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 Master. I
had rather believe every syllable of Teresa's so-staggering locutions and
visions than be left to this, that ever since Paul and John went home to
heaven our Lord's greatest promises have been so many idle words. It is
open to any man to scoff and sneer at Teresa's extraordinary life of
prayer, and at the manifestations of the Father and the Son that were
made to her in her life of prayer, and some of her biographers and
censors among ourselves have made good use of their opportunity. But I
cannot any longer sit with them in the seat of the scorner, and I want
you all to rise up and leave that evil seat also. Lord, how wilt Thou
manifest Thyself in time to come to me? How shall I attain to that faith
and to that love and to that obedience which shall secure to me the long-
withheld presence and indwelling of the Father and the Son?
* * * * *
Teresa's _Autobiography_, properly speaking, is not an autobiography at
all, though it ranks with _The Confessions_, and _The Commedia_, and _The
Grace Abounding_, and _The Reliquiae_, as one of the very best of that
great kind of book.
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