REVEREND HER, The Holy her has confided to me the agreeable mission of conveying to you his warm and sincere
thanks for the remarkable treatise on Mystical Theology entitled: Les Graces d'Oraison, the fifth edition of which you
have just published. His Holiness is rejoiced at the fruitful result of your long years of study, spent in observing the
ways of grace in souls aspiring to perfection. He is happy to see that now, thanks to you, directors of consciences
possess a work of great worth and high utility. You not only rely upon the incontestable doctrine of the olel masters
who have treated this very difficult subject, but you present these teachings, which constitute your authorities, under
the form that our age requires. While wishing your work a great success and abundant spiritual fruits, His Holiness
grants to your Paternity the Apostolic Benediction. In acquainting you with this favour, I am happy to assure you of the
sentiments of high esteem with which I am, Yours very affectionately in the Lord, CARDINAL MERRY DEL VAL. ROME, April 2,
1907. her Poulain's book is an example of modern scientific methods applied to a subject-mysticism-which critics
outside the Church commonly regard as a mere form of brain-weakness peculiar to pious persons, and over which even
Catholics are sometimes apt to shake their heads. Is there to be found in the interior life of devout souls, in their
intercourse with their Maker, a life more still-a secret door opening into a world still further withdrawn from
sense, where very few may enter, but where the chosen ones have a and ieeling of God, and enjoy His presence not
less, but more really than we apprehend objects with our bodily senses? This is clearly a question of no little
importance, and one which should not be without interest for a day like our own when we hear so much of Occultism and
Theosophy and Spiritualism in its different branches-all of them attempts in their own way to pass material bounds and
explore the region beyond. Pere Poulain's book is much more than an examination of spiritual marvels. It is a survey of
the Kingdom of Prayer in all its length and breadth, in its lowest as well as its most perfect forms. The interior life
is seen to be a process, an orderly evolution, of which we can outline the laws and mark the successive stages. Even in
its highest development we are permitted, as it were, to watch the first sprouting of the wings, then their gradual
growth and freer play, until at last, with gathered strength and unerring , they bear the soul towards God beyond the
range of our . There are comparatively few problems of the ascetical life which do not fall in some degree within
the of this treatise-the helps and hindrances of prayer, interior trials, scruples, discouragement, presumption.
On all these topics the teaching of the author, deduced, be it observed, from the words or actions of the saints which
he cites, seems to us eminently helpful and sane. Not unfrequently it lurks in unexpected places, in what appear to be
casual remarks, in brief comments on some unusual point of theory or practice, but it will not escape the eye of a
careful reader; and, above all, it will be treasured by those who are entrusted in whatever way with that most difficult
and delicate of tasks, the direction of souls. The experiences of those who have climbed the highest peaks of
Perfection, their successes, even their mistakes, cannot fail to be useful even to those who are still stumbling on its
lower slopes, or only gazing wistfully upwards from its base.