Influence of the Jesuits on Religion and Civilization

Brownson's Quarterly Review, April, 1846

ART. III. — Histoire Religieuse, Politique, et Litteraire de la Compagnie de Jesus, composte sur les Documents inidits et authentiques. Par J. CRETINEAU-JOLY. 5 vol. 8vo. Paris.    1844.

THE day, we believe, is dawning when justice will be done to the Jesuits, the most eminent and useful order of men that the Church has yet produced.    Hitherto, their history, like that of the Christians of the earliest ages, has been identified with persecution and suffering.    Alone, the Order has had to contend with more enemies, and more merciless ones, than the whole Church together.    For not only has it unflinchingly stood its ground as a faithful body-guard, exposed to the hottest of the battle, but it has been subjected to cruel attacks from the very persons it defended, and has seen itself sacrificed as a propitiatory offering to the common enemies of both.    Conceived in an age of spiritual insubordination, and born for holy strife, the Society of Jesus, from the first moment of its existence, has manned the battlements of the Church with intrepid champions of the truth. From the halls of her colleges, and from the depths of the wilderness and the forest, she has sent forth missionaries, theologians, and confessors innumerable, the lustre of whose virtues was eclipsed only by the marvellous successes that everywhere attended their labors.    The council-chambers   of kings,  the palaces of nobles, the cottages of the poor, the cells of prisoners, the beds of the dying, have alike witnessed their magnificent achievements.    During the three centuries of the existence of the Institute, never for a single moment has its renown ceased to fill the earth.    Religion, morals, politics, oratory, poesy, the exact sciences, literature, travels, history, discovery, the fine arts, all have felt its influence, all have belonged to its domain.

No task, therefore, we think, can be undertaken, at once more delicate and more difficult, considering the important place they must necessarily occupy in the modern history of the world, and the number and zeal of-the enemies that their learning and success have raised up against them, than correctly and impartially to delineate the history of the Jesuits. Yet this task has been undertaken by M. Cretineau-Joly, and it appears to us with triumphant success. Never have we been so fully convinced that their ablest defence is the plain, unvarnished recital of their deeds, as in reading this work, — the work, not of a Jesuit, nor of an admirer of the Jesuits, nor of a pupil of the Jesuits, but of a man of education, of a penetrating mind, of thorough research, and, above all, of sound good-sense.*(footnote: * In speaking thus favorably of M. Cretineau-Joly's work, we would not be understood as indorsing all his private opinions on events involved in obscurity, and especially on some points of English history.)

The work of M. Cretineau-Joly is somewhat bulky, consisting of five octavo volumes, of some five hundred pages each. It is written in a style at once elegant and dignified ; and we are much mistaken, if any man of good taste, after having read one chapter, could be easily persuaded to forego the pleasure of perusing the entire work.
We translate the introductory pages of the author, both to convey to our readers an idea of the nature of his undertaking, and as an introduction.to a few remarks of our own upon the influence of the Jesuits on the civilization and moral improvement of the world.

" I undertake a work difficult, — perhaps impossible. I propose to recount the origin, the development, the grandeur, the sacrifices, the studies, the mysterious combinations, the conflicts, the vicissitudes of every kind, the ambition, the faults, the glories, the persecutions, and the martyrdoms of the Company of Jesus.

" I shall tell of the prodigious influence that this Society has exercised upon religion by hs saints, its apostles, its theologians, its orators, its moralists ; upon kings, by its directors of conscience and by its diplomatists ; upon the masses, by its charity and salutary instructions ; upon literature, by its poets, its historians, its scholars, and its writers, in every language, so eminent for the purity and elegance of their style.

" I shall show it from its very birth battling for the Church Catholic, and for the monarchies that Protestantism, yet in its cradle, had already undertaken to destroy.(footnote: The author would express himself more accurately to our sense, if he had said governments instead of " monarchies." The Jesuits always support the legitimate order of the country where they are established ; and in countries where republicanism, as with us, is the legitimate order, they are as firm defenders of republicanism, as they are of monarchy, where that is the legitimate order. They defend the legal order, and are never revolutionists in favor of one form of government or of another.)

" I shall penetrate into its colleges, whence have come forth so many famous personages, the glory or the dishonor of their country.

" I shall follow it beyond the seas, over those unknown oceans whither the zeal of the house of the Lord led its fathers, who, after having been a light to illumine the gentiles, enlarged the bounds of civilization and science, and revealed to those sitting in the shadow of death how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace.

" I shall study its Institute, so little known, and of which men have discoursed with so much love or with so much hatred. I shall thoroughly investigate its policy, according to its detractors so dark and tortuous, so open and straightforward according to its defenders ; but which has left an indelible imprint upon the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the epoch of the world the most remarkable for the diffusion of knowledge and the magnitude of events.

" I shall not suffer myself to be influenced by the enthusiastic sentiments of admiration which the Society of Jesus has gathered around it, or by the prejudices or angry feelings which its omnipotence has perpetuated.

" The Jesuits do not count me in the number of their scholars. They have never beheld me among their neophytes. I have been neither their friend, nor their admirer, nor-their adversary. I owe them no gratitude. I have no prepossession in their favor. I am neither of them, nor with them, nor for them, nor agajnst them. They are to me what Vitellius, and Otho, and Galba were to Tacitus. I know them neither by injury nor by favor. A historian, I rest upon history, relying only on truth, seeking only, by the aid of facts uncontested and incontestible, to deduce logical consequences, and forming an opinion only after the most conscientious examination."

The author, we confess, has pledged himself deeply, but he has faithfully redeemed his pledge. Nothing can be more satisfactory to one who sincerely desires information than the fidelity and candor with which he portrays the characters of the distinguished men of the Society, describes their toils and achievements, delineates the most remarkable traits of their history, and depicts the blessings showered upon the world by their missions and their colleges. And in the brief sketch of the labors and influence of the Jesuits which we propose to give, we shall draw from his pages, and rely on his authority,, as we find it convenient, and without reserve.

This illustrious order dates its origin from the middle of the sixteenth century ; but, before entering upon a narrative of some of its achievements, we must glance at the condition of Europe, as regards civilization and religion, at and prior to that epoch.
The first three centuries of the Christian era were crimsoned with the blood of persecution.    The Church had to grapple with tyranny, false philosophy, barbarism, ignorance, and superstition. Rivers of blood flowed from her bosom, millions of her children were immolated, before the trembling nations bowed to her yoke, and professed her faith. Then she stood forth in her glory. The sages of Rome and of the Areopagus were mute before the tent-maker of Tarsus and the fishermen of Galilee. The cross of Christ was reared in every village and hamlet, and glittered in the diadem of the Caesars.

During the following five or six centuries, the splendor of Christianity was doomed to be obscured and the march of civilization to be checked. Swarms of merciless and ignorant barbarians, from the extremities of the North, invaded the empire with fire and sword. Some poured in like torrents, ravaging and devastating the land ; others, wearied with pillage and massacre, established themselves in the region's they had blasted. Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, all had alike been nursed with blood, and all were alike distinguished for their ferocity and contempt of the arts. They recognized no law but that of passion and of force. Hence the necessity of the feudal system, which was established for the purpose of keeping in check the torrent of crimes and disorders of every kind that were inundating Europe. This was effected mainly by the efforts of the Church, which, amid the breaking up of the very elements of civilization, and the storms of war, and the death-cry of millions, made her voice be heard, her laws respected, and her pastors obeyed; and thus, out of this same feudal system, she may be. said to have produced the modern monarchies of Europe, and for the second time to have civilized and Christianized the world.

But though many of these barbarians sincerely embraced Christianity, yet the submission of not a few in the Northern countries seems to have been sullen and incomplete. Hence that uneasiness under the yoke of the Gospel, manifested to no inconsiderable extent from the very beginning ; hence their continual resistance to the salutary ordinances of their bishops and pastors, and an ill-concealed longing to recover their former liberties, and to become once more desperadoes and assassins ; hence, too, those secret societies and mutinous combinations, nurseries of numerous and abominable heresies, which so often and so deeply afflicted the Church.

This spirit of opposition to religion smouldered like a subterranean fire in the bosom of the Church, which at times it heaved and convulsed, — and occasionally, as during the pontificates of Gregory the Seventh and Innocent the Third, exploded for a moment, till, in the sixteenth century, it burst forth in terrific -fury, and spread far and wide the accumulated fires and scoriae of centuries, threatening in its progress again to desolate and barbarize the world.

We regard the great Protestant movement of the sixteenth century in the main, therefore, as a political effort on the part of the nations, inheriting the predilections and passions of their forefathers, to shake off a yoke to which they had never cheerfully submitted. It is a remarkable fact confirming this statement, that the Reformation, so called, found its supporters numerous just in proportion as it advanced toward the north ; and it is also a fact, that the Goths, Vandals, and other barbarians descended from the north, and established themselves chiefly in the northern countries of Europe.

Such being the temper of these indomitable spirits, nothing was wanting to excite a general outbreak, but a bold and reckless adventurer to stand at their head and lead them on. Wickliffe had attempted it in England ; John Huss, in Bohemia, and Jerome, in Prague ; each with but a partial success, but with a success sufficient to embolden Luther, who was destined to be the successful champion of innovation, revolt, and disorder.

Martin Luther was an apostate monk, — arrogant, presumptuous, and bold, —with the bearing of a maniac toward those who should dare to contradict him. Moreover, he had considerable learning, which, aided by a great volubility of language and rapidity of thought, a voice of thunder and a fiery and haughty air, gave him all the qualifications requisite for a here-siarch of the first magnitude. It is said that he dreamed of the Roman purple, but, seeing it only in the distance, he hoped to bring it nearer by making himself formidable. Accordingly, armed with certain real or fancied abuses that formed no part of the doctrine or discipline of the Church, he set himself forth to dogmatize and dictate to the Church, and summoned her to his tribunal. She, however, yielded not to the summons thus insolently made, and treated him as an apostate and a heretic, and he became what history relates of him.

Such was the man, who, knowing full well that the spirits were prepared and only waited for the word,—knowing full well, that, with the blood of Goths and Vandals coursing in their veins, the spirit of insubordination and irreligion were there also, — such was the man that unfolded the banner of religious independence, and sounded the tocsin of revolt. Nor was he deceived in his expectations. With the rapidity of lightning, the word passed from mouth to mouth, from people to people, and in a few years the greater part of the Northern nations of Europe were found in open rebellion against the Church. Anarchy resumed her empire. War, massacre, pillage, sacrilege, and every crime, desolated the nations. Laws, human and divine, were laughed to scorn ; spirits of darkness roamed at large, and the Church herself was menaced with ruin ; the holy city was sacked and pillaged, and the Sovereign Pontiff barely escaped with his life ; bishops and priests were butchered in cold blood ; ladies of the highest rank, young maidens, and holy nuns were seized and violated by a brutal soldiery ; nay, to such excesses was carried this infernal spirit of fanaticism, that the Turkish Sultan himself publicly declared his horror of it, and in the name of humanity demanded that it should cease.

It was at this trying moment, when the world seemed relapsing into barbarism, and men's hearts were failing them for fear, and the faithful were looking tremblingly for succour to Him who had promised them that the gates of hell should never prevail against his Church, —it was then that the Eternal raised up a host of holy and learned men as champions of the faith. Then appeared upon the noisy field of strife blessed peacemakers, who, when need was, proved themselves also fearless and successful warriors. Then arose a Thomas of Villeneuve, a Bartholomew de Martyribus, a St. Charles Borromeo, a St. Francis of Sales, a St. Philip Neri, a St. Vincent of Paul, a St. John of the Cross, a St. Theresa, and, on the chair of St. Peter, a Paul the Fourth, and a St. Pius the Fifth, and, above all and more than all, a St. Ignatius Loyola, with his Spartan band of companions and followers, whose influence on the civilization and religion of Europe and the world we now proceed, with as much brevity as possible, to consider.
St. Ignatius of Loyola was born in the year 1491, of noble parents. He joined the army and marched against the French. At the siege of Pampeluna, he displayed extraordinary valor and was severely wounded. During his convalescence, he called for a romance to amuse the tedious hours of his confinement. As none could be found, the Lives of the Saints was brought him. The perusal of this inspired him with an ardent desire to imitate their holy lives, and with an insatiable thirst to become a partaker of their immortal glory. From this moment he attached himself to the armies of Christ, and consecrated his life to his service. His religion partook of all the ardor of his brilliant imagination, and of all the energy and bravery of his character. On his recovery, he retired to a grotto near Man-resa, where he composed his Spiritual Exercises. Having accomplished his studies, he undertook the execution of a design he had long cherished, the establishment of a religious order for the extirpation of error and the conversion of the world ; and associated with him nine others, possessed of a piety, zeal, courage, and self-denial equal to his own.

It has ever been in the order of Providence that evils should be met by remedies, and heresies, the greatest of evils, by sturdy champions of the truth. Thus, to the Arians was opposed St. Athanasius, to the Pelagians and Manicheans, St. Augustine, to the Albigenses, St. Dominic, and to Lutherans and Calvin-ists, St. Ignatius and his companions. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact, that, at the precise epoch when Luther publicly sustained the thesis of his apostacy in the Diet of Worms, and composed his book against monastic vows in the solitude of Alstadt, St. Ignatius was consecrating himself to God in the chapel of Monte Serrato, and was composing his Spiritual Exercises in his retreat at Manresa. At the time, too, that Henry the Eighth proclaimed himself spiritual head of the Anglican Church, and ordered, under penalty of death, that the very name of the Pope should be effaced from every document and from every book, St. Ignatius was laying the foundations of an order that professed, in a most special manner, obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff, and zeal and activity in enlarging the bounds of his jurisdiction.

After innumerable difficulties, Ignatius succeeded in obtaining for his company the solemn approval of the Pope, in 1540, under the name of the Company of Jesus, whence the members were called Jesuits ; and this was but one of an infinite series of brilliant triumphs that followed the labors of the Jesuits so long as the world was worthy of such men. They stood forth an impregnable breastwork against the armed legions of error, and advanced shield to shield, a Macedonian phalanx, to battle against the enemies of God ; and the momentum of their onset secured them the victory. In a few years, the enemy's camp was one of confusion, contention, and flight. The plague was stayed. The thundering torrent of infidelity and atheism, which, like an ocean-surge, was inundating Europe, was driven back and hemmed within its natural bounds, where it was left to roar and waste its impotent fury.    Entire nations, that had fallen victims to the maddening delusions of a false philosophy, hailed with gratitude these messengers of Heaven, and returned with exultation to the bosom of the Church. Kingdoms and tribes innumerable, in other regions, where the light of the Gospel had never before penetrated, were converted to Christianity and to civilization, insomuch that infinitely more souls were gained in America and the Indies than had been lost in Europe.

But the partisans of error and irreligion, restless under defeat, continued to attack the Church on every side. According to Loyola, the points of defence should correspond in number. Hence, he digested a code for the government of the Society, in which he devised the most gigantic plans of operation, and developed them with astonishing sagacity. He anticipated every possible obstacle to success, and furnished the means of averting or surmounting them. From the loftiest themes, he descended to the minutest details, solving every difficulty, placing a curb on every passion, and seeking in the very extension of his institute to give the Church an ascendency, which, in this age so rife with disorders, she seemed almost afraid to claim for herself.
" Loyola was aware, that, on the day of battle, the most experienced officers stand apart, in order to watch with more composure the conflict which they direct. A general of an army ought, by means of the orders that he issues, to be everywhere present to his troops. Their movements, their courage, their very life, depend on him ; ho disposes of them in the most absolute manner ; and the very physical inaction to which, in consequence, he subjects himself augments his intellectual energies. It is he that stimulates, that restrains, that combines the springs of action, and that assumes the responsibility of events. Such was the admirable policy of Ignatius Loyola. He dispersed his companions over the globe ; he sent them forth to humiliation or to glory, to preach or be martyred, while he from Home, as a central point, communicated force to all, and, what was still belter, regulated their movements.

" At Rome, Ignatius followed his disciples at every step. In an age when communication was neither easy nor expeditious, and when each political revolution added to the difficulty, he found means to correspond with them frequently. He had a perfect knowledge of the state of the missions, and was acquainted with the joys and sufferings of the missionaries ; he sympathized with them, and thus shared their dangers and their struggles ; his orders were anxiously expected, his counsels were scrupulously followed. More calm than they, for he was uninfluenced by local passions, he decided with greater discernment, he regulated with greater unity of design." — Vol. I., pp. 183, 184.

The position of the Church was indeed a deplorable one. From every city, from every village, yea, from every monastery and convent, there marched forth an enemy armed at all points to contend against her. True, she met them without shrinking, and fulminated her censures ; but the people, swollen with pride, and allured by the specious novelties of the day, were not disposed to yield to the just censures of the Church.

Ignatius understood perfectly the state of things and the na
ture of the remedy required, and he shrunk not from a contest
which the number of the assailants rendered so uncertain, nay,
so perilous. Like an experienced general, he marshals into the
field the soldiers that he himself had drilled for combat and for
martyrdom. These soldiers advance, incapable of fear or re
treat, as a rapid view of their movements and their victories in
the different countries into which they penetrated will amply
prove. 

England was at this time a prey to the most extravagant opinions in church and state. Henry the Eighth, the legitimate spouse of Catherine of Aragon, became impassioned with Anne Boleyn, and demanded a divorce of the Holy See. Too impatient, however, to await the decision which his own conscience told him would be adverse to his petition, he separated himself and his kingdom from the Roman communion, and, to effect his purpose the more speedily, he set on foot the most terrible system of persecution ever recorded in the annals of tyranny. The English, for the most part, ignominiously succumbed. But the Irish were made of sterner stuff,—and they refused to change their faith as often as it should please their sovereign to change his mistresses. They continued steadfast Catholics. Such a firm resistance did not pass unpunished, but drew down upon their devoted country the most cruel, the most coldblooded, and the most relentless infliction of wrongs and sufferings ever experienced by any people. While Ireland was palpitating under the knife of this royal butcher, and her sons and daughters were perishing for their faith or languishing in dungeons, the venerable and afflicted Archbishop of Armagh appealed in her behalf to the Sovereign Pontiff. Ignatius is summoned, and the holy Father makes requisition for two of his Company. Brouet and Salmeron are charged with the mission. With tears of joy they accepted the perilous embassy, and departed from Rome without companions, without provisions, without money, like veritable apostles, as in some sort they were.

In the year 1542, after innumerable dangers, they arrived in Ireland. But what tongue can describe the desolation and distress that met their eye at every turn ? Without teachers or spiritual guides, the people were abandoned to penury, to prisons, and to indiscriminate massacre. The two missionaries were without an asylum and depended upon alms. Little by little, however, they gained the confidence of the faithful, and made known to them the object of their mission. Soon they were surrounded by a flock bold as themselves. Then their zeal knew no bounds ; they traversed the isle from one extremity to the other, shriving, administering the sacraments, whispering peace to the troubled conscience, animating the strong, supporting the weak, encouraging all. The widows and orphans were provided for ; the churches were restored"; the altars of God were again set up ; the holy sacrifice was renewed ; in a word, the object of their mission was accomplished, and, a price being set on their heads, they were recalled to Rome.

A vast field of labor was prepared for them in Italy, of which a large portion had been seduced and corrupted by the innovators of the age. The fathers of the Company of Jesus, as an advanced guard, dispersed themselves in every city. Success everywhere crowned their efforts. Errors were extirpated. Abuses were corrected. Convents and monasteries were reformed. Ecclesiastics of every rank became zealous and devout. Apostate monks and priests returned to the bosom of the Church. Teachers of false doctrine and sedition were confounded. Hospitals and confraternities were established for every work of mercy. In two or three years, heresy and irreligion could scarcely be found in regions that had been their strongest holds.

We have already alluded to the causes that disposed the Germans and other nations of the North to receive with alacrity the doctrines of the Reformers. Many other causes came in as auxiliary, and, indeed, the doctrines and principles of the Reformation were such as to recommend themselves to the passions of men. The German States, under the tutelage of Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, and Carlostadt, and France and Switzerland, under that of Zuinglius, Calvin, and Beza, soon became one vast political arena, where each one, by disputing and commenting on the texts of Scripture and the holy fathers, attributed to himself that infallibility that he denied to the Church Universal.    From their vain disputes and disorderly assemblies swarmed forth hosts of fanatics, proud, cruel, and relentless, unhappy victims to the most extravagant errors, and in their turn perverting and corrupting millions.

The Sovereign Pontiff was profoundly afflicted at the degradation and misery into which this portion of his flock was plunged; and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, hitherto so timid and compromising, felt the necessity of applying a remedy. Lefevre, one of the earliest companions of Loyola, received orders to penetrate into Germany. He was a consummate theologian, a persuasive orator, and, above all, a virtuous priest. On his arrival, in October, 1540, he soon perceived that but little was to be gained by openly resisting the sectaries, and therefore applied himself chiefly to the spiritual resuscitation of Catholics, and particularly of the clergy, whose morals were in very many cases fearfully lax. He went from city to city, giving retreats to all classes, to bishops, prelates, electors, ambassadors of kings, doctors in theology, priests and multitudes of the commonalty. Charles, Duke of Savoy, chose him for his spiritual director. Germans, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians crowded around him, and adopted the rule of life that he recommended. The dlite of the nobility regarded him as their spiritual father, and bore with them to their homes in other and distant lands the sweet remembrance of his counsels, and the virtues that he had inculcated. By the edification of their example they confirmed the people in the true faith, or led them back to the centre of unity.

Le Jay and Bobadilla continued the work thus gloriously begun. In Ausgburg, the Catholic worship was reestablished, mainly through the persuasive eloquence of Bobadilla. Le Jay astonished the world by the marvellous conversions which followed his labors at Ratisbon, Nuremberg, and Ingolstadt. In short, heresy and irreligion trembled and fell before them, and the faithful rejoiced and took courage.
Lefevre returned to Germany in 1543, and at Mayence he publicly expounded the Holy Scriptures. His lectures were attended by all the inhabitants, and multitudes were brought back to the Church. " Nor was this all; his lectures attracted crowds of strangers, who, from all parts of the provinces of the Rhine, flocked to listen to a priest who enjoyed such an extraordinary reputation for piety and learning.
Canisius, regarded as one of the most solid and brilliant spirits of his age, and as one of the ablest doctors in the University of Cologne, listened with delight to the discourses of Lefevre, —had an interview with him, — and his vocation was decided. Canisius became a Jesuit. Throughout the German empire he reared and unfolded the standard of the cross, and by his comments on the Holy Scriptures, and his expositions of Christian doctrine, he dissipated, in a great measure, the clouds of anarchy and false doctrine that, in whirling masses, were drifting over the land, and displayed to the astonished minds of men the light of truth beaming from the sun of justice.

Such marvellous successes attended the labors of Le Jay, Canisius, and Lefevre, that Jesuits were demanded wherever irreligion showed its front. The prince of Transylvania requested them for his estates ; the Archbishop of Strigonia for Hungary ; the Bishop of Breslau for Silesia ; Sigismund for Poland. Everywhere, by their illustrious virtues and unctuous exhortations, they forced the people back to the religion which their fathers had ingloriously abandoned. The Archbishop of Cologne apostatized, but the zeal and charity of Lefevre saved the flock. Cologne remained faithful, and manfully withstood every effort at corruption. France herself was saved from anarchy and infidelity, at least for a century, by the labors of Jesuits, who, despite a thousand obstacles, found means to establish themselves in that kingdom. It was the Jesuit alone who could make head against the rabid fanaticism of Calvinism on the one hand, and the slippery treachery of Jansenism on the other. It was he alone that dared from the pulpit speak boldly to his sovereign and his courtiers, while others dealt only in flatteries and pompous eulogies.

It is impossible in the compass of a single article to enter into details, but we have already stated sufficient to show what we proposed, namely, that before the band of Loyola whole armies trembled and fled in dismay ; that each man in that little band was himself a host; and that the march of irreligion and barbarism was in Northern Europe stayed by their efforts, and entire cities and provinces won back to the faith of their fathers. It remains now to convey a general idea of the successes which attended them in foreign climes.
Francis Xavier departed for the Indies, and, after a tedious voyage of thirteen months, landed, in May, 1542, at Goa, the capital of the Portuguese acquisitions in India. Here he found religion in a most deplorable state. Among the Portuguese, revenge, ambition, luxury, avarice, and debauchery seemed to have extinguished the Christian virtues;' The sacraments were neglected ; the exhortations and censures of the bishop were despised ; and no dam was found sufficient to arrest the torrent of retrogression. The natives of these and all the neighbouring countries were addicted to the grossest abominations and superstitions, resembling men in nothing but the outward form ; and they who had embraced Christianity had already relapsed into idolatry. So great, however, was the zeal of Xavier, and so successful his labors, that in less than six months every thing was completely changed. The children crowded around their benefactor, and with eagerness listened to his instructions. Through their children the hearts of the parents were reached, and again by their example the very savages were stimulated to action, — and all, with scarcely au exception, abandoned their unlawful practices, and, with tears in their eyes, and contrition in their hearts, threw themselves at the feet of our apostle, and voluntarily resigned themselves to his spiritual direction. The fruits that accompanied and followed their conversion were a sufficient proof and guaranty of its sincerity.
After this, Xavier visited the coast of the Pearl Fishery, where the chief persons of the country and most of the inhabitants embraced Christianity, and adopted the usages of civilized society. Endowed with the gift of tongues and the power of working miracles, a like success everywhere attended him. The whole kingdom of Travancore embraced the Gospel. In a few years forty-five churches were here erected, and in one day Xavier baptized ten thousand idolaters. His fame extended far and wide, and from every quarter the gentiles flocked around him, demanding baptism, and urging him to visit their several countries. He could not yield to the prayers of all, but replied to them by sending forth missionaries animated and formed by his spirit. The island of Amboina, the Moluccas, the isle Del Moro, Ceylon, with several of its kings, Tanore, with its king, Manaar and Coulan, and a large part of the vast empire of Japan, accepted the yoke of the Gospel and of civilized life. So great, at times, was the number of those to be baptized, that, for very weariness in administering the sacrament, the holy missionary was scarcely able to move his arm. It is said, that, with that one arm, he baptized one million of pagans.
Burning with an insatiable desire to spread the kingdom of Christ, the indefatigable missionary meditated yet other and more brilliant conquests, and fixed his eyes upon the Celestial Empire.    But the hour for the conversion of the Chinese had not yet come.    God accepted the intention of his servant, and called him to receive an immortal crown.

" The missionary was within sight of China. The benedictions with which the Portuguese had encircled his name, the rejoicings manifested wherever he went, the recital of the innumerable obstacles to be surmounted before he could penetrate into the country, nothing was capable of making the least impression upon his mind. He obtained an interview with some of the natives, who, astonished at his doctrine, counselled him to pass into their country, whence, said they, the emperor has not long since despatched learned men to study abroad the different religions.

" At this news, Xavier, transported with joy, resolves to be landed upon the beach from a small boat; but the interests of the Portuguese merchants are opposed to his desire. They entreat him to postpone his apostolic labors till after their departure. He accedes to their solicitations.

" When the hour for entering into this vast kingdom had arrived, when human motives no longer restrained him, the father falls a victim to a consuming fever. Behold him, destitute of all succour, alone, exposed, upon the beach, to all the inclemencies of the season. He feels a presentiment of his approaching death, he predicts it in express terms, and has but one regret, which is, not to live long enough to open to his successors the empire that lay before him.

" A Portuguese, touched with compassion, receives him into his cabin. The malady rapidly progresses. The very medicines administered by a mistaken charity add new force to the fever that consumes him.    Delirium seizes uponhis brain.

" On the second of December, 1552, at the age of forty-six years, the Jesuit expired.

" His name, his virtues, his miracles, the multiplicity of his voyages, the success of his exhortations throughout the East, the favors that, by his prayers to God, he had so often obtained for the relief of suffering humanity, or for the consolation of families, presented themselves vividly to the recollection of all. The shores that he had evangelized, the regions that he had visited, the desert wilds through which he had pursued the savages, in order to offer them, by the cross, the blessings of civilization, — the isles that he had bedewed with his sweat, and that his fellow-missionaries have fertilized with their blood, all these different people, unknown to each other, united in one common sentiment of human sorrow and holy exultation.

" They mourned the father of whom death had bereaved them.
They implored the protection of the saint who from the highest
heavens was watching over their happiness.    From all those kingdoms that Xavier had conquered to the faith, there rose homage to his memory. His bier, born in triumph, was surrounded with veneration; the people crowded its passage; the banners of every nation honored it on the seas; the very ambassadors of the Great Mogul, though Mahometans, bowed down before that corpse that corruption has always respected. Long after the decease of the Jesuit, the ships which passed the spot where he died displayed their flags, and saluted, by a full discharge of artillery, the land where the Apostle of the Indies breathed his last sigh." —Vol. I., pp. 244-247.

In 1549, the Jesuits, not content with the conversion of the Indies, crossed the Atlantic, and announced the Gospel in America. Brazil, where they commenced their labors, was in a state of barbarism. Vice existed under every form. The people were cannibals. They were merciless and without natural affection. The Jesuits here found a field of labor just suited to the extent of their charity and the ardor of their zeal. They traversed the country, plunged into the forests, penetrated into the very huts of the savages, and, by their gentle manners and soothing language, and a thousand services which they cheerfully rendered, they gradually gained the confidence of the natives, and were at length received into their cabins and listened to with attention. They inveighed with zeal against the exactions and oppressions of the Portuguese, and proved themselves at all times tho friends and advocates of the natives, not as slaves, but as freemen. By dint of perseverance and patience they gained the very cannibals. To induce them to accept the yoke of civilization, it was necessary, first, to subdue them to that of the Gospel, and they succeeded. The wandering tribes were gathered into settlements, and taught the arts of civilized life. Churches arose ; schools were opened; colleges were endowed ; I'eligious houses were established ; and in a few years the whole empire of Brazil became a Christian empire.
The march of civilization had commenced, and it was not to cease. Deputations from the very heart of the continent came to solicit baptism and Jesuit missionaries ; and though seventy of the latter were taken prisoners on the seas, by the ships of French Calvinists, and savagely slaughtered and thrown into the deep, yet others were ever found eager to confront the same perils, and to endure the same labors and sufferings. Barefooted,— without raiment, save a cassock, — a crucifix and chaplet depending from the girdle,— the staff of the pilgrim, and the breviary of the priest, in the hand, — the shoulders laden with the ornaments indispensable to the Sacrifice of the Mass,— the humble, though fearless, Jesuit directed his steps to the interior of these wild and almost deserted regions.    He penetrated the densest forests ; he toiled through vast morasses ; he waded the shallow  streams, and swam the deep ones ; he clambered over the mountains, and scaled the beetling crags ; he traversed vast prairies and  desert plains, exposed to the scorching rays of a tropical sun ; and, abandoning himself to the protection of Providence, he confronted ferocious beasts and more ferocious men.    All these fatigues, all these perils, had God alone for witness.    The Jesuit braved them, not for earthly fame or honor, but with a single and unblenching eye to the conquest of souls.   Wherever he encountered a savage, he extended towards him his arms, and by signs made him comprehend the  object  of his mission.    By words of kindness, and smiles that betokened peace, he sought to allure him to the way of the cross.    If he resisted, then the Jesuit threw himself at the feet of the wild man, bedewed them with his tears, embraced him with affection, and by the most ardent demonstrations of charity strove to gain his confidence.    If, as sometimes happened, the savages still refused to yield, the Jesuit was nowise discouraged.    He became their servant and slave; he yielded to their caprices ; he followed them in the chase; he interested himself in their affairs ; he became a partner in their toils, their sufferings, and their amusements.    And though many of these holy men fell victims to their zeal, and bedewed the  earth with their blood, yet that very blood proved, as it ever has, the veritable seed of Christians.    New warriors instantly occupied the posts of the slaughtered, and followed up their work, until, little by little, the barbarians were instructed in the laws of God, and in the precepts and obligations of Christianity, which at length they embraced with a fervor, a simplicity, and a unanimity that would have honored the primitive ages of the Church.    Soon there was no hut or settlement in all those regions that had not been visited and blessed by a Jesuit.
Peru, Chile, New Granada, Buenos Ayres, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guatemala, presented each a similar theatre of the apostolic toils and sufferings of the Jesuits. In North America, California, Mexico, Florida, and Canada, numerous tribes of Indians, such as the Hurons, the Algonquins, the Illinois, and, in our own day, under the marvellous efforts of the illustrious father De Smett, the Flatheads, the Snake Indians, and the Crows, and many other tribes of the Rocky Mountains, have heard the voice of the Jesuits and embraced Christianity. Blessed Christianity ! which has succeeded in realizing the dreams of sages and philosophers, and converted numberless tribes of ferocious and brutalized men into communities of brothers, — extinguished in them the spirit of cruelty and revenge, and breathed into them that of meekness, docility, and love, — offering to an amazed and incredulous world an example of the practice of every virtue, and a model of the truest civilization.
In contemplating this admirable spectacle of the nations converted and civilized by the Jesuits, BufFon, a witness who will not be suspected of partiality, exclaims : —

" These missions have made more men than the victorious armies of the princes that subjugated them have destroyed. The meekness, the charity, the good example, the virtues constantly practised by the Jesuits, have touched the hearts of the savages and vanquished their distrust and their ferocity. They came of their own accord to ask to be instructed in a law that rendered men so perfect. To that law they submitted, and were reunited to the society of men. Nothing has done more honor to the Jesuits than to have civilized these nations, and to have laid the foundations of an empire without other arms than those of virtue."
Thus scarcely a century had elapsed since the establishment of the Society, and already it covered the four great continents of the earth, and had borne the standards of Christianity and civilization to the remotest isles of the ocean. It had missionary stations in Japan and Ethiopia, —in the Indies and Peru, — in Brazil and Mogul, — in the remotest archipelagos and the bleakest islands, — in the heart of Africa and on the banks of the Bosphorus, — under the cedars of Lebanon and in the wigwam of the Illinois, — in«China and in Canada, — at Madras and Thibet, — in Goa and in Baltimore. In humble imitation of the great Apostle, the Jesuits made themselves all things to all; infirm with the suffering, weak with the feeble, ignorant with the unlettered, learned with the refined, diplomatists with princes. In China they were mandarins, astronomers, and artists ; in Carthagena, slaves to the very negroes ; in Hindostan, Bramins and Parians ; in India, Bonzes ; in Canada and in the valleys of the Missouri and Mississippi, hunters and fishermen ; and all this with but one design, which, like a bright star, preceded them and shone upon their path, and was the guide of all their actions; — THE GREATER GLORY OP GOD AND THE WELFARE OF THEIR RACE. Thus, while the sectaries and philosophers of the day were predicting the downfall of the Church, and shouting in triumph over the apostasy of nations, the Jesuits were conducting new worlds and new nations, of which the Old World had never before heard even the names, and laying them at the foot of the throne of St. Peter.  
As far as our limits would permit, we have aimed to convey a clear and correct idea of the influence on the civilization and moral improvement of the world of the Jesuits considered as missionaries. We have accompanied them into the cottage of the peasant, and into the palaces of kings. We have followed them to the very extremities of the earth, and witnessed the zeal with which they braved suffering and martyrdom in order to convey the blessings of true civilization to the savages of the North, to the cannibals of the South, and to the luxurious inhabitants of the East. We turn now to regard them in other, and, if possible, still more amiable and useful toils; in rearing the youth of every land, and training them to virtue and wisdom.

The system of education laid down by St. Ignatius in his Constitutions, and which, by undeviating application, has become an integral element in the very being of the Society, is the most perfect and the wisest ever devised by the genius of man. Three hundred years of experience have not been able to discover in it a single defect, nor in all that length of time has it diminished aught in energy or in its marvellous results. Indeed, it has displaced and superseded all other systems, however venerable for antiquity, however approved by experience. It has been adopted in its leading principles, not only in the colleges of other religious orders, but also, as far as practicable, in the colleges and schools of Protestants themselves, and in the very universities of infidels. It constitutes the basis of all that is substantially good in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Gottingen, and Paris. From it has been borrowed all that the schools in the cities and villages of our own country possess of merit or of excellence.
Its distinguishing feature — that which elevates it far above all former systems of education — is its marvellous aptitude for penetrating into the characters and appreciating the sympathies and hearts of childhood, and, above all, in rendering all physical, and even intellectual education, subordinate to the moral and religious culture of the mind.    The first object in a Jesuit college is to make Christians ; the second, to make scholars and men. As, in that age so prolific in arts and inventions, every science and every art proceeded from religion as its source, and flowed back upon religion as its end, — and as religion had been glorified and honored by the lyre of Tasso, the muse of Dante, the chisel of Michel Angelo, and the pencil of Raphael, so Ignatius Loyola would that it should be honored and glorified by the piety of guileless youth, on whose tender souls, more capable of receiving beautiful impressions than the canvass or the marble, he would fain stamp the images of virtue, the impress of God. What remarkable penetration ! What depth of wisdom ! The sole object of the Society was to enlighten the world, to extend as far as possible the blessings of Christian civilization. To accomplish this object, what mode more effectual than to mould the plastic minds of youth and train them to piety and virtue, that, when they should occupy the places of their fathers on the arena of the world, they might shine as burning lights, and illumine the path of those around them, and thus oppose a formidable barrier to the torrent of incredulity with which the nations of the earth were menaced ? Two great moral principles were constantly set before their pupils in all the colleges of the Jesuits; first, to be good Christians ; second, to be good citizens. Hence, in all their instructions, they never interfered with the politics of the countries in which they were established. They were conservatives, in the truest sense of the word. In their view, the authority of governments resided rather in possession than in right. Hence, they were monarchists, imperialists, legitimists, or republicans, according to the form of the government under which they lived, and their pupils therefore were taught to respect and to obey " the powers that were," and that as a Christian duty.

To the Jesuits is the world indebted for the establishment of normal schools,*(footnote: * This perhaps may be thought by some to be a little too strongly expressed, and to overlook the educational services of the Dominicans.) or schools to prepare young men to act as teachers, where they are initiated in the art of making study agreeable to their scholars, and of exercising that wise and salutary discipline that touches the heart, and makes the learner love his preceptor and imitate his virtues.

But the Jesuits extended their zeal and talents farther than inculcating the principles of virtue and religion.    Inflamed by a passion for literature and science, — a passion that gives a charm to solitude, and cheerfulness to suffering, — they aimed to fire their pupils with the same passion. To this end, they introduced into their colleges branches till then unknown in colleges, such as polite literature, history, eloquence, poetry, and the exact sciences. Special professors were appointed for the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and various other languages. To excite emulation and enthusiasm, they invented those classical contests in which memory is set at conflict with memory, and mind with mind ; and they introduced those solemn distributions of prizes, during which prevails such a virtuous excitement, and which are followed by such blissful remembrances. Men of the highest intellectual attainments consecrated their entire lives to the work of planing away the difficulties of-the dead languages. They plunged fearlessly into the darkness in which they had so long been buried, and instantly, as by magic, light shone around them. Some explained and developed the first principles, while others were engaged in the more arduous toil of preparing dictionaries.

Nor in these employments did the Jesuits confine themselves to the civilized nations of Europe ; but everywhere — throughout all the continents, and in all the islands where they had planted the cross or which they had fertilized with their blood — they busied themselves in the blessed work of disseminating knowledge, and imparting a thirst of it to their pupils. Amid the perils of persecution and the agonies of martyrdom, they were composing elementary books and catechisms. The Indians, the Japanese, the Chinese, the inhabitants of Western Asia, the Africans, and the countless tribes of America, were astonished to see their languages, which some of them scarcely knew themselves, enriched, under the hands of the Jesuits, by grammars and dictionaries, and elementary and entertaining books of instruction.

The pursuit of knowledge in the schools of the Jesuits was made an agreeable pastime, and was invested with a thousand delightful associations. It was disengaged from the aridities of the schools, and presented under the most alluring aspects, and with a multitude of ingenious expedients to enlist the sympathies of youth. Amusements of every sort, historical and Scriptural dramas, songs and ballets, the arts and sciences, poetry and music, the electrical machine, the galvanic battery, the microscope and telescope were all called to aid in this magnificent design. A system of instruction, based on such principles, pursued with such ability, and set in operation by such men, could not, it may be supposed, fail of success. It must furnish to each successive generation men whose lives, attainments, and characters should shed a lustre on science, on their respective countries, and on Christianity. Such is, indeed, the fact. It has in every age formed and sent forth into the world illustrious popes, prelates, princes, generals, magistrates, and scholars. Among them we may name a Gregory the Thirteenth, and a Benedict the Fourteenth, — a St. Francis of Sales and a Bossuet, — a St. Liguori and a Fenelon, — a Cardinal de Fleury and a Frederick Borromeo, — with a long retinue of popes, cardinals, and prelates, that have honored the Church by their virtues and talents. In the magistracy we may name a Montesquieu and a Bouhier, a Malesherbes and a Le Jay. In the department of letters, a Tasso and a Galileo, a Moliere and $ Fontenelle, an Edmund Burke and a Kemble, a Muratori and a Buffon. In the cause of patriotism, a Richard Shiel and a Daniel O'Con-nell. But why should we proceed ? — time would fail to repeat the host of names that, in. every portion of the known world, have thrown a halo of splendor around the schools and the educational system of the Company of Jesus.

It is no longer, therefore, a subject of astonishment, that the Jesuits had to encounter the bitter hatred and opposition of infidels, disorganizers, and anarchists. They were the successful champions of religion, the determined opposers of sedition and rebellion, the teachers of sound philosophy, and the surveyors and engineers in the progress of civilization. They alone, by their missions, their schools, and their colleges, were able to make head against the downward tendencies of the age. It is a remarkable fact, that, so long as the Jesuits controlled the colleges and universities of Europe, religion, literature, science, and the arts were ever .on the ascendant ; and that precisely at the fatal era of their suppression, impiety, anarchy, and barbarism threatened the downfall of civilization, and partially triumphed. The fall of the Jesuits was the tocsin of the French Revolution, and the Robespierres and-Desmoulins of that terrific period were the first generation educated in the universities after that event, whereas scarcely a pupil of a Jesuit college ever took any prominent part in revolutionary measures. The great Chateaubriand, after the suppression of the Order, and before its restoration, fully appreciated its important influence on the rising generation : — " Europe," says he, "has suffered an irreparable loss in the Jesuits. Education has. never since lifted up her head. They were singularly agreeable to youth. The refinement of their manners divested their lectures of that pedantic air so repulsive to childhood. As the greater part of the professors were men of letters, and of estimation in the world, their pupils regarded themselves as members of an illustrious academy."— Genie du Christianisme, Tom. VIII., p. 199.

The Jesuits, with all their zeal for the propagation of Christianity and the education of youth, were not found backward in the cultivation of the arts, and in the promotion of science and literature in general. It was a Jesuit, Father Fabri, who discovered and made known the circulation of the blood, at the same time, if not before, the discoveries of Harvey. Many of the fathers labored- with signal success in the field of philosophy ; at the head of these unquestionably stands the celebrated Suarez, who has been classed with such men as St. Thomas, St. Bonaventura, and Scotus, having received from Benedict the Fourteenth the honorable title of Doctor .EximiuSj as. to them had been already assigned those of Doctor Jlngelicus, Doctor Sei'aphicus, and Doctor Subtilis ; and when in France the spirit of infidelity stalked proudest, the French Academy awarded to Father Guenard a prize for the best essay on the question, In what consists the spirit of philosophy ?
In pulpit eloquence the fathers stood unrivalled. Their sermons were for the most part extemporaneous, and no orators better understood the art of riveting attention and enforcing conviction. It was not worldly fame they sought; the only fame they desired was that of having brought sinners to the cross. In churches, in the public squares, and at the corners of streets, they produced the most marvellous effects upon the people ; controlling their feelings at will; exciting them to tears, filling them with joy, nerving them to vigorous action. Nor in the presence even of emperors, kings, and nobles did they fear to reason of justice, temperance, and judgment, and a success attended them like to that which in brighter days had followed the labors of St. Paul, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, and St. Bernard. Segneri in Italy, Tolet in Spain, Vieira in Portugal, Coster in Belgium, Cani-sius in Germany, Bourdaloue in France, were but single examples amid hosts of others, alike distinguished for the charm of their eloquence, the dignity of their style, and the persuasive unction, of their language.
The Society has furnished historians in every language. In Italian, a Pallavicini; in Spanish, a Mariana, who has been named the Livy of the Peninsula ; in French, a Daniel, a Char-levoix, a Du Halde, a Bouhours ; in every Christian land, not only local historians and biographers, but also contributors to the immortal Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists.

In the department of jurisprudence, the Society of Jesus is not wanting in distinguished writers. Among the most brilliant were Lineck, Schwartz, Stephanucci, Lascaris, Schmidt, and a host besides, of whose labors other and more ambitious authors have availed themselves, and thus secured a perpetual renown, while the names of the Jesuits are almost forgotten.

In astronomy and mathematics the Jesuits have never been surpassed, perhaps never equalled. It was Father Clavius that reformed the calendar, a reform now almost universally adopted ; in mathematics, he was the oracle of the age in which he lived. Father Guldin stood in intellectual contact with Kepler, and was able to solve his most difficult problems. Father Gregory de St. Vincent was author of the well known Theo-remata JVIathematica, and of another work equally celebrated.*(footnote: * Opus Geometricum Quadrature Circuli.) According to Leibnitz, St. Vincent, Descartes, and Fermot constituted the triumvirate of geometry. But these names are all eclipsed by that of Father Riccati. " His treatise on the Integral Calculus has never been surpassed. He is always clear, always exact. No sooner does he invent new methods and new theorems, than these methods and theorems find their adaptation." — Vol. IV., p. 313. Father Kircher was at home in every branch of science, whether physics, mathematics, languages, hieroglyphics, history, music, antiquities, or the exact sciences, and secured a renown that the brilliant success of those who built from the materials that he furnished them could never obscure. Father Scheiner discovered the spots on the sun's disk long before Galileo. Eschinardi, from his observatory at the Roman College, was the first that discovered the great comet of 1668. Other Jesuits, scattered over the seas, perceived it and calculated its progress, while its existence was yet unknown in Europe. It was Deschales who demonstrated that the refraction of light was an essential condition to the production of the colors in the rainbow and in prisms, a discovery which afterwards served as the basis of the Newtonian theory.    Father Lana, by means of scientific calculations, discovered the air-balloon, and, one hundred years before the Abbe Sicard, explained the manner of teaching the deaf, dumb, and blind to read and write, and communicate with their fellow-creatures and with each other.

It was the Jesuit Paez, who, in 1618, discovered the sources of the Nile ; and in 1740, Manuel Roman, another Jesuit, applied himself during nine months to ascertain its course. In 1673, the mouth of the Mississippi was discovered by Father Marquette, who started in a row-boat from Lake Michigan, and followed the course of the river to the Gulf of Mexico. Other Jesuits broke paths in the wilderness and forest, and prepared the way for the discovery and population of new countries, and made known to commercial enterprise lakes and rivers, and boundless seas. Father Albonel did what soldiers arid adventurers had not the courage to undertake, — he opened a road from Quebec to Hudson's Bay ; and in this our day, the illustrious De Smet, stimulated by zeal for the conversion of the savage tribes of the West, has penetrated to the Rocky Mountains, ascended the Mississippi and the Missouri to their sources, and thus realized in his own person the desires and the hopes of the ancient members of the Institute.
They were Jesuits that discovered the febrifuge properties of quinine, and introduced it into the European pharmacopoeia, that transplanted the rhubarb plant and the ginseng, and naturalized them in Europe, and gave to commerce the gum-elastic and vanilla. A Jesuit in India discovered the process and the mordants for printing calicoes. Another took advantage of a residence in China to learn the art of manufacturing and coloring porcelain, which he communicated to the French government ; hence the magnificent porcelains of France, more rich and beautiful than those produced in China itself.
Thus, in every age, in every clime, have the Jesuits been not only zealous apostles of Christianity, but also successful promoters of the arts, of science, and of civilization.

" Though separated often by half the circumference of the earth, though personally unknown to each other, they corresponded from evevy region. Scattered here and there, they remarked the phenomena of nature. They transmitted the results of their observations to their brethren in Europe, which, made upon the spot, were regarded as of authority by the Academies.

" Their zeal for science allowed nothing to pass unobserved; with them every object presented matter of instruction; for in the very depths of those vast countries, the field of their apostolic toils, they encountered everywhere vestiges of ancient worship or of history, monuments long forgotten, arts unknown, and medicinal plants. Upon this field, vaster than any that had ever been presented to the eyes of associated men, they toiled, so long as the Society of Jesus existed, with a perseverance that accorded not a day of repose." —Vol. IV., p. 324.

We have alluded to the suppression of the Jesuits. We cannot close this article without saying a few words upon so extraordinary an act. Yes ! notwithstanding the extent and fecundity of its missions,—notwithstanding the splendor and renown of its colleges, — notwithstanding the piety and learning of its fathers, — in the midst of its brilliant career, and while at the zenith of its glory, the Society of Jesus, the brightest constellation in the Christian galaxy, was suddenly extinguished. And, what is more surprising still, the act was performed by the common father of the faithful, by the Pope himself.

Clement the Fourteenth was elevated to the chair of St. Peter in an age rife with political and religious storms, when anarchy and impiety stalked insolently over the earth, and predicted and demanded the downfall of religion and the cessation of Christian instruction. But the Jesuits were the most able and successful defenders and disseminators of both. Hence the cry of extermination against the Jesuits, uttered by the anarchists and freethinkers of France and Germany. Hence, too, the numberless modes devised, and calumnies fabricated, to render them odious to princes and to people. Falsehoods and sarcasms, — books and pamphlets, in which their theology and morals were misrepresented and falsified, —unblushing reports, which soon became popular, that the fathers were stimulated solely by cupidity and ambition, — such were the arms with which the impious demagogues of Spain and Portugal, and the Jansenists and philosophers of France, rebutted the triumphant and logical arguments of their opponents ; and with these, alas ! they succeeded. Carvalho, minister, or rather monster, at the court of Joseph thq First, of Portugal, — a man without principle, a slave to the most brutish passions, a shameless scoffer at religion, yet enjoying the confidence of his royal master, — had conceived the design of exterminating the Catholic faith from the realm. To effect his purpose, he saw that he must begin with the Jesuits. But the Jesuits were the idols of the people, the guides and counsellors of the nobility, the aids and minute-men of the bishops. A bold step was necessary, one that should appall and paralyze. He fabricated against them and matured in secret a charge of fearful magnitude ; — it was no other than that of conspiring against the life of the king ; and in 1759 he procured an edict, by which, without giving them a moment's warning, or an opportunity to substantiate their innocence, or even the form of a trial, they were declared traitors and rebels, their goods were confiscated, and they were driven naked and penniless into exile.

The accusations preferred against the Company in France were equally false ; yet, in 1762, through the insidious arts of another Carvalho, it was declared incompatible with the institutions of the state, and the Jesuits received orders to abandon their houses and colleges, and to adopt a secular dress.

The policy that had succeeded so well in Portugal was followed in Spain by the prime minister, D'Aranda, who falsely implicated the Jesuits in a popular insurrection at Madrid. Their goods were confiscated, they were expelled from the Spanish territory and colonies, and forbidden ever to set foot therein again. This example was speedily followed by the king of Naples and the Duke of Parma.

But this was but the beginning of the afflictions of the Jesuits. Not content with chasing them from their dominions, all the sovereigns of Europe, with few exceptions, infected with the mad ferocity of Choiseul, Carvalho, and D'Aranda, demanded, with stunning vociferation, the suppression, the destruction, the annihilation of the entire order. Crucify him ! crucify him !

All eyes were turned to Rome, — the Jesuits' for protection, their enemies' for extermination. The latter prevailed. They represented to the Holy Father that the suppression of the Jesuits was necessary to save the faith, to prevent schism, to promote education, to secure the liberties of the Church and state, to render men more Catholic and more virtuous, and princes securer on their thrones. Clement the Fourteenth was not the enemy of the Jesuits ; but persuaded, undoubtedly, that the act of suppression would restore the peace and tranquillity so ardently desired, after having exhausted every art and appliance to evade the dread responsibility, at length, in 1773, he signed the fatal brief, and the Company of Jesus was no more. That brief was the death-warrant of the afflicted pontiff. He had riven his own heart, and soon after he died full of sorrow, exclaiming, — a They made me do it ! they made me do it! compulsus feci! compulsus feci! " (footnote: That the suppression of the Jesuits, according to our human modes of judging and speaking', was a fatal error, a deplorable calamity, is no doubt true; and yet, perhaps not, if viewed as it existed in the designs of Providence. " All these things are against me," said the patriarch Jacob, when forced to go down into the land of Egypt, where his son Benjamin was retained ; and yet he was mistaken. That the Holy Father cannot err, when deciding ex cathedra a question of faith or morals for ihe whole Church, we firmly and devoutly hold ; and although we can admit that he might err in a question like that of suppressing the Jesuits, without prejudice to the infallibility we claim for him, yet we confess we are hardly willing to say he actually did. We do not like to admit even to ourselves that the Holy Father really errs in any important measure which he solemnly authorizes or approves. What to our dim reason and feeble judgments may seem to be a fatal error, a deplorable calamity, may, in reality, be wise and salutary. We see but little, and that but indistinctly. We see never the end, —the termination of events. It is necessary to see a measure in its providential relations and termination, in order to pronounce definitively concerning its character. It may be, after all, that Almighty God had his purposes in the suppression of the Jesuits, and that the measure was necessary to his greater glory, and the ultimate prosperity of his Church. " Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." He may have designed, on the one hand, to vindicate the Society itself from the charges preferred against it, and to edify the -nations, by the meekness, silence, and obedience with which so powerful a body would submit to the order for its dissolution and dispersion; and, on the other hand, he may have designed to humble the Society, and admonish it, that, powerful as it was, invaluable as were the services it had unquestionably rendered, it was by no means indispensable to him or to his Church. Perhaps there was danger of vainglory; perhaps, too, there was danger that the Order would, in many minds, usurp the place of the Church herself, and the daughter receive the homages due only to the mother. After all, the Church had existed without the Order, and could so exist still. Our Lord also may have wished to confer on the Society bearing his name still greater honor, by making its history more similar to his own, and to teach the world in its resurrection, as in his own, that death hath no power over what is his, — that virtue, though for a moment held captive, is sure to burst its bands and lead captivity itself captive. The sublime example of perfect submission presented by the Jesuits throughout the world, on receiving the order dissolving them, was worth more to the Church than it cost. While we scout every suspicion against the Order, while we cheerfully acknowledge its invaluable services to religion and civilization, while we fully admit it to have been founded by the special interposition of Almighty God, and to be under the special protection of Him whose sacred name it bears, we think we need not blame the pontiff who suppressed it, but recognize the Lord's hand in the suppression, as well as in the resuscitation, and be as slow to accuse Clement the Fourteenth of error, as Pius the Seventh.

What we say here militates not in the least against the view taken in the text. All the text is intended to express is a firm conviction of the innocence and worth of the Order, and that its suppression, according to our human modes of judging, was attended by most deplorable consequences. This we admit; but we add this note for the purpose of showing, that, in saying all this, we do not necessarily accuse the sovereign pontiff of having done wrong in issuing his brief. We confess we are slow to bring an accusation against the sovereign pontiff, even in matters where faitli permits us to canvass freely his acts. We would not willingly or consciously refuse to admit error or wickedness, wherever we find it; but we shrink, we own, from charging the Pope with erring, merely because we do not chance to sec the wisdom and propriety of his acts, or because they seem to us unwise and improper. We would use our liberty as not abusing it. The sovereign pontiffs, when they act from their own judgment, may doubtless err; but they have reason and judgment as well as we, and perhaps are not more likely to err than wo are. The reverential and obedient spirit that submits in all meekness and humility is dearer to God than the rash, captions, and insubordinate spirit that finds fault, and resists. It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. Under the circumstances, it may be the suppression of the Jesuits was wise and salutary. It is our duty always to presume the public measures of the sovereign pontiff are wise and just, unless we have positive evidence to the contrary.)

And now we may be allowed to inquire, What were the benefits reaped, either by the Church or state, in consequence of the suppression of the institute of Loyola ? Were any of those that had been promised, and that danced like night-visions before the misguided defenders of the Church, were any of them ever realized ? Not one. Instead of long, sunny clays of unity and peace, the Church, bereft of her children and bodyguard, put on sackcloth and mourning. The faithful stood aghast with fear, — holy prelates and pastors wept and prayed in secret, — the march of the Gospel was stayed, — the missions were abandoned, —'darkness and confusion covered the earth, — crimes and abominations unutterable followed, such as, while history recounts the deeds of men, shall be the terror and the amazement of the civilized world.    It was to preserve religion and monarchy that the Church and state combined to suppress the Jesuits, Twenty years after, to a day, the French republic solemnly renounced all religion and all monarchy-) forced the people to renounce them on pain of death, slew their own king, a son of St. Louis, upon a scaffold, and erected the crime of regicide, which they had accused the Jesuits of tolerating, into a republican virtue. A little later, and all Europe presented a scene of battles and of blood ; forty kingdoms were overthrown; kings were made and unmade at the will of one man. The Popes and the College of Cardinals were made prisoners in Rome, and afterwards transported to France and incarcerated.

The fatal error was discovered, and publicly as well as privately avowed ; and from every quarter of Europe, and louder than all from Spain, Portugal, and France, there arose a cry for the restoration of the Jesuits. That cry was heard, and in 1814, just forty-one years after the suppression of the Institute, Pius the Seventh published the bull for its restoration, amid the cries of joy, the acclamations, and the plaudits of the Christian world. The Roman people accompanied Pius the Seventh from the Quirinal Palace to the church of Gesu, where the bull was read, and the Pope's return to his palace was a triumphal march.

" It was in the church of Gesu, in presence of the whole Sacred College and of the patricians of Rome, that the bull was promulgated. Father Pannizoni, Provincial of Italy and General for the time being, received it from the Pope's hands. All the old Jesuits that could be assembled were present, saluting with tears of filial piety their mother risen from the dead. Eighty-six venerable men hasten to reassume the yoke of obedience. Albert of Montalto, aged one hundred and Uucnty-six years, during one hundred and eight of which he had been a Jesuit, stood at the head of these veterans of the Order. An immense void was to be filled, and the sons of the noblest families in Italy eagerly offered themselves to the work. By the side of the Angiolini, the Crassi, the Pannizoni, arose an Altieri, a Pallavicini, a Patrizi, an Azeglio, a Ricasoli, who in concert with the Fathers Piancini, Sinone, Manera, and Secchi, infused new vigor into that body, whose courage had never faltered in presence of danger." — Vol. V; pp. 523, 524.

From that clay the Society has constantly and rapidly increased. It has revived its missionary stations, it has reopened its colleges, it presents each day new aspirants to sufferings and martyrdom, and, vigorous, active, and successful as in its palmiest days, it is now occupied in every quarter of the globe in the sublime work of civilizing and evangelizing the world.

Thus, as faithfully as the limits of a single article would permit, we have endeavoured to convey an idea of the immense benefits conferred upon the world by the humble fathers of the Company of Jesus. We have not aimed to give a history of the Society, but merely to sketch an imperfect outline of their labors in the cause of religion and humanity. In an entire volume it were impossible to narrate the half of what they have achieved for the human race ; sufficient, however, has, we think, been said, to show how faithfully they accomplished the two primary objects of their mission,—the advancement of true religion, and the promotion of useful knowledge.

In conclusion, we cannot too strongly urge it upon our readers never for one moment to lend an ear to the calumnies of the enemies of the Jesuits. Who are those enemies ? The enemies of God and of his Church, — the impious, the abandoned, the insane.

Indeed, no encomium can speak more eloquently the praises of the Society of Jesus, or more efFectually commend it to our respect, than a retrospective comparison of the character and avowed sentiments of its opponents on the one hand, and its partisans and defenders on the other. For, if such men as Marion and Servin, Pombal and D'Aranda, Choiseul and Florida Bi-anca, Calvin and Beza, Arnauld and St. Cyr, Voltaire and D'Alembert, and, in this our day, Guizot, Michelet, and Eugene Sue, accompanied by a dense cloud of infidels and blasphemers, have been associated in desperate league to oppose, vilify, and persecute the Society of Jesus, it has not been, we may be certain, with an eye to the advancement of the glory of the Most High, and the dissemination of Christianity, and the amelioration of society, and the preservation of law and order ; but rather to compass an end dark and sinister, to overturn established governments, to blast virtue, to sap the foundations of Christianity, to break in pieces the chair of St. Peter, to exterminate the Catholic faith. The confusion of ideas, the infidelity, the crimes and unutterable abominations which immediately followed the suppression of the Order, and the fiendish exultations of those by whose eflorts and writings it was effected, constitute an imperishable evidence of the truth and justice of our assertion.
If, on the other hand, we consider that among the friends and warm defenders of the Jesuits are to be numbered thirty illustrious popes, — a St. Charles, a St. Philip Neri, a St. Theresa, a St. Francis of Sales, a St. Vincent of Paul, a St. Liguori, and a host of saints and martyrs who have been at once the pride of Christianity and the glory of their age, not one of whom ever breathed a word against the Jesuits, but all of whom have cooperated with, them and combated for them ; the most illustrious emperors of the German confederation, from Rodolph to Maria Theresa, Henry the Fourth of France, and Louis the Fourteenth, Sobieski, John the Third and Fifth of Portugal, Frederick of Prussia, and Catherine of Russia, the kings and princes of the north and of the south ; all the members, with the exception of some three or four who had scandalized the faithful by their disorders or heresies, — all the
members of the Sacred College of Cardinals, the most venerable and learned body in the world ; archbishops and bishops occupying the most distinguished sees, such as Hovius, Bos-suet, Fenelon, and the illustrious De Beaumont; generals and fathers of the different religious orders, the Benedictines, the Dominicans, the Cistercians, the Franciscans, the Augustin-ians, the Carmelites, the Trinitarians, the Theatins, and the Barnabites, who, magnanimously forgetting every sentiment of rivalry, warmly and eloquently espoused the cause of the persecuted Jesuits; magistrates and scholars, patriots and poets, historians and philosophers, Montesquieu and Le Jay, Tasso and Corneille, Leibnitz and Bacon, Descartes and BufFon, De Maistre and Bonald, Chateaubriand and O'Connell ; — if, wo say, such men be the friends and defenders of the Jesuits, may we not, ought we not to, be justified in honoring and revering them as the most fearless and potent champions of truth, as the most unsparing enemies of vice and irreligion, and as the most enlightened heralds of civilization ?
Happy art thou, my country, refuge of the exile and home of the pilgrim, to have received within thy borders some choice bands of these honored fathers, who, from their peaceful solitudes and the laborious fields of their missionary toils, invoke and obtain the benedictions of Heaven on thy sons ! Happy art thou to have thy loveliest mountains crowned with colleges of the Institute of Jesus, which, like blazing beacons, illumine the path of thy pilgrims, and shed abroad upon the hearts of thy children the light of truth and the fervor of virtue !
In our next Review we propose to take up and consider the more serious of the charges which are commonly urged against the Society of Jesus, in reply to the infamous work, The Jesuits, by Messrs. Michelet and Quinet, recently translated and published among us by that literary charlatan, Charles Edwards Lester, — a man who will, no doubt, ere long, sink to his native level.(footnote: Since the above was written, we have read with considerable interest and pleasure an article entitled The Jesuits, in the Southern Quarterly Revieio for January last. The article is written with ability, and, considering it is by a Protestant, with a good deal of fairness. The writer, however, falls into some errors of fact and speculation, which we may notice when we come to consider the charges preferred against the Jesuits. The same number of the Revieio also speaks at some length of the Jesuits, in a scorching criticism of the Wandering Jew, by Eugene Sue. We thank this able periodical for its earnest denunciation of the work of the French.)