The life of Sister Theresa of Lisieux, better known now perhaps as the Little Flower of Jesus, has a special interest of its own. These are days of a general disbelief in, or disregard of the super natural, and we, who have to move about the world, can hardly fail if we do not take care, to be more or less infected by the poisonous atmosphere which we have to breathe. Against this peril we have to guard our souls and hearts by every means in our power. To be reminded, as we are so vividly in this life that Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, with the Angels and Saints are ever at hand and that a simple soul devoted to God, can be in constant and easy communication with them, is a great and useful grace. The main difference between the prosaic days in which we live and the Ages of Faith, before the spirit of scientific scepticism had seized upon the world, lies, I think, principally in the fact, that to the people of those days — even to those indeed, who did not live up to their Own ideals — heaven and the super natural world was not even, so to speak, next door; it was an ever present reality to the Christian mind and was as certain and as true, as was the natural World of the senses. There was nothing strained in this mental attitude in days when God reigned in the hearts of men generally and when the notion that man could do without religion was rare if not wholly unknown. Of course there were men and women then as always, who led lives inconsistent with their professions but they, living as they were in thesuper natural atmosphere of those times — an atmosphere which, if I may so express it, gave a singular beauty to faith, as the sun's rays give the bloom to the peach or the plum — were out of joint with their surroundings. There can be no doubt that the vast majority of Christians in those arcadian days brought God into their lives. He was an ever present reality to them and they lived with the Angels and the Saints and looked to our Blessed Mother for help and protection, and turned to her as naturally as they would to their earthly fathers and mothers.
