of
orison, caring for points of honor for which she now feels profoundest
contempt. I