Teresa's 'locutions'
and revelations; but after anxiously weighing them all, the simplest
explanation is also the most scientific, as it is the most scriptural. If
our ascending Lord actually said what He is reported to have said about
the way that He and His Father will always reward all love to Him, and
the keeping of all His commandments; then, if there is anything true
about Teresa at all, it is this, that from the day of her full conversion
she lived with all her might that very life which has all these
transcendent promises spoken and sealed to it. By her life of faith and
prayer and personal holiness, Teresa made herself 'capable of God,' as
one describes it, and God came to her and filled her with Himself to her
utmost capacity, as He said He would. At the same time, much as I trust
and honour and love Teresa, and much good as she has been made of God to
me, she was still, at her best, but an imperfectly sanctified woman, and
her rewards and experiences were correspondingly imperfect. But if a
holy life before such manifestations were made to her, and a still holier
life after them--if that is any test of the truth and reality of such
transcendent and supernatural matters,--on her own humble and adoring
testimony, and on the now extorted and now spontaneous testimony of
absolutely all who lived near her, still more humility, meekness, lowly-
mindedness, heavenly-mindedness and prayerfulness demonstrably followed
those inward and spiritual revelations to her of her Lord. In short and
in sure, ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles? On the whole, then, I for one am strongly
disposed toward Teresa, even in the much-inculpated matter of her inward
voices and visions. The wish may very possibly be father to the thought:
but my thought leans to Teresa, even in her most astounding locutions and
revelations; they answer so entirely to my reading of our Lord and of His
words. I take sides, on the whole, with those theologians of her day,
who began by doubting, but ended by believing in Teresa and by imitating
her. They were led to rejoice that any contemporary and fellow-sinner
had attained to such fellowship with God: and I am constrained to take
sides with them. 'One day, in prayer, the sweetness was so great that I
could not but contrast it with the place I deserved in hell. The
sweetness and the light and the peace were so great that, compared with
it, every