ong as he was true to the interests
of France.

So of the Jesuits,--there is no mystery in their success; the same
causes would produce the same results again. When Catholic Europe saw
men born to wealth and rank voluntarily parting with their goods and
honors; devoting themselves to religious duties, often in a humble
sphere; spending their days in schools and hospitals; wandering as
preachers and missionaries amid privations and in fatigue; encountering
perils and dangers and hardships with fresh and ever-sustained
enthusiasm; and finally yielding up their lives as martyrs, to proclaim
salvation to idolatrous savages,--it knew them to be heroic, and
believed them to be sincere, and honored them in consequence. When
parents saw that the Jesuits entered heart and soul into the work of
education, winning their pupils' hearts by kindness, watching their
moods, directing their minds into congenial studies, and inspiring them
with generous sentiments, they did not stop to pry into their motives;
and universities, when they discovered the superior culture of educated
Jesuits, outstripping all their associates in learning, and shedding a
light by their genius and erudition, very naturally appointed them to
the highest chairs; and even the people, when they saw that the Jesuits
were not stained by vulgar vices, but were hard-working, devoted to
their labors, earnest, and eloquent, put themselves under their
teachings; and especially when they added gentlemanly manners, good
taste, and agreeable conversation to their unimpeachable morality and
religious fervor, they made these men their confessors as well as
preachers. Their lives stood out in glorious contrast with those of the
old monks and the regular clergy, in an age of infidel levities, when
the Italian renaissance was bearing its worst fruits, and men were going
back to Pagan antiquity for their pleasures and opinions.

That the early Jesuits blazed with virtues and learning and piety has
never been denied, although these things have been poetically
exaggerated. The world was astonished at their intrepidity, zeal, and
devotion. They were not at first intriguing, or ambitious, or covetous.
They loved their Society; but they loved still more what they thought
was the glory of God. _Ad majoram Dei gloriam_ was the motto which was
emblazoned on their standard when they went forth as Christian warriors
to overcome the heresies of Christendom and the superstitions of
idolate