e, and
were totally unfitted to take part in the outer, or so-called
practical life.

Such, for example, was Saint Teresa, of whom William James, in his
"Varieties of Religious Experience," says: "Her idea of religion seems
to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation--if one may say so
without irreverence--between the devotee and the Deity." Although this
estimate of St. Theresa's saintliness will doubtless be shocking to
the people who think they are pious, we take an optimistic view of it,
and suggest that the saint's idea of religion is far more satisfying
than that usually presented as saintliness. St. Theresa, like most of
the female saints, became "the bride of Christ"--the _man_ Jesus, the
Christ, let it be remembered.

St. Gertrude, a Benedictine nun of the Thirteenth Century, gave
herself up so wholly to this inward contemplation; to fasting, prayer,
and withdrawal from the outer to the inner life, that she lived as the
"bride of God," in such daily contact with Him as would fitly describe
any love-mated honeymoon of today. According to her testimony "God"
indulged in such language and caresses, and intimacies, kisses and
compliments as would satisfy any woman married to her ideal lover.

In the case of St. Louis of Gonzaga, it is significant that he
selected the Virgin Mary as the object of his adoration and
"consecrated to her, his own virginity;" and we read how "burning with
love, he made his vow of perpetual chastity." In consequence of this
vow, he was never tempted as was St. Anthony, by visions of beautiful
women.

Here again we have the love of the male for the female. If it were not
so, St. Louis may well have chosen Jesus, or Joseph, or John, as the
object of his devotional contemplation; and St. Catherine, and
Theresa, and Mechthild might have paid their homage to the Virgin
Mary.

"Jeanne of the Cross" held constant converse with her guardian angel,
who by the way was a beautiful youth, "more brilliant than the sun and
with a crown of glory on his head."

St. Frances was inseparable from her angel, whom she loved with
extravagant and blissful devotion, and whom she also described as "a
young man of such radiant beauty and purity that he melted her soul."

The truth is that, in seeking to escape from the "sin" of human love,
as seen in the world, in the union of the sexes, they touched the very
main-spring of their sex-nature, intensifying to a degree unknown to
the merely sense-con