endeavour in the main to be and to do what is right, according to the given lights. Thus we admire and respect Socrates, Alfred the Great, Luther, Isaac Newton, John Milton, Cromwell, and Wellington, not because they were wise in all respects and at all times, nor their deeds always just, according to our standard of right and wrong, but because we believe them to have been mainly actuated by a spirit of self-denial and honesty. Apart from their greatness, these men strenuously endeavoured (who can do more?) to be just and right. We presume that no person will dispute the claims of Ignatius Loyola to admiration on the score of greatness. No little mind could so readily have abandoned the pursuits of half a lifetime, and humbled himself to the hornbook of a child, in preparation for totally diverse ends; could have attracted to himself minds of such calibre as those of his companions; could have been so faithful to a purpose through many years of discouragement and non-success, nor have so steered the bark onwards when, at last, the flood-tide of prosperity came. We claim for Ignatius Loyola, then, the charater of a great man.

It is on the second ground that the battle must be fought, viz., "Is this man's character worthy of respect?"

If a

We say, Yes, on the ground of "fidelity to conscience." We quote from a bicentenary pamphlet, by the Rev. A. McLaren, of Manchester, a passage which will illustrate our meaning. "Conscience tells a man only it is right to do right, wrong to do wrong; it is not the task of conscience to determine right or wrong. man so far sophisticate his understanding as to think that to kill is to do God service, conscience will say to him, Then kill. It spoke on Bartholomew's day with equal authority to many a muderer and many a victim." * *He is not wholly faithful who has not striven to arrive at a true judgment of what is right, before submitting an issue to its laconie tribunal."

*

The two points which we need to establish to prove our case are these:-Did Loyola strive to arrive at a right estimate of truth? and was he faithful to his convictions when they were once formed?

We readily admit that from our Protestant, nineteenth-century, freethinking stand-point, it is difficult to imagine Loyola to have been an honest inquirer after truth, seeing the awful errors into which he fell. But it is at his stand-point that we must place ourselves; we must gaze on the world of waters from his Ararat.

Holy writ tells us that to the pure God will show Himself pure, to the froward He will show Himself froward. And it is remarkable (if only as showing the universal adaptability of the Gospel to men of all kinds and of every age) how, even within the limits of orthodox faith, it comes to each man in an outward clothing, corresponding to his peculiar disposition.

By orthodox faith we mean those cardinal doctrines which all honest searchers into the Scriptures as a whole will agree upon. Of course, without these limits there is a vast sea of error into which a man, who yet trusts to be saved by Jesus, may and will

wander, if he credit the assertions of uninspired, fallible men, or bring a prejudiced mind to his inquiries concerning the inspired writings.

Loyola was a Spaniard. Spain, the birthplace of that terrible engine for the suppression of free inquiry, the Inquisition, has always been ultra-Papal; Spain has had no Savanarola, no Huss, no Wickliffe, to rouse the minds sunk in superstition and priestcraft; it has been noted, and is noted still, as the most grossly Papal of all countries, owning Rome's sway over body, soul, and mind.

Loyola was a soldier. Obedience to authority and strict discipline -the soldier's virtues-were his. Loyola was an aristocrat, accustomed to command, and to consider himself as a notch above those not born to the possession of blue blood. Loyola was a knight in days when knightly devotion to a lady-love, if rarer than once, had not entirely vanished. Now imagine yourself placed in the position this man occupied during those months of illness when his faith became fixed.

You are from your earliest days a Catholic. You are taught that doubt as to any doctrine held by the Church is a mortal sin; that whosoever does not hold completely and entirely the Church's dogmas will infallibly perish. Your knowledge of the Bible is wonderfully small, and confined to portions which fully support the pretensions of the Church; finally, you have yourself experienced the miracleworking power of the spiritual Head of the Church, whose infallible successors the Popes are.

Having imagined yourself in this position, tell us if you find it wonderful that Loyola's search for truth led him to the same point to which it has led many mistaken men, quite as honest, and infinitely more enlightened.

We go no further in Loyola's history than his conversion for the consideration of this first question, because his was a mind (like that of his great rival, Luther) which, having once received conviction, never wavered or faltered. The principles of faith with which Loyola started on his Palestine pilgrimage were those which influenced and guided him during the remainder of his life. Time will not permit us to argue this further, and yet it will be urged that we have shown no direct proof that Loyola honestly strove to arrive at the truth. Our reply must be this:- Direct proof is simply impossible to obtain, it we must be as gods, and have the man's whole mental struggles before our view. All we can prove, and this we claim to have done, is, that there is nothing inconsistent with facts or analogy in believing Loyola to have suhmitted a true judgment, according to his lights, to the tribunal of his conscience.

Then, was he faithful to his convictions? We say unhesitatingly, Yes. What were these convictions? That the Church of Rome was the only true Church; that none without its pale could be saved; that the Pope was Christ's vicegerent, and the whole hierarchy divinely appointed.

Burning with zeal for the Lord he had found, longing to increase

the boundaries of his sheepfold, Loyola's first project is the vast benevolence of bringing the unbelieving nations of the East into the communion of the Church.

Does not his faith and zeal rebuke ours, who are content to spare our surplus farthings for evangelistic work, and are satisfied and comfortable when we hear of one or two heathens brought from darkness into "The marvellous light of the Gospel ?"

Baffled once, grown wiser, perhaps, by experience as to the requirements of such a task, he devotes himself to the acquirement of theological knowledge, in preparation for further attempts. He enlists other heads and hearts in the great work, and abandons his great and philanthropic idea only when it becomes clear to him that the Church at home is in danger, and that she first of all needs help against as he thought it-the soul-destroying heresy of Luther. The Church, he thinks, is Christ's way of salvation; then logically and consistently he devotes himself to the help of the Church. The Church, he thinks, is superior to earthly kingdoms; then logically and consistently governments and national politics must go to the ground before its progress. Every heretic that dies outside the Church's pale is subject, he thinks, to eternal perdition; and again logically and consistently what sacrifice, even of outward morality, is not praiseworthy to rescue such souls from that everlasting doom?

Neither age, nor fatigue, nor prosperity availed to turn him from his spiritual purposes: To the last day of a life closely approaching threescore years and ten, the eternal happiness of his fellow mortals is his only end and aim. The very principles of the "Company of Jesus," which developed into practices that gained for the Jesuits well-merited detestation, were no inventions of Loyola; they were the logical sequences (absurd reductions, so to say) of principles and privileges claimed for centuries by his Church. Whether the stemming back of Protestantism, effected mainly by the Jesuits, did so much harm as many of us imagine, to the best interest of spiritual religion, is open to doubt. The Reformation had degenerated into Protestantism before the Jesuits had effected much of their work; the spiritual had become earthy, the cause of reformed religion a party political cry. The Church of England by its theory, and the churches of Germany by theory and much of practice, are vastly removed from scriptural injunction; and there are not wanting "signs of the times" that the "Church of the future" will neither be Roman nor Protestant after the model of the sixteenth century. What form it will take is only known to its Head, in whom all sincere believers are united, and whose word we have, that "those who believe" (not in any form of worship or dogmas, but) "in ME shall have eternal life.' We conclude our paper by affirming that Ignatius Loyola, although vastly in error in many points, was a gifted, devout, zealous, self-sacrificing man, and as such is worthy in a high degree of our admiration and respect.

Readers and friendly opponents, our best wish for you and for

ourselves is, that, minus his errors, we may all be as devout, as selfsacrificing, as faithful to our convictions, as was Ignatius Loyola. Preston.

NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-II.

N. E.

As a preliminary to the discussion of the question which stands at the head of this article, a few words on the terms of the question seem to be necessary.

By "character," we are doubtless to understand the assemblage of qualities in Loyola taken together, not any one or two of those qualities considered without reference to the rest. Therefore we must proceed with Loyola's character as the chemist does with an ore, on the composition of which he wants to pronounce accurately. He analyzes it, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and thus is enabled to tell us whether it be rich or poor. So we must analyze the character of Loyola, observing whether in him the dross or the precious metal preponderates; then we shall be qualified to give an answer to the question we are discussing. If Loyola is not to be judged by the sum of his qualities, but by two or three selected ingredients of his character, why is not every other man to be judged in a similar manner? And if men generally are judged in this way, it will be easy to condemn some of the most eminent Bible saints, and to justify many of the wicked. Judging men upon such grounds, a wrong conclusion would be come to respecting some of the most worthless characters who ever existed. It has not unfrequently happened that men who have been sots, rakes, and gamblers, have been exceedingly generous, and have in various ways manifested great kindness to their fellow-men. But can it be said, because they were kind and generous, that their character was worthy of respect and admiration? Then, the various ingredients which made up Loyola's character being discovered, he is to be judged in the present discussion, not according to one or two selected qualities, either bad or good, but according to the aggregate or mass. If the greater part of the ingredients of his character, or if those which were most influential in him and over him, are shown to be vicious, he is to be judged unworthy of admiration and respect. If the greater number or the most influential of his qualities are proved to be good, he is to be declared worthy of what is expressed by the two abstract nouns which are contained in the question discussed. Admiration is expressive of high esteem, or a regarding of the object admired with affection. Respect also expresses esteem, regard, honour, and good-will.

Now, to warrant an affirmative answer to the question we are discussing, it is not sufficient to show that Ignatius Loyola was possessed of one, two, or three qualities which are deserving of respect and admiration. To warrant such an answer, it must be shown that he did not possess a greater number of evil qualities, or that his evil qualities were not more influential than the good ones adduced. We have no fear of being able to show that in

Loyola's character evil qualities were predominating and overwhelming, and consequently that his character is unworthy of admiration and respect.

1. Loyola was attracted from a military life to a religious one, not by a spiritual influence, but by the influence of the superstitions of Rome upon that fanaticism which was a predominating ingredient in Loyola's character.

The designedly false tales of miracles with which the annals of the Church of Rome abound-the senseless, fanatical, and monstrous practices of the members of that Church-these allured him to devote himself to a religious life. It is recorded of him that, when at Jerusalem, he desired to note the footprints of Christ on the Mount of Olives with sufficient accuracy to know in what direction the Lord turned his face when about to ascend to heaven. This incident, as Macaulay well remarks respecting another cirenmstance in the life of this man, "it is difficult to relate without a pitying smile." Is fanaticism the feature in Loyola's character which is worthy of admiration and respect?

II. After Loyola had entered upon his religious life, he was determinedly opposed to truth and right. Those invaluable benefactors of their race- Luther and his coadjutors-were the men whose work he laboured to overturn; and there is reason to believe that it was fully agreeable to his feelings that the weapons of the Inquisition should be employed to recover the erring. Is this feature in Loyola's character worthy of admiration and respect?

III. The ends which Loyola worked for were totally unjustifiable and unlawful. Our esteemed friend, Mr. Neil, tells us.--" There arose in Loyola's mind the possibility, hitherto only half-dreamt of, of effecting a mighty change throughout the whole extent of Christendom, and establishing an absolutism more real, a supremacy more permanent, a government more potent, than that which took initiation from the Vatican. This scheme, planned beforehand with Faber and Lainez, was placed before the association for consideration. The various elements of it may be briefly enumerated thus, viz.:-1st. The education of the young. 2nd. The instruction of adults. 3rd. The defence of the Catholic faith against all enemies, heretics, or infidels. 4th. The propagation of Catholicism by missions among the heathen and misbelievers. Its members were to be men of sleepless activity, of indomitable perseverance, of unquestioning and unquestionable zeal. They were to become the leaders and guides, the master-spirits among men, to push their inquiries into every branch of thought, and make it bend and incline Romeward; to mingle in every political movement, and impart a religious tendency to it; to mix in the daily strife of worldliness, and leaven it with the doctrines of the Church; to beat back Protestantism from the lands yet faithful to the Pope; and to enter into a crusade against it by placing themselves in the van of intellectual achievement, and attracting the sympathies of the public, till the Church attained its old predominance."