37. This, I believe, must have been the reason why some of the Saints withdrew into the desert. And it is a kind of humility in man not to trust to himself, but to believe that God will help him in his relations with those with whom he converses; and charity grows by being diffused; and there are a thousand blessings herein which I would not dare to speak of, if I had not known by experience the great importance of it. It is very true that I am the most wicked and the basest of all who are born of women; but I believe that he who, humbling himself, though strong, yet trusteth not in himself, and believeth another who in this matter has had experience, will lose nothing. Of myself I may say that, if our Lord had not revealed to me this truth, and given me the opportunity of speaking very frequently to persons given to prayer, I should have gone on falling and rising till I tumbled into hell. I had many friends to help me to fall; but as to rising again, I was so much left to myself, that I wonder now I was not always on the ground. I praise God for His mercy; for it was He only Who stretched out His hand to me. May He be blessed for ever! Amen. 1. See Way of Perfection, ch. xl.; but ch. xxvii. of the former editions. 2. See Relation, i. § 18. 3. A.D. 1537, when the Saint was twenty-two years old (Bouix). This passage, therefore, must be one of the additions to the second Life; for the first was written in 1562, twenty-five years only after the vision. 4. See ch. xxvii. § 3. 5. In the parlour of the monastery of the Incarnation, Avila, a painting of this is preserved to this day (De la Fuente). 6. Ch. vi. § 4. 7. See Inner Fortress, v. iii. § 1. 8. Ch. i. § i. 9. Ch. xix. §§ 9, 17. 10. See § 2, above. 11. See ch. xi. § 23: Inner Fortress, vi. i. § 8. 12. § 16. 13. See Inner Fortress, v. iii. § 1. 14. In 1541, when the Saint was twenty-five years of age (Bouix). 15. F. Vicente Barron (Reforma, lib. i. ch. xv.). 16. See ch. xxxviii. § 1. 17. See ch. xix. § 19. 18. The Spanish editor calls attention to this as a proof of great laxity in those days--that a nun like St. Teresa should be urged to communicate as often as once in a fortnight. 19. See ch. xiii. §§ 7, 8. Chapter VIII. The Saint Ceases Not to Pray. Prayer the Way to Recover What Is Lost. All Exhorted to Pray. The Great Advantage of Prayer, Even to Those Who May Have Ceased from It.