man distinguished not more by the gigantic | but enhance the wonder. To transmute promagnitude of his designs, than by the clear fligates into converts, by a process of which, good sense, the profound sagacity, the calm during any one of her revolutions round our perseverance, and the flexible address with planet, the moon is to witness the commence. which he was to pursue them. History affords ment and the close, might perhaps seem like a no more perfect illustration how readily deliri- plagiarism from the academies of Laputa. cus enthusiasm and the shrewdness of the ex- But in his great, and indeed his only extant change may combine and harmonize in minds work, Ignatius Loyola is no dreamer. By of the heroic order. A Swedenborg-Franklin, force of an instinct with which such minds as reconciling in himself these antagonist pro- his alone are gifted, he could assume the chapensities, is no monster of the fancy. racter to which the shrewd, the practical, and the worldly-wise aspire, even when abandoning himself to ecstasies which they are alike unable to comprehend or to endure. His mind resembled the body of his great disciple, Francis Xavier, which, as he preached or baptized, rose majestically towards the skies, while his feet (the pious curiosity of his hearers ascertained the fact,) retained their firm hold on the earth below. If the spiritual exer. cises were designed to excite, they were not less intended to control and to regulate, religious sensibilities. To exalt the spirit above terrestrial objects was scarcely more his aim, than to disenchant mankind of the self-deceits by which that exaltation is usually attempted. The book, it is true, indicates a tone of feeling utterly removed from that which animates the gay and the busy scenes of life; but it could not have been written except by one accustomed to observe those scenes with the keenest scrutiny, and to study the actors in them with the most profound discernment. To this commendation must be added the praise (to borrow terms but too familiar) of evangelical orthodoxy. A Protestant synod might indeed have extracted from the pages of Ignatius many propositions to anathematize; but they could also have drawn from them much to confirm the doctrines to which their confessions had given such emphatic prominency, If he yielded to the demigods of Rome what we must regard as an idolatrous homage, it would be mere prejudice to deny that his supreme adoration was reserved for that awful Being to whom alone it was due. If he ascribed to merely ritual expiations a value of which we believe them to be altogether destitute, yet were all his mighty powers held in the most earnest and submissive affiance in the divine nature, as revealed under the veil of human infirmity and of more than human suffering. After the lapse of two centuries, Philip Doddridge, than whom no man ever breathed 'more freely on earth the atmosphere of heaven, produced a work of which the Spiritual Exercises might have afforded the model-so many are still the points of contact between those who, ranging themselves round the great object of Christianity as their common centre, occupy the most opposite positions in that expanded circle.

On his restoration to human society, Ignatius reappeared in the garb, and addressed himself to the occupations of other religious men. The first fruits of his labours was the book of which we have transcribed the title-page. It was originally written in Spanish, and appeared in an inaccurate Latin version. By the order of the present pope, Loyola's manuscript, still remaining in the Vatican, has been again translated. In this new form the book is commended to the devout study of the faithful by a bull of Pope Paul III., and by an encyclical epistle from the present general of the order of Jesus. To so august a sanction, slight indeed is the aid which can be given by the suffrage of northern heretics. Yet on this subject the chair of Knox, if now filled by himself, would not be very widely at variance with the throne of St. Peter. The "Spiritual Exercises" form a manual of what may be called "the act of conversion." It proposes a scheme of selfdiscipline by which, in the course of four weeks, that mighty work is to be accomplished. In the first, the penitent is conducted through a series of dark retrospects to abase, and of gloomy prospects to alarm him. These ends obtained, he is during the next seven days to enrol himself-such is the military style of the book-in the army of the faithful, studying the sacred biography of the Divine Leader of that elect host, and choosing with extreme caution the plan of life, religious or secular, in which he may be best able to tread in his steps, and to bear the standard emblematic at once of suffering and of conquest. To sustain the soldier of the cross in this protracted warfare, his spiritual eye is, during the third of his solitary weeks, to be fixed in a reverential scrutiny into that unfathomable abyss of wo, into which a descent was once made to rescue the race of Adam from the grasp of their mortal enemies; and then seven suns are to rise and set while the still secluded but now disen. thralled spirit is to chant triumphant hallelujahs, elevating her desires heavenward, contemplating glories hitherto unimaginable, and mysteries never before revealed; till the sacred cxercises close with an absolute surrender of all the joys and interests of this sublunary state, as a holocaust, to be consumed by the undying flame of divine love on the altar of the regenerate heart.

He must have been deeply read in the nature of man, who should have predicted such first fruits as these from the restored health of the distracted visionary, who had alternately sounded the base strings of humility on earth, and the living chords which vibrate with spontaneous harmonies along the seventh heavens. A closer survey of the book will

From the publication of the "Spiritual Exercises" to the Vow of Montmartre, nine years elapsed. They wore away in pilgrimages, in feats of asceticism, in the working of miracles, and in escapes all but miraculous, from dangers which the martial spirit of the saint, no less than his piety, impelled him to incur. In the caverns of Monreza he had vowed to scale the heights of 'perfection' and it therefore be

hooved him thus to climb that obstinate emi- | traversing the Netherlands and England as a nence, in the path already trodden by all the beggar. Unheeded and despised as he sat at canonized and beatified heroes of the church. the feet of the learned, or solicited alms of the But he had also vowed to conduct his fellow-rich, he was still maturing in the recesses of pilgrims from the city of destruction to the his bosom designs more lofty than the highest land of Beulah. In prison and in shipwreck, fainting with hunger or wasted with disease, his inflexible spirit still brooded over that bright, though as yet shapeless vision; until at length it assumed a coherent form as he knelt on the mount of Olives, and traced the last indelible foot-print of the ascending Redeemer of mankind. At that hallowed spot had ended the weary way of Him who had bowed the heavens, and came down to execute on earth a mission of unutterable love and matchless self-denial; and there was revealed to the prophetic gaze of the future founder of the order of Jesus, (no seer-like genius kindled by high resolves,) the long line of missionaries who, animated by his example, and guided by his instructions, should proclaim that holy name from the rising to the setting sun. It was indeed a futurity perceptible only to the telescopic eye of faith. At the mature age of thirty, possessing no language but his own, no science but that of the camp, and no literature beyond the biographies of Paladins, and of saints, he became the self-destined teacher of the future teachers of the world. Hoping against hope, he returned to Barcelona, and there, as the class-fellow of little children, commenced the study of the first rudiments of the Latin tongue.

Among the established facetiæ of the stage, are the distractions of dramatic Eloisas under the tutorship of their Abelards, in the attempt to conjugate Amo. Few play-wrights, probably, | have been aware that the jest had its type, if not its origin, in the scholastic experiences of Ignatius Loyola. At the same critical point, and in the same manner, a malignant spirit arrested his advance in the grammar. On each successive inflection of the verb, corresponding elevations heavenwards were excited in his soul by the demon, who, assuming the garb of an angel of light, thus succeeded in disturbing his memory. To baffle his insidious enemy, the harassed scholar employed the pedagogue to make liberal use of that discipline of which who can ever forget the efficacy or the pain? The exorcism was complete. Amo, in all her affectionate moods, and changeful tenses, became familiar as household words. Thus Thomas à Kempis was made to speak intelligibly. Erasmus also revealed his hidden treasures of learning and wit, though ultimately exiled from the future schools of the Jesuits, for the same offence of having disturbed the thoughts of his devout reader. Energy won her accustomed triumphs, and, in the year 1528, he became a student of the Humanities, and of what was then called philosophy, at the University of Paris.

Of the seven decades of human life, the brightest and the best, in which other men achieve or contend for distinction, was devoted by Ignatius to the studies preparatory to his great undertaking. Grave professors examined him on their prælections, and, when these were over, he sought the means of subsistence by

To

to which the monarchs of the houses of Valois or of Tudor had ever dared to aspire. In the University of Paris he at length found the means of carrying into effect the cherished purposes of so many years. It was the heroic age of Spain, and the countrymen of Gonsalvo and Cortes lent a willing ear to counsels of daring on any field of adventure, whether secular or spiritual. His companions in study thus became his disciples in religion. Nor were his the common-place methods of making converts. To the contemplative and the timid, he enjoined hardy exercises of active virtue. To the gay and ardent, he appeared in a spirit still more buoyant than their own. a debauchee, whom nothing else couid move, he presented himself neck-deep in a pool of frozen water, to teach the more impressively the duty of subduing the carnal appetites. To an obdurate priest, he made a general confession of his own sins, with such agonies of remorse and shame, as to break up, by force of sympathy, the fountains of penitence in the bosom of the confessor. Nay, he even engaged at billiards with a joyous lover of the game, on condition that the defeated player should serve his antagonist for a month; and the victorious saint enforced the penalty by consigning his adversary a month of secluded devotion. Others yielded at once and without a struggle to the united influence of his sanctity and genius; and it is remarkable that, from these more docile converts, he selected, with but two exceptions, the original members of his infant order. Having performed the initiatory rite of the Spiritual Exercises, they all swore on the consecrated host in the crypt of St. Denys, to accompany their spiritual father on a mission to Palestine; or, if that should be impracticable, to submit themselves to the vicar of Christ, to be disposed of as missionaries at his pleasure.

Impetuous as had been the temper of Ignatius in early life, he had learned to be patient of the slow growth of great designs. Leaving his disciples to complete their studies at Paris under the care of Peter Faber, he returned to Spain to recruit their number, to mature his plans, and, perhaps, to escape from a too familiar intercourse with his future subjects. In the winter of 1536, they commenced their pilgrimage to the eternal city. Xavier was their leader. Accomplished in all courtly exercises, he prepared for his journey by binding tight cords round his arms and legs, in holy revenge for the pleasure which their graceful agility had once afforded him; and pursued his way with Spartan constancy, till the corroded flesh closed obstinately over the ligatures. Miracle, the prompt handmaid of energies like his, burst the bands which no surgeon could extricate; and her presence was attested by the toils which his loosened limbs immediately endured in the menial service of his fellow travellers. At Venice they rejoined their leader, and there employed themselves in mi

nistering to the patients in the hospitals. Fore- ten successive years their initiatory discipline most in every act of intrepid self-mortification, had been conducted. Wildly as their leader Xavier here signalized his zeal by exploits, may have described his survey of the celestial the mere recital of which would derange the regions, and of their triumphant inmates, he stomachs of ordinary men. While courting had anxiously weighed the state of the world all the physical tortures of purgatory, his soul, in which he dwelt, and the nature of his fellow however, inhaled the anticipated raptures of sojourners there. He was intimately aware Paradise. Twice these penances and raptures of the effects on human character of self-acbrought him to the gates of death; and, in his quaintance, of action, and of suffering. He last extremity, he caused himself to be borne therefore required his disciples to scrutinize to places of public resort, that his ghastly as- the recesses and the workings of their own pect might teach the awful lessons which his hearts, till the aching sense found relief rather tongue was no longer able to pronounce. than excitement, in turning from the wonders and the shame within, to the mysteries and the glories of the world of unembodied spirits. He trained them to ceaseless activity, until the transmutation of means into ends was complete; and efforts, at first the most irksome, had become spontaneous and even grateful exercises. He accustomed them to every form of privation and voluntary pain, until fortitude, matured into habit, had been the source of enjoyments, as real as to the luxurious they are incomprehensible. He rendered them stoics, mystics, enthusiasts, and then combined all into an institute, than which no human association was ever more emphatically prac tical, or more to the purpose and the time.

Such prodigies, whether enacted by the saints of Rome or by those of Benares, exhibit a sovereignty of the spiritual over the animal nature, which can hardly be contemplated without some feelings akin to reverence. But, on the whole, the hooked Faqueer spinning round his gibbet is the more respectable suicide of the two for his homage is, at least, meet for the deity he worships. He whose name had been assumed by Ignatius and his followers, equally victorious over the stoical illusions and the lower affections of our nature, had been accustomed to seek repose among the domestic charities of life, and to accept such blameless solaces as life has to offer to the weary and the heavy-laden; nor could services less in harmony with his serene self-reverence have been presented to him, than the vehement emotions, the squalid filth, and the lacerated frames of the first members of the society of Jesus. Loyola himself tolerated, encouraged, and shared these extravagances. His countenance was as haggard, his flagellations as cruel, and his couch and diet as sordid as the rest. They who will conquer crowns, whether ghostly or secular, must needs tread in slippery places. He saw his comrades faint and die with the extremity of their sufferings, and assuming the character of an inspired prophet, promoted, by predicting, their recovery. One of the gentlest and most patient of them, Rodriguez, flying for relief to a solitary hermitage, found his retreat obstructed by a man of terrible aspect and gigantic stature, armed with a naked sword and breathing menaces. Hosez, another of his associates, happening to die at the moment when Ignatius, prostrate before the altar, was reciting from the Confiteor the words, et omnibus sanctis,' that countless host was revealed to the eye of the saint; and among them, resplendent in glory, appeared his deceased friend, to sustain and animate the hopes of his surviving brethren. As he journeyed with Laynez, he saw a still more awful vision. It exhibited that Being whom no eye hath seen, and whom no tongue may lightly name, and with him the eternal Son, bearing a heavy cross, and uttering the welcome assurance, "I will be propitious to you at Rome."

These, however, were but the auxiliary and occasional arts (if so they must be termed) by which the sovereignty of Ignatius was established. It behooved him to acquire the unhesitating submission of noble minds, ignited by a zeal as intense and as enduring as his own; and it was on a far loftier basis than that of bodily penances or ecstatic dreams, that for

Of all the occupations to which man can devote the earlier years of life, none probably leaves on the character an impress so deep and indelible as the profession of arms. In no other calling are the whole range of our sympathetic affections, whether kindly or the reverse, called into such habitual and active exercise; nor does any other stimulate the mere intellectual powers with a force so irresistible, when once they are effectually aroused from their accustomed torpor. Loyola was a soldier to the last breath he drew, a general whose authority none might question, a comrade on whose cordiality all might rely, sustaining all the dangers and hardships he exacted of his followers, and in his religious campaigns a strategist of consummate skill and most comprehensive survey. It was his maxim that war ought to be aggressive, and that even an inadequate force might be wisely weakened by detachments on a distant service, if the prospect of success was such, that the vague and perhaps exaggerated rumour of it would strike terror into nearer foes, and animate the hopes of irresolute allies. To conquer Lutheranism, by converting to the faith of Rome the barba rous or half-civilized nations of the earth, was, therefore, among the earliest of his projects; and his searching eye had scanned the spirits of his lieutenants to discover which of them was best adapted for enterprises so replete with difficulty and hazard. It was necessary that he should select men superior, not only to all the allurements of appetite, and the common infirmities of our race, but superior, also, to those temptations to which an inquisitive mind and abilities of a high order expose their possessor. His missionaries must be men prepared to do and to dare, but not much disposed to speculate. They must burn with a zeal which no sufferings or disappointment could extinguish; but must not feel those impulses which might prompt men of large capa

city to convert a subordinate into an indepen- | soul?" The world which Xavier had sought dent command. Long he weighed, and most to gain, was indeed already exhibiting to him sagaciously did he decide this perplexing its accustomed treachery. It had given him choice. It fell on many who well fulfilled amusement and applause; but with his selfthese conditions, but on none in whom all the government had stolen from him his pupils requisites for such a service met so marvel- and his emoluments. Ignatius recruited both. lously as on him who had borne himself so He became the eulogist of the genius and the bravely in the chapel of St. Denys, and with eloquence of his friend, and, as he presented to such strange mortifications of the flesh in the him the scholars attracted by these panegyrics, pilgrimage to Rome. I would repeat them in the presence of the delighted teacher; and then, as his kindling eye attested the sense of conscious and acknowledged merit, would check the rising exultation by the ever-recurring question, What shall it profit?" Improvidence squandered these new resources; but nothing could damp the zeal of Ignatius. There he was again, though himself the poorest of the poor, ministering to the wants of Xavier, from a purse filled by the alms he had solicited; but there again was also the same unvarying demand, urged in the same rich though solemn cadence, "What shall it profit?" In the unrelaxing grasp of the strong man-at once forgiven and assisted, rebuked and beloved by his stern associateXavier gradually yielded to the fascination. He became, like his master, impassive, at least in appearance, to all sublunary pains and pleasures; and having performed the initiatory rite of the Spiritual Exercises, excelled all his brethren of the society of Jesus in the fervour of his devotion and the austerity of his self-discipline.

It was in the year 1506 that Francis Xavier, the youngest child of a numerous family, was born in the castle of his ancestors in the Pyrenees. Robust and active, of a gay humour and ardent spirit, the young mountaineer listened with a throbbing heart to the military legends of his house, and to the inward voice which spoke of days to come, when his illustrious lineage should derive new splendour from his own achievements. But the hearts of his parents yearned over the son of their old age; and the enthusiasm which would have borne him to the pursuit of glory in the camp, was diverted by their counsels to the less hazardous contest for literary eminence at the University of Paris. From the embrace of Aristotle and his commentators, he would, however, have been prematurely withdrawn by the failure of his resources, (for the lords of Xavier were not wealthy,) if a domestic prophetess (his eldest sister) had not been inspired to reveal his marvellous career and immortal recompense. For a child destined to have altars raised to his name throughout the Whatever might have been his reward in Catholic church, and masses chanted in his another life, his name would have probably honour till time should be no longer, every left no trace in the world's records, if John III. sacrifice was wisely made; and he was thus of Portugal, resolving to plant the Christian enabled to struggle on at the college of St. faith on the Indian territories which had beBarbara, till he had become qualified to earn come subject to the dominion or influence of his own maintenance as a public teacher of his crown, had not petitioned the pope to select philosophy. His chair was crowded by the some fit leader in this peaceful crusade. On studious, and his society courted by the gay, the advice of Ignatius, the choice of the holy the noble, and the rich. It was courted, also, father fell on Francis Xavier. A happier seby one who stood aloof from the thronging|lection could not have been made, nor was a multitude; among them, but not of them. Sordid in dress but of lofty bearing, at once unimpassioned and intensely earnest, abstemious of speech, yet occasionally uttering, in deep and most melodious tones, words of strange significance, Ignatius Loyola was gradually working over the mind of his young companion a spell which no difference of taste, of habits, or of age, was of power to subdue. Potent as it was, the charm was long resisted. Hilarity was the native and indispensable element of Francis Xavier, and in his grave monitor he found an exhaustless topic of mirth and raillery. Armed with satire, which was not always playful, the light heart of youth contended, as best it might, against the solemn Impressions which he could neither welcome nor avoid. Whether he partook of the frivolities in which he delighted, or in the disquisitions in which he excelled, or traced the windings of the Seine through the forest which then lined its banks, Ignatius was still at hand to discuss with him the charms of society, of learning, or of nature; but, whatever had been the theme, it was still closed by the same awful inquiry, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own

summons to toil, to suffering, and to death, ever so joyously received. In the visions of the night he had often groaned under the incumbent weight of a wild Indian, of ebon hue and gigantic stature, seated on his shoulders; and he had often traversed tempestuous seas, enduring shipwreck and famine, persecution and danger, in all their most ghastly forms; and as each peril was encountered, his panting soul had invoked, in still greater abundance, the means of making such glorious sacrifices for the conversion of mankind. When the clearer sense and the approaching accomplishment of these dark intimations were disclosed to him, passionate sobs attested the rapture which his tongue could not speak. Light of heart, and joyful in discourse, he conducted his fellow-pilgrims from Rome to Lisbon, across the Pyrenees. As he descended their southern slopes, there rose to his sight the towers where he had enjoyed the sports of childhood, and woven the day-dreams of youth; where still lived the mother, who for eighteen years had daily watched and blessed him, and the saintly sister whose inspired voice had foretold his high vocation. It was all too high for the momentary intrusion of the holiest of