12 LOYOLA AND THE JESUITS. 



and exalted natures have been intensified, without 

 being abased, by the pressure to which they have 

 been subjected. 



It is not for nothing that the Society studies the 

 character of its members so intently, and by meth- 

 ods so startling. It not only uses its knowledge to 

 thrust into obscurity or cast out altogether those 

 whom it discovers to be dull, feeble, or unwilling 

 instruments of its purposes, but it assigns to every 

 one the task to which his talents or his disposition 

 may best adapt him : to one, the care of a royal 

 conscience, whereby, unseen, his whispered word 

 may guide the destiny of nations ; to another, the 

 instruction of children ; to another, a career of 

 letters or science ; and to the fervent and the 

 self-sacrificing, sometimes also to the restless and 

 uncompliant, the distant missions to the heathen. 



The Jesuit was, and is, everywhere, — in the 

 school-room, in the library, in the cabinets of 

 princes and ministers, in the huts of savages, in 

 the tropics, in the frozen North, in India, in China, 

 in Japan, in Africa, in America ; now as a Chris- 

 tian priest, now as a soldier, a mathematician, an 

 astrologer, a Brahmin, a mandarin, under countless 

 disguises, by a thousand arts, luring, persuading, or 

 compelling souls into the fold of Eome. 



Of this vast mechanism for guiding and govern- 

 ing the minds of men, this mighty enginery for 

 subduing the earth to the dominion of an idea, this 

 harmony of contradictions, this moral Proteus, the 

 faintest sketch must now suifice. A disquisition 

 on the Society of Jesus would be without end. 



