Page:Life and life-work of Mother Theodore Guerin Foundress.djvu/19

Rh views of the Foundress, her schemes and her methods. To pronounced ability she brought the results of great care and diligence; and when were added the fruits of experience, together with that special keenness of perception consequent upon a life of deep union with God, and "exercising the spirit," as St. Peter says, there was laid the foundation of a pedagogy which to-day is neither antiquated nor insufficient. The whole system that makes the order of Providence so successful as an educational institution is attributed, and justly, to the sagacious Mother Foundress, present contingencies developing, not changing, her plans.

It was the high conception she had formed of the dignity of a religious teacher that gave to her life-work the perfection it assumed. To be identified with God's work in the salvation of souls and the betterment of mankind was her holy ambition; she required no other motive for the exercise of her zeal, no other recompense than to spend and to be spent.

In deploring the scarcity of vocations to the religious life when the field was so vast and the laborers so few, we observe that the cause she assigned was the same that to-day holds back so many nobly gifted young men and women from responding to the call of the divine Master. Appeal to the religious impulses of nature is hushed by irresistible pleasure-seeking, softness, and love of one's ease, which incapacitate souls for anything approaching the valorous in self-sacrifice; strangers to the arbitrament of virtue, their lives are as aimless as useless.