when I have been conquered by a little desultory reading and by a little effort after love no man need despair. And if you will listen to this lecture with a good and honest heart: with a heart that delights to hear all this good report about a fellow-believer: then He who has begun that good work in you will perfect it by books and by lectures like this, and far better than this, till you are taken absolutely captive to that charity which rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth: and which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Follow after charity, and begin with Santa Teresa. Forbid it, mighty Love, let no fond hate Of names or words so far prejudicate; Souls are not Spaniards too; one friendly flood Of baptism blends them all into one blood. What soul soe'er in any language can Speak heaven like hers, is my soul's countryman. But the greatest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer. And the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer. And those servants best put their Lord's money to the exchangers who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding out and ever following after better and better methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer: till they literally pray without ceasing, and till they continually strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrichments. It was this that first drew me to Teresa. It was her singular originality in prayer and her complete captivity to prayer. It was the time she spent in prayer, and the refuge, and the peace, and the sanctification, and the power for carrying on hard and unrequited work that she all her life found in prayer. It was her fidelity and her utter surrender of herself to this first and last of all her religious duties, till it became more a delight, and, indeed, more an indulgence, than a duty. With Teresa it was prayer first, and prayer last, and prayer always. With Teresa literally all things were sanctified, and sweetened, and made fruitful by prayer. In Teresa's writings prayer holds much the same place that it holds in the best men and women of Holy Scripture. If I were to say that about some of the ladies of the Scottish Covenant, you would easily believe me. But you must believe me when I tell you that about a Spanish lady, second to none of them in holiness of life, even if her holy life is not all cast in our mould. All who have read the autobiographic _Apologia_ will remember the fine passage in which its author tells us that ever since his conversion there have been two, and only two, absolutely self-luminous beings in the whole universe of being to him,--God and his own soul. Now, I do not remember that Newman even