14 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



of static religion. Had they published a manifesto it might have waited 

 till our own day before getting the stamp of Nihil ohstat. Imprimatur. 

 Protestants might suppose this privilege would never have been granted 

 at all. But let them look at The Priest's Studies of Dr. Scannell, which 

 actually recommends works based on the theory of evolution as applied 

 to theology, and which passed the censor witli flying colours in the very 

 year of the " Modernist " Encyclical. 



And so this most human of saintly women died at thirty-three, the 

 very age of Christ, heart-broken at having failed in her Church-and- 

 State reform ; but leaving an example of mediating service between God 

 and man that will quicken individual effort to the end of time. 



St. Theresa's worldly circumstances were entirely different. She 

 was bom in 1515, of aristocratic family, at Avila, in gallant, proud, 

 sententious Old Castile. As a child she had the true Don Quixote 

 love of books about knight errantry. At seventeen she was a pretty 

 débutante; and doubtless spoke the language of mantilla, fan and eyes 

 as well as others of her sex and people. Even when she entered the local 

 Carmelite convent of the Incarnation, she a^cquiesced, though with 

 qualms of conscience, in. tlie rather worldly intercourse that went 

 on there. " For twenty years I was tossed about on a stormy sea in a 

 wretched condition; for, if I had small contentment in the world, in 

 God I had no pleasure. At prayers I watched the clock to see it strike 

 the end of the hour. To go to the oratory was a vexation, and prayer 

 itself a constant effort." It was only in her fortieth year, after her 

 father's death, that the sight of her Saviour's woomds struck her so 

 intensely that she fell in tears before the crucifix, while every worldly 

 emotion died within her. In vision she saw herself as a clear but form- 

 less mirror, which shone with the inner light of Christ. She felt his 

 bodily presence so constantly that she named herself Theresa of Jesus. 

 An angel then appeared and pierced her heart with a fire-tipped lance; 

 a mystic act whijch became a favourite subject with religious artists, and 

 is still represented in the frontispiece of aU her books of devotion. She 

 immediately began reforming the Carmelite practice, and, of course, met 

 with strong opposition. Finally, in 1562, she opened a little house of 

 her own in Avila, with four poor women living under the strictest rule. 

 Here she spent her five happiest years, following every self-denying pre- 

 cept, and writing her immortal works. Philip II. valued her manuscripts 

 60 highly that he kept them in the richest cabinet in the Escorial and 

 always carried the key about his person. She died in 1582, and was 

 canonized by Pope Gregory XV. forty years later. 



There are many curious links, historical and psychological, connect- 

 ing these three saintly women with each other and with their religious 



