Teresa was an extraordinarily
handsome and attractive young lady, and the knowledge of that, as she
tells us, made her very vain, and puffed up her heart with foolish
imaginations. She has a powerful chapter in the opening of her
Autobiography on dangerous companionships in the days of youth. 'Oh that
all parents would take warning by me, and would look carefully into their
children's early friendships!' She suffered terribly from bad health all
her days, and that severe chastisement began to fall on her while she was
yet a beautiful girl. It was a succession of serious illnesses, taken
along with her father's scrupulous care over her, that brought Teresa
back to the simple piety of her early childhood, and fixed her for life
in an extraordinary devotion to God, and to all the things of God. When
such a change of heart and character comes to a young woman among
ourselves, she usually seeks out some career of religion and charity to
which she can devote her life. She is found labouring among the poor and
the sick and the children of the poor, or she goes abroad to foreign
mission work.
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