Page:Life and life-work of Mother Theodore Guerin Foundress.djvu/15

Rh dissolution. When holy traditions lapse into desuetude the written word becomes the only safeguard; this makes the value of a history or a biography apparent.

In no better way can an insight of character be gained than by letters. A large number written by the Mother Foundress are here produced. They are all characteristic, many of them very remarkable. These, with her conferences, constitute an expository of sound doctrine, solid and practical, that may justly be considered a basis for the highest spirituality.

The narrative taken in its entirety reveals to us a woman of uncommon valor, one of those religious athletes whose life and teachings effect a spiritual fecundity that secures vast conquests to Christ and His holy Church. It is a beautiful and forcible setting of those sublime truths that underlie the eternal plan of creation and establish the relationship that should exist between the Sovereign Maker and the creature fashioned by His word; showing clearly how Providence is just and holy in wise dispensation, man often perverse in selfish conceit. It proves that the arm of the Lord is not shortened; that the gift of God abideth with the just, whose advancement shall have success forever. It shows the capabilities of strong living faith: If you have faith, said the Divine Teacher, even as a grain of mustard-seed, you shall remove mountains.

It shows the sustaining powers of resigned hope: They that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength;