The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1869-07-10

4
FROM srlay's History Of England.
Before the order hs~ existed q hundred years,
it had filled the whou world with memorials oil
great things done ard altered for the faith. Nc
religious community rould produce a list of men
| 90 variously distir lshed; mono had extended
| its operations owe SO vast space; yet in none
had there ever been such perfect unity of feeling
and action. There was no region OF the globe,
no walk of speculative or of active life, in which
Jesuits were not to be found. They guided the
oounsels of kings. They deciphered Latin in
scriptions. They observed the motions of Jupi.
ter's satellites. They published whole Libraries,
controversy, csuistry history treatises on optics,
Alcaic odes. litions of the fathers, madrigals,
cstechisms nd lampoons. The liberal educa.
| ton of vol passed almost into their hands, and
| was condut led by them with conspicuous ability.
Enmity its If was compelled to own that, IN the
art of managing and forming he tender mind,
ly and successfully cultivated the eloquence Of
the pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still
greater success they applied themselves to the
ministry of the confessional. Throughout Cath
Ollie Europe the secrets OF every government and
of almost every family Of note were in their keep
ing. They glided from one protestant country
to another under innumerable DISCUSSES, as gay
cavaliers as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers.
They wandered to countries which neither mer-
camille avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever i'm
PEELED any stranger to explore. They were to
be found in the garb of Mandarins, superintend-
ing the observatory at Pekn. They were to be
found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments Of
agriculture 10 the savages of Paraguay Yet,
whatever might be their residence whatever
might be their employment, their spirit was the
same, entire devotion to the common cause, i'm
plicit obedience to the Central authority. None
of them had chosen bis dwelling place or LIS vo-
cation for himself. Whether the Jesuits should
live under the Attic circle or the equator, wheth-
er he should pass his life in arranging gems,
collecting manuscripts at the Vatican, or in per-
suading naked barbarians in the southern hem
isphere not to eat each other, were matters
which he left with profound submission to the
decision of others. If he was wanted at Bagdad
he was toiling through the desert with the next
caravan. If his ministry was need I'd in some
country where his life was nor secure than
that OF wolf, where it was CT me so harbor
him, where the heads and quarters of his breth.
rem, fixed in the public places, showed him what
he had to expect, he went without remonstrance
or hesitation to his doom. Nor is this heroic
spirit yet extinct. When in our own time, q
new and terrible pestilence passed around the
globe, when, in some great cities, fear had dis
solved all the ties which held society together,
when the secular clergy had deserted their focks;
when medical succOr was not to bepurchased with
gold; when the strongest natural a1i stiops had
yielde' the love of life, even then the Jesuit
was TO. by he pallet which bishop and curate,
physicians and nurse, father and MOTHER had
deserted, bending over infected lips to catch the
faint accents of confession, and holding up to the
last, before the expiring penitent, the image of
the expiring Redeemer.