The story of St. Teresa of Lisicux must be almost unique in the history of the saints. She was not quite twenty-five years old when she died, on September 30th, 1897, having been a nun for just over nine years, and many who, when she was born, were already older than she was to be when she died, lived to see her name enrolled among the saints. Indeed, her whole history from her birth to her canonization lies well within the lifetime of countless persons now living who would by no means willingly consider themselves old. This, remembering the traditional slowness of the Church in according her official recognition to the heroic sanctity of any individual, would have been remarkable enough had the stage of Teresa's life been set in public view : had she been a path-breaker in some region of active spiritual or social work: or had she been a martyr, an apostle, or a foundress. But her life, as to three fifths of it, was spent entirely within the narrow shelter of a provincial home of the petite bourgeoisie: and as to the remainder, in the virtual obliteration of a Carmelite cloister. Still more remarkable in these circumstances is the fact that canonization may verily be said to have been conferred upon her by publican Lunation even before the Church had set her seal to it. This inversion of the accustomed order of things has happened before, but then the subject of it has always (as one should expect) been one who in lifetime had already taken the public eye—one need go no further back for an example than to the Cure d'Ars or to St. Benedict Joseph Labre.