s an extraordinary woman in every way: and that
comes out on every page of her Autobiography. So extraordinary that I
confess there is a great deal that she tells us about herself that I do
not at all understand. She was Spanish, and we are Scottish. She and we
are wide as the poles asunder. Her lot was cast of God in the sixteenth
century, whereas our lot is cast in the nineteenth. She was a Roman
Catholic mystic, and we are Evangelical Protestants. But it is one of
the great rewards of studying such a life as Teresa's to be able to
change places with her so as to understand her and love her. She was,
without any doubt or contradiction, a great saint of God. And a great
saint of God is more worthy of our study and admiration and imitation and
love than any other study or admiration or imitation or love on the face
of the earth. And the further away such a saint is from us the better
she is for our study and admiration and imitation and love, if we only
have the sense and the grace to see it.

Cervantes himself might have written Teresa's _Book of the Foundations_.
Certainly he never wrote a better book. For myself I have read Teresa's
_Foundations_ twice at any rate for every once I have read Cervantes'
masterpiece. For literature, for humour, for wit, for nature, for
photographic pictures of the time and the people, her _Foundations_ are a
masterpiece also: and then, Teresa's pictures are pictures of the best
people in Spain. And there was no finer people in the whole of
Christendom in that day than the best of the Spanish people. God had
much people in the Spain of that day, and he who is not glad to hear that
will never have a place among them. The Spain of that century was full
of family life of the most polished and refined kind. And, with all
their declensions and corruptions, the Religious Houses of Spain enclosed
multitudes of the most saintly men and women. 'I never read of a
hermit,' said Dr. Johnson to Boswell in St. Andrews, 'but in imagination
I kiss his feet: I never read of a monastery, but I could fall on my
knees and kiss the pavement. I have thought of retiring myself, and have
talked of it to a friend, but I find my vocation is rather in active
life.' It was such monasteries as Teresa founded and ruled and wrote the
history of that made such a sturdy Protestant as Dr. Johnson was say such
a thing as that. _The Book of the Foundations_ is Teresa's own account,
written also under supe