Page:Saint Theresa of Avila (Gilman 1889).djvu/23

Rh were realities impressed on the minds of that sensuous, pleasure-loving Spanish people in a way we can hardly conceive to-day. The feeling which drove so many men and women to seek a cloistered life or a martyr’s death in that century was not very exalted, but it was very intense. To them, earthly joys seemed paltry and short-lived beside the never-ending joys they were told awaited them in eternity. In its ultimate analysis, the feeling was selfish and calculating; but the strange thing to understand in our materialistic and sceptical age is the power those unseen, unproven pains and pleasures had over that unspiritual people. The God of the Spanish Catholic, however cruel and anthropomorphic he may have been, was a present God, a real Being to even the children of that day; we find the young Theresa stealing away to tell her beads and recite her various prayers, and at a very early age expressing a wish to be either a saint or a nun. However, just as a boy playing with his toyboats longs to be a sailor, but forgets his wish as soon as he tires of his game, so Theresa, as