earthly passions and desires. Faith presented
them with no problems; all such questions had been settled once for
all by Holy Church. They were ascetics first and Church Reformers
next; neither of them was a typical mystic.[295]

The life of St. Teresa[296] is more interesting than her teaching. She
had all the best qualities of her noble Castilian ancestors--
simplicity, straightforwardness, and dauntless courage; and the record
of her self-denying life is enlivened by numerous flashes of humour,
which make her character more lovable. She is best known as a visionary,
and it is mainly through her visions that she is often regarded as one
of the most representative mystics. But these visions do not occupy a
very large space in the story of her life. They were frequent during the
first two or three years of her convent life, and again between the ages
of forty and fifty: there was a long gap between the two periods, and
during the last twenty years of her life, when she was actively engaged
in founding and visiting religious houses, she saw them no more. This
experience was that of many other saints of the cloister. Spiritual
consolations seem to be frequently granted to encourage young
beginners;[297] then they are withdrawn, and only recovered after a long
period of dryness and darkness; but in later life, when the character is
fixed, and the imagination less active, the vision fades into the light
of common day. In considering St. Teresa's visions, we must remember
that she was transparently honest and sincere; that her superiors
strongly disliked and suspected, and her enemies ridiculed, her
spiritual privileges; that at the same time they brought her great fame
and influence; that she was at times haunted by doubts whether she ever
really saw them; and, lastly, that her biographers have given them a
more grotesque and materialistic character than is justified by her own
descriptions.

She tells us herself that her reading of St. Augustine's
_Confessions_, at the age of forty-one, was a turning-point in her
life. "When I came to his conversion," she says, "and read how he
heard the voice in the garden, it was just as if the Lord called me."
It was after this that she began again to see visions--or rather to
have a sudden sense of the presence of God, with a suspension of all
the faculties. In these trances she generally heard Divine
"locutions." She says that "the words were very clearly formed, and
unmistakable, t