thing in this world is vanity and lies. I was filled with a new
reverence for God. I saw His majesty and His power in a way I cannot
describe, and the vision kept me in great tenderness and joy and
humility. I cannot help making much of that which led me so near to God.
I knew at that great moment what it is for a soul to be in the very
presence of God Himself. What must be the condescension of His majesty
seeing that in so short a time He left so great an impression and so
great a blessing on my soul! O my Lord, consider who she is upon whom
Thou art bestowing such unheard-of blessings! Dost Thou forget that my
soul has been an abyss of sin? How is this, O Lord, how can it be that
such great grace has come to the lot of one who has so ill deserved such
things at Thy hands!' He who can read that, and a hundred passages as
good as that, and who shall straightway set himself to sneer and scoff
and disparage and find fault, he is well on the way to the sin against
the Holy Ghost. At any rate, I would be if I did not revere and love and
imitate such a saint of God. Given God and His Son and His Holy Spirit:
given sin and salvation and prayer and a holy life; and, with many
drawbacks, Teresa's was just the life of self-denial and repentance and
prayer and communion with God that we should all live. It is not Teresa
who is to be bemoaned and blamed and called bad names. It is we who do
all that to her who are beside ourselves. It is we who need the beam to
be taken out of our own eye. Teresa was a mystery and an offence; and,
again, an encouragement and an example to the theologians and the
inquisitors of her day just as she still is in our day. She was a
stumbling-stone, or an ensample, according to the temper and disposition
and character of her contemporaries, and she is the same to-day.

The pressing question with me is not the truth or the falsehood, the
amount of reality or the amount of imagination in Teresa's locutions and
visions. The pressing question with me is this,--Why it is that I have
nothing to show to myself at all like them. I think I could die for the
truth of my Lord's promise that both He and His Father will manifest
Themselves to those who love Him and keep His words; but He never
manifests Himself, to be called manifestation, to me. I am driven in
sheer desperation to believe such testimonies and attainments as those of
Teresa, if only to support my failing faith in the words of my Mast