Page:Life and life-work of Mother Theodore Guerin Foundress.djvu/14

xiv the record of grace triumphant, human nature rising to the sublime heights of moral grandeur, we read convincing tales of our own delinquencies, unmistakable defection, cowardice, or desertion from the high standard of rectitude.

This is wholesome food for heart and mind, and we gratefully welcome each new accession to the long and honorable line of heroes and heroines whose biographies edify us and by happy art draw us on to the appreciation of those better things that made their lives exemplars and incentives.

Sacred literature now receives a valuable contribution in the life of Mother Theodore Guérin, Foundress of the Sisters of Providence at St.-Mary-of-the- Woods, Vigo County, Indiana. Little has hitherto been known of her magnificent institution; its early history, therefore, will undoubtedly claim a large number of interested readers.

Apart from the historical value of such a work, it is a most praiseworthy action on the part of the spiritual daughters of their venerated Mother Theodore to have collected and published her letters and sayings. It tells of their loyalty. It tells of their reverence. It tells of their desire to perpetuate her spirit, revealed in her words, her acts, her plans and measures, according as each is here presented. As long as the spirit of an order is maintained, its vital force continues and increases; but when modifications affecting essentials are suffered, when the craft drifts away from the early moorings of self-denying and God-seeking principles, no matter what the apparent expansion may be, disappointing results follow, deterioration, and, finally,