obedience to the great commission. The motive to obedience is twofold: a divine philanthropy, and a spirit of loyalty. For many weary, dreary years even the professed followers of Jesus Christ had been unmindful of his command, and without the inspiration of this motive. Amidst the dense darkness of the middle ages, there was only here and there a glimmer of gospel light. But when the Renaissance began to enlighten and liberate the minds of men, and the Reformation to touch their hearts, then began the inquiry into the needs of their fellow-men, and the sense of personal responsibility followed; and the solution of the problem of giving the gospel to a lost world was undertaken. Little wonder if in that twilight hour earnest souls should stumble, and even fatal mistakes be made in the application of gospel principles and motives.

Among the first to feel the obligation of missions, and to give response to the divine ought, were the few heroic men who banded themselves together in an association destined to become historic as the Society of Jesus. We must give these men credit at the outset for planting themselves squarely on the principle of obedience to the commission of our Lord, and being wonderfully wrought upon by the twofold motive above referred to. They *** gripped with the conviction that Confianity was designed to be agWhatever Jesuitism afterward became, and whatever errors wire incorporated into the system, we mmat admit that it had its origin in the Hooght that Christians had something -inch the world needed, and which Hoy w under obligations to furAt

Beating on the command of the

SUCCESS AND THIER FAILURE

risen Lord, and swayed by the mighty impulse of love for the perishing and loyalty to duty, they went forth to their work; and the formation of the Society of Jesus was their solution of the tremendous problem of enlighten ing the world with gospel radiance. It is easy for us to see, in the light of history, that their solution was erroneous, and later exposed them to grievous dangers, and led the way ultimately to disaster, but it is only just to grant them the meed of sincerity in an honest and earnest effort to prosecute the work of world-wide missions.

In their plan of organization they were far in advance of the existing orders in the church. The earlier bodies were known as orders, and were established for the personal good of the membership, and were utterly exclusive in their sympathies and aims. But here was an organization formed with a different purpose altogether; formed by men mutually attracted to each other from different parts by the lodestone of missionary zeal. They established not an order but a company, thus suggesting in the very name the idea not of separation but of association, not of segregation but of congregation. Others had sought personal good, they aimed at the general good and were all inclusive in aim and purpose. Their organization was rigid, and, as we shall try to show a little later, seriously open to criticism, but its object in the minds of its originators was sublime, an object lost sight of for ages, but which proved them in regular apostolic succession: no less an object than world-wide supremacy for the kingdom of their Lord. In pursuance of this transcendent aim the Jesus-ites, as they might not improperly be termed, were ready to bear the gospel as they understood

it into every land. In the prosecution of their work with untiring zeal, and unflinching tenacity for more than two centuries, they actually planted the standard of the Cross in India, Japan, China, and in various parts of North and South America. Between 1540 and 1650 they had enrolled hundreds of thousands of professed converts in these different lands; 260,000 in China alone. And all this amidst well-nigh incredible hardships and persecutions; as many as 400 sacrificing their lives upon the altar of devotion in a single century.

And yet, with the right basis of action, and the right motive impelling to toil and self-renunciation, we behold the anomalous result of an almost utter obliteration of their work. The writer on the Jesuits in the Encyclopædia Britannica thus sums up the results of their manifold labors. After speaking of the universal hostility and suspicion roused against the system he goes on to say: "It_controlled the policy of Spain, when Spain was aiming, with good reason to hope for success, at the hegemony of of Europe, and Spain came out of the struggle well-nigh the last among the nations. It secured the monopoly of religious teaching and influence in France under Louis XIV and XV, only to see an atheistic revolution break out under Louis XVI, and sweep over the nation after a century of such training. It guided the action of James II, lost the crown of England for the house of Stuart, and brought about the limitation of the throne to the Protestant succession. Its Japanese and Red Indian missions have vanished without leaving a trace behind; its labors in Hindustan did but prepare the way for the English empire there; it was swept out of its Paraguayan domains without power of defence; and having in our own day concentrated its efforts on the maintenance of the temporal power of the popes, and raised it almost to the rank of a dogma of the Catholic faith, it has seen Rome proclaimed as the capital

of united Italy, and a Piedmontese sovereign enthroned in the Quirinal." An examination into the causes of this stupendous failure after such prophecy of magnificent success may well engage our attention.

We suggest two reasons only. First, that the system put man in the place of Jesus Christ. The general of the Society was practically superior to the pope himself, who as head of the Church was nominally viceregent of Christ on earth. Loyola had been a soldier, and he organized his Society with military precision and absolutism. Unquestioning obedience, not to Christ directly but to himself as Christ's representative, was demanded and enforced from every adherent. This exaltation of the human, finite will to the seat of supreme authority was in itself enough to invite ultimate defeat, for Jesus Christ never granted to any man such absolute sway over the hearts and lives of men.

Another reason lay in the obliteration of all individuality, a result naturally growing out of such despotic imperious rule. No room was left for the development of individual traits, however helpful. The man stood for nothing, and by consequence in time. manhood stood for nothing. The candidate for highest honors must begin at the age of fourteen years when the character is plastic, and the will yielding, and continue his course of training for thirty-one years till the age of practical fixedness of character is reached. And all that long course of subjection was to the end that the individual should absolutely lose himself in the system of which he had become a part. Crushing every thought but that of obedience to a superior; "the will of a Jesuit novice scooped out to make way for that of the general, as a watchmaker might remove the works of a watch from its case to make room for another." A writer suggests that "men of the highest stamp will either refuse to submit to the process, or will come forth from the mill with their finest quality pul

verized and useless." Such a system, practically eliminating the divine element while assuming to obey God, and depreciating the powers of a man while essaying to lift up humanity, was foredoomed to failure. Though the workers stood upon the one foundation, yet building with wood, hay and stubble, their building must be consumed. Crushing out the life and retaining the form while denying the power, the only logical result must be a decaying carcass, a stench in the nostrils of men and an offence to Heaven. It is a lesson for the ages upon the folly of exalting any part of the human to the rank of the divine. Loyola made the fatal mistake of seating his will on the throne of power.

It may be asked if we of to-day are not in danger of putting reason in the same seat. We may be sure that reason in place of God will prove no better master than will, and if we bow to its behests we shall soon find ourselves bereft of spiritual power, and smothering in the miasmatic atmosphere of a decaying formalism. If the world is to be evangelized, it must be by the power of an endless life pulsating every heart throb, energizing every activity, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, and yet devloping every capac ity of the individual to the highest efficiency. So shall our missionary activity and zeal be efficient and sufficient for the conquest of the world.

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