e sensual, lazy, ignorant, and
corrupt. The pope did not want such soldiers. But the followers of
Loyola were full of ardor, talent, and zeal; willing to do any thing
for a sinking cause; able to do any thing, so far as human will can
avail. And they did not disappoint the pope. Great additions were
made. They increased with marvellous rapidity. The zealous, devout,
and energetic, throughout all ranks in the Catholic church, joined
them. They spread into all lands. They became the confessors of kings,
the teachers of youth, the most popular preachers, the most successful
missionaries. In sixteen years after the scene of Montmartre, Loyola
had established his society in the affections and confidence of
Catholic Europe, against the voice of universities, the fears of
monarchs, and the jealousy of the other monastic orders. In sixteen
years, from the condition of a ridiculed fanatic, whose voice,
however, would have been disregarded a century earlier or later, he
became one of the most powerful dignitaries of the church, influencing
the councils of the Vatican, moving the minds of kings, controlling
the souls of a numerous fraternity, and making his power felt, even in
the courts of Japan and China. Before he died, his spiritual sons had
planted their missionary stations amid Peruvian mines, amid the marts
of the African slave trade, in the islands of the Indian Ocean, and in
the cities of Japan and China. Nay, his followers had secured the most
important chairs in the universities of Europe, and had become
confessors to the most powerful monarchs, teachers in the best schools
of Christendom, and preachers in its principal pulpits. They had
become an organization, instinct with life, endued with energy and
will, and forming a body which could outwatch Argus with his hundred
eyes, and outwork Briareus with his hundred arms. It had forty
thousand eyes open upon every cabinet and private family in Europe,
and forty thousand arms extended over the necks of both sovereigns and
people. It had become a mighty power in the world, inseparably
connected with the education and the religion of the age, the prime
mover of all political affairs, the grand prop of absolute monarchies,
the last hope of the papal hierarchy.

[Sidenote: Rapid Spread of the Jesuits.]

The sudden growth and enormous resources of the "Society of Jesus"
impress us with feelings of amazement and awe. We almost attribute
them to the agency of mysterious powers,