the times. They threw away the old
dresses of monastic life; they quitted the cloister and places of
meditation; they were preachers as well as scholars; they accommodated
themselves to the circumstances of the times; they wore the ordinary
dress of gentlemen; they remained men of the world, of fine manners and
cultivated speech; there was nothing ascetic or repulsive about them,
like other monks; they were all things to all men, like politicians, in
order to accomplish their ends; they never were lazy, or profligate or
luxurious. If their Order became enriched, they as individuals remained
poor. The inferior members were not even ambitious; like good soldiers,
they thought of nothing but the work assigned to them. Their pride and
glory were the prosperity of their Order,--an intense _esprit de corps_,
never equalled by any body of men. This, of course, while it gave them
efficiency, made them narrow. They could see the needle on the
barn-door,--they could not see the door itself. Hence there could be no
agreement with them, no argument with them, except on ordinary matters;
they were as zealous as Saul, seeking to make proselytes. They yielded
nothing except in order to win; they never compromised their Order in
their cause. Their fidelity to their head was marvellous; and so long as
they confined themselves to the work of making people better, I think
they deserved praise. I do not like their military organization, but I
should have no more right to abuse it than the organization of some
Protestant sects. That is a matter of government; all sects and all
parties, Catholic and Protestant, have a right to choose their own
government to carry out their ends, even as military generals have a
right to organize their forces in their own way. The history of the
Jesuits shows this,--that an organization of forces, or what we call
discipline or government, is a great thing. A church without a
government is a poor affair, so far as efficiency is concerned. All
churches have something to learn from the Jesuits in the way of
discipline. John Wesley learned something; the Independents learned
very little,

But there is another side to the Jesuits. We have seen why they
succeeded; we have to inquire how they failed. If history speaks of the
virtues of the early members, and the wonderful mechanism of their
Order, and their great success in consequence, it also speaks of the
errors they committed, by which they lost the confidence