harmony in the midst of all the ravage and miseries of the fall; how to make creation, by its very derangement, help in the work of its own recovery. Taught by Him, the very dissonance of instincts and passions and growing elements loosed from their primary law of harmonious love, and doomed for a time to the service of vanity, lends a deeper pathos to the dirge of the fall; while it serves to enrich the song of redeeming mercy with a fuller stream of adoring praise. Every seeming and real discord is thus resolved by Divine art, and forms the key to a richer and nobler harmony. Such is the truth which meets us every where, with a simple and impressive grandeur, in the life and miracles of our blessed Lord. There we have a bright specimen before our senses, of that unspeakable wisdom, which makes the miseries of the fall reveal more clearly the riches of Divine goodness and love. Has the earth been cursed with comparative sterility and barrenness by the guilt of mankind? The Redeemer appears, and in the barren wilderness, a few loaves are multiplied into an ample and abundant feast, and water is turned at once into wine, at the bidding of the Lord. Do storms and tempests, and the roar of the angry waves, proclaim the terrors of judgment, and the threatenings of wrath against the guilty sinner? He rises from his pillow, and speaks those words of power, Peace, be still; " and at once all the fury of nature is hushed into silence. The storm is laid, the waves retire Obedient to Thy will; The sea that roared at Thy command, Are sickness, disease, and death, the still deeper signs of our misery, the painful memorials of ruin and moral desolation? He turns them all into so many varied illustrations of His own love, and lessons of those deeper miseries of the soul which He is able and willing to remove. The palsy and the leprosy, the racking fever, and demoniac madness, the blind eye, the deaf ear, the withered hand, the mute and speechless tongue, and all the forms of sickness and sorrow, nay, even death itself are made so many trophies of his Divine power, so many parables to instruct us in the hidden wants of the immortal spirit, and to prepare us to welcome, with thirsty hearts, the refreshing influence of heavenly love, the hope of the gospel, and the blessed promise of life eternal. Thus in Christ our Lord are truly hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Not only the powers and harmonies of Creation, as it stood in its original beauty, but the very changes which have seemed to obscure its loveliness, and fill it with gloom and terror, with fear and darkness, are made by Him to minister to His high designs of mercy. Its very discords are made to produce a deeper harmony. The barren desert, the thorn and thistle of the neglected wilderness, the storm and lightning, the blighted harvest, the wasting desolation of sickness and pestilence, the thousand forms in which the creature proves itself subject to vanity, are overruled by His matchless wisdom, so as to humble the sinner, to arouse his conscience, and awake his dull spirit, and call forth his slumbering affections, till he learns the folly of his long and weary wandering, and turns back, as a repenting prodigal, to find a home once more in his Father's house. T. R. B. THE JESUITS AS TEACHERS AND MISSIONARIES. ONE of the most common answers to any accusations preferred, however justly, against the Order of Jesuits, is an appeal to the great services which they have rendered to mankind as instructors of youth, and to the glorious success of their missions among the heathen, It would indeed be strange, if men, trained by the constitutions, and bred up in the morality of this society, should have been eminently successful in the two sacred functions of teachers and missionaries; offices which of all others demand real spiritual life: it becomes therefore necessary to examine the pretensions both of their schools and missions. The character of the education afforded by the Jesuits is ably described by Villers in his Treatise on the Reformation. He shows how the Roman Church, finding it impossible to stifle the eager desire for knowledge, which had taken possession of men's minds, strove to direct this desire into channels profitable rather than dangerous to the Church, to inspire a taste for classical learning, profane history, and mathematics, which should extinguish the desire of investigating matters of religion. The philosophy taught in their schools was calculated to excite aversion and disgust. It was no other than the scholastic system revived. and corrected by them, applied to present circumstances, and the controversy with the Reformers. With regard to the study of religion, it was confined to the books of theology, composed for the purpose by the members of the society, to the Casuists, and the Jesuitical Moralists. From all this it follows, (and this consideration appears to me the key to the very contradictory judgments passed on the plans of the Jesuits in the cultivation of the sciences,) that this Society performed immense services to certain parts of literature which it improved, but that on the other hand, it retained designedly, certain other important parts in the dark, or so obstructed the avenues to them with thorns, that nobody was tempted to enter. Thus considered generally, the instruction given in their schools, very brilliant in one respect, yet very dark in another, was a system partial, incomplete, and which set the mind in a wrong direction. But as on the one side all was clearness and illumination, and on the other all mystery and obscurity, the eyes of men were naturally directed to the illuminated side, and disdained to dwell on the other, which they acquired the habit of considering as altogether insignificant. "To model science according to the interests of the Pontifical power, and render even science ignorant in all things in which it was requisite that she should be ignorant to produce some things in the clearest light, and to retain others in the thickest darkness: to fertilize the kingdoms of the memory and the imagination, by rendering that of thought and reason barren; to form minds submissive, without being ignorant of any thing but what could affect their submission; like those highly valued slaves of the great men of antiquity, who were grammarians, rhetoricians, poets, fine dancers, and musicians, and knew every thing except how to become free I cannot fear that I shall be contradicted by any impartial man, in stating, that such was the system of instruction pursued by the Jesuits. It was ingenious, and inimitably adapted to the end they had in view. It was calculated to form illustrious and elegant authors, learned men, orators, good Roman Catholics, Jesuits, if you please, but not men, in the full acceptation of that term. He who became a man under their management, became so independently of that management, and in spite of it.'-See Villers's Essay on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of Luther, translated by Mill. p. 379. It is true, that there were times and places, as in Protestant Germany, in which it was important that the Jesuits should be recognized as the most able instructors of youth, but it also sometimes proved to be for the interests of the Society, that youth confided to them should make but slow progress, that they might retain them longer under their influence. Let us see how these brilliant instructors acted in such cases. Turn to Poland, and hear the judgment of Broscius, a zealous Romanist, so eminent for learning, as to be styled a walking Encyclopedia. The Jesuits,' he says, 'teach children the grammar of Alvar, which is very difficult to understand and learn, and much time is spent at it. This they do for many reasons: 1st. That by keeping the child a long time in the school, they may receive as long as possible the above-mentioned presents, (he had proved in another part of his work, that the Jesuits received in gifts from the parents of the children, whom they pretended to educate gratis, much more than they would have done had there been a regular payment,). 2nd. That by keeping children for a long time in the school they may become well acquainted with their minds. 3rd. That they may train the boy according to their own plans and for their own purNOVEMBER, 1847. 2 D |