-lit city the enthusiastic Loyola had bound his six
companions with irrevocable vows--he had established his Society in the
confidence and affection of Catholic Europe, against the voice of
universities, the fears of monarchs, and the jealousy of the other
monastic orders. In sixteen years, this ridiculed and wandering Spanish
fanatic had risen to a condition of great influence and dignity, second
only in power to the Pope himself; animating the councils of the
Vatican, moving the minds of kings, controlling the souls of a numerous
fraternity, and making his influence felt in every corner of the world.
Before the remembrance of his passionate eloquence, his eyes of fire,
and his countenance of seraphic piety had passed away from the minds of
his own generation, his disciples "had planted their missionary stations
among Peruvian mines, in the marts of the African slave-trade, among the
islands of the Indian Ocean, on the coasts of Hindustan, in the cities
of Japan and China, in the recesses of Canadian forests, amid the wilds
of the Rocky Mountains." They had the most important chairs in the
universities; they were the confessors of monarchs and men of rank; they
had the control of the schools of Italy, France, Austria, and Spain; and
they had become the most eloquent, learned, and fashionable preachers in
all Catholic countries. They had grown to be a great institution,--an
organization instinct with life, a mechanism endued with energy and
will; forming a body which could outwatch Argus with his hundred eyes,
and outwork Briareus with his hundred arms; they had twenty thousand
eyes open upon every cabinet, every palace, and every private family in
Catholic Europe, and twenty thousand arms extended over the necks of
every sovereign and all their subjects,--a mighty moral and spiritual
power, irresponsible, irresistible, omnipresent, connected intimately
with the education, the learning, and the religion of the age; yea, the
prime agents in political affairs, the prop alike of absolute monarchies
and of the papal throne, whose interests they made identical. This
association, instinct with one will and for one purpose, has been
beautifully likened by Doctor Williams to the chariot in the Prophet's
vision: "The spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels; wherever
the living creatures went, the wheels went with them; wherever those
stood, these stood: when the living creatures were lifted up, the wheels
were lifted up o