She
is the geographer and hydrographer of the sinful soul. She has drawn the
map of its poles, marked its latitudes of contemplation and prayer, and
laid out all the interior seas and lands of the human heart. Other
saints have been among those heights and depths and deserts before her,
but no one has left us so methodical and so scientific a survey.' Were
it for nothing else, the chapters on mystical literature in M. Huysmans'
unfinished trilogy would make it a valued possession to every student of
the soul of man under sin and under salvation. I await the completion of
his Pilgrim's Progress with great impatience and with great expectation.
And then, absolutely possessed as Teresa always is by the most solemn
subjects,--herself, her sin, her Saviour, her original method of prayer
and her unshared experiences in prayer,--she showers upon us continually
gleams and glances of the sunniest merriment, amid all her sighs and
tears. She roasts in caustic the gross-minded, and the self-satisfied,
and the self-righteous, as Socrates himself never roasted them better.
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