tary,
dreary-looking people, although their faces shone occasionally in the
light of ecstatic visions of heaven and the angels.

But whatever mistakes monasticism made, however repulsive the religious
life of the Middle Ages,--in fact, all its social life,--still it must
be admitted that the aim of the time was high. Men and women were
enslaved by superstitions, but they were not Pagan. Our own age is, in
some respects, more Pagan than were the darkest times of mediaeval
violence and priestly despotism, since we are reviving the very things
against which Christianity protested as dangerous and false,--the
pomps, the banquets, the ornaments, the arts of the old Pagan world.

Now, all this is preliminary to what I have to say of Saint Theresa. We
cannot do justice to this remarkable woman without considering the
sentiments of her day, and those circumstances that controlled her. We
cannot properly estimate her piety--that for which she was made a saint
in the Roman calendar--without being reminded of the different estimate
which Paganism and Christianity placed upon the soul, and consequently
the superior condition of women in our modern times. Nor must we treat
lightly or sneeringly that institution which was certainly one of the
steps by which women rose in the scale both of religious and social
progress. For several ages nuns were the only charitable women, except
queens and princesses, of whom we have record. But they were drawn to
their calm retreats, not merely to serve God more effectually, nor
merely to perform deeds of charity, but to study. As we have elsewhere
said, the convents in those days were schools no less than asylums and
hospitals, and were especially valued for female education. However, in
these retreats religion especially became a passion. There was a fervor
in it which in our times is unknown. It was not a matter of opinion, but
of faith. In these times there may be more wisdom, but in the Middle
Ages there was more zeal and more unselfishness and more intensity,--all
which is illustrated by the sainted woman I propose to speak of.

Saint Theresa was born at Avila, in Castile, in the year 1515, at the
close of the Middle Ages; but she really belonged to the Middle Ages,
since all the habits, customs, and opinions of Spain at that time were
mediaeval. The Reformation never gained a foothold in Spain. None of its
doctrines penetrated that country, still less modified or changed its
religious custo