hem 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 hard and unrequited work that she all her
life found in prayer. It was her fidelity and her utter surrender of
herself to this first and last of all her religious duties, till it
became more a delight, and, indeed, more an indulgence, than a duty. With
Teresa it was prayer first, and prayer last, and prayer always. With
Teresa literally all things were sanctified, and sweetened, and made
fruitful by prayer. In Teresa's writings prayer holds much the same
place that it holds in the best men and women of Holy Scripture. If I
were to say that about some of the ladies of the Scottish Covenant, you
would easily believe me. But you must believe me when I tell you that
about a Spanish lady, second to none of them in holiness of life, even if
her holy life is not all cast in our mould. All who have read the
autobiographic _Apologia_ will remember the fine passage in which its
author tells us that ever since his conversion there have been two, and
only two, absolutely self-luminous beings in the whole universe of being
to him,--God and his own soul. Now, I do not remember that Newman even
once speaks about Teresa in any of his books, but I always think of him
and her together in this great respect. GOD is to them both, and to them
both He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. And it is just
here, at the very commencement and centre of divine things, that we