And stand prepared to wear the martyr's flames I sear the hydra's heads of heresy." Strangely perverted enthusiast! He has come to England to compass the destruction of Anne Boleyn, through which, it is hoped, the Protestantism of the land will be shaken to its foundation; and, after pursuing his aim by a course of atrocities, with the punishment of which the very gibbet of Tyburn would have been degraded, his sole remaining purpose is to go forth as a missionary among the Indians, where he expects nothing but a life of suffering and a death of violence! De Such was the organization of this most profound of secret societies; and its career, which forms the strangest episode of modern history, was in full harmony with its character and purposes. Addressing themselves to the overthrow of the Reformation, the Jesuits brought back multitudes to Rome. voting themselves to the work of education, amidst the mighty intellectual stir that had commenced in Europe, they soon acquired the character of the best of schoolmasters, by throwing aside the formal routine, and training every pupil according to his particular fitness. Casting their eyes over the whole world, and, even then, grudging its littleness, they sent their missionaries to countries hitherto unknown or overlooked, and in a few years were able to report their converts by thousands and tens of thousands. As spiritual confessors of monarchs and the mistresses of monarchs, of statesmen and the favourites of statesmen, they quickly obtained the direction of public events, and became the political arbiters of the fate of Europe. No plot was too latent for their keen inspection and universal espionage. No instrument was too humble in that complicated machinery by which such vast results were produced. And descending from these generalities to specific cases, we find, that no zealot could be too ascetic for their strict demands of superior sanctity, and no semi-penitent debauchee so wedded to his one sin as not to find a full tolerance for its commission in the subtle casuistry of his Jesuit confessor. In this way the order was moving onward to universal dominion, not however with the resounding tread of a conqueror, but with sandaled foot and abased head, gliding silently through the crowd, telling its beads as it went. But let the very Prince of Darkness himself quote Scripture for his purpose, or even disguise himself as an angel of light, his coming and going will at last be felt in the desolation which he leaves behind him. And thus it was with the Jesuits. After the first burst of admiration had passed away, a misgiving succeeded, and a strict inquest was commenced. The whole world grew suspicious, and detection, as might have been ex pected, surely followed. It was found that the Popery they were re-establishing was not even that of the Pope but of the General of the Order, and that while the former was infallible in theory, the latter was so in practice. It was found, also, that the Christianity which they propagated beyond the bounds of Europe was so adapted to every creed, that even its very form had almost wholly disappeared. Thus, they had identified Christ with Confucius, and the gospel Trinity with the Hindoo Trimurti, while savages were allowed to worship their ghosts and hobgoblins indifferently with the saints and angels of the Popish calendar. And how had the Jesuits discharged their momentous trust as the masters of colleges and instructors of the youth of Europe? It was found that though they had made ripe and ready scholars, they had not produced a single master intellect. Bringing up the mind to a certain point of accomplishment, at which it would still remain obedient, they there arrested its progress. And as statesmen, where was their patriotism? They were Jesuits, and nothing more. They had no parents, no kindred, no country; and what mattered it then to them though a kingdom should perish if their own order survived, though a monarch should be undone if their general's mandate was fulfilled? The suspicion, the envy, and the dread of kings, popes, and statesmen, were further aggravated as well as justified by the atrocities which the Jesuits not only tolerated, but even enjoined, when their own interests were at stake. Poison and the dagger had come into use with portentous frequency, and sovereigns quickly found that their tenure of life was insecure so soon as they opposed a Jesuit movement. Had the Old Man of the Mountains returned to life, and extended his sway over the world itself? Who could tell? for a craft more profound than that of the Assassins concealed the proceedings of the Jesuits. Humanity found itself outraged by their deeds, and the universal cry for their suppression was as loud from Popish as from Protestant communities. Kingdom after kingdom drove them into banishment; and at last the seal of condemnation was set upon them by Clement XIV. in 1773, by a bull in which the order itself was declared to be "annulled and extinguished for ever, and to all eternity." It was a perilous deed, and this the poor pontiff knew, for, on signing the instrument, he exclaimed, "This suppression will be my death!" In less than a year afterwards he suddenly and strangely sickened; and having been daily in dread of some such event, he said in his last moments, "I am going to eternity, and I know for what." The horrible condition of the corpse after death could have procured no honest verdict of "died by the visitation of God." This "eternal" suppression of one infallible was reversed by another infallibility, after the iterated and reiterated eternity had held on for forty-one years. This was done in 1814, that era so pregnant with vast political changes both for evil and for good. Since that period the open movements in the history of the order we well know, for it has built up for itself a home in Britian, and now dwells in the midst of us. And yet, what indication does the open give of the secret history of such a society? Again we begin to feel the spiritual atmosphere more heavily laden, and by its baneful effects can trace the fresh coming of the "pestilence that walketh in darkness." Whence, otherwise, those strange perversions to Popery now so frequent among us perversions, too, not of the ignorant and lowly, but of the high-born, the learned, and the intelligent! Do not these indicate the presence of some persuasive power called into full operation-some new apparatus of craft and cunning that had been previously held in abeyance? For how else has Popery suddenly became so powerful after it had slept so long? Is it changed? Is it improved? Is it improved? Has it become less perverse in its doctrines, less earthly in its character, and less grasping in its ambition? Is it more scriptural and more apostolical than it was a century ago? No, it still is, and dares not be otherwise than, the unchanged and unchangeable. But it is men who have changed, and the causes of that change we are justified in surmising. The last and mightiest of all secret societies has only recruited its strength and improved its experience by the forty-one years' interval; and now has risen up in greater power than ever, for the overthrow of Protestantism, and the subjugation of the world. Is this, then, the power which our statesmen will delight to honour? Let them but traffic with it, and it needs no prophet to foretell the issue. It must be all or nothing, and its power to accomplish the first alternative we have already seen. But Jesuitism has now become innocent and effete!—yes, even as Popery was some thirty years ago. It knocked at our door, and we gave it entrance that it might lie down and die in peace; but now it is so strong that it confronts us in our own home, and peremptorily demands half possession, in the full confidence of converting that half into a whole. By what strange judicial blindness have we been stricken, that, undeterred by the warning, we seek to hasten the catastrophe by admitting the Jesuits also? CRITICAL NOTICES. ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. Eighth Edition. Vols. I. and II. Го We need not enlarge on the advantages of a good Encyclopædia. To parties in large towns, who have neither wealth to purchase, nor the requisite leisure to consult a voluminous library, and still more to such as, living in rural districts or the colonies, are far from these great public libraries which, in the capitals of old countries, are the full and open reservoirs of knowledge, a work which, moderate in compass and in price, presents an adequate and accurate digest of the contributions of centuries to every department of literature and science, is an acquisition not important only but invaluable. The difficulties in the preparation of such a work, however, are as serious as its advantages are apparent. If compiled, as in the case of our earliest Cyclopædias, chiefly by one individual, its range of subjects is necessarily limited, and its treatment even of these superficial. If again prepared on the principle of the division of labour, which regulates the quality of the products as well of intellect as of handicraft,— its different departments, and even the individual details of these, being treated by different writers,-while the range of topics is widened, and the intellectual and literary character of the work as a whole immeasurably elevated, the differences in execution and style, and the want of suitable proportions, in the various parts, may invest it even under the most competent editorial superintendence with an aspect of incompleteness and inequality, satisfactory neither to the professional student nor to the intelligent general reader. The history of the great work before us affords ample illustration of the difficulties in question, while its last and current editions supply the proof how wonderfully these may be overcome by the union of judgment with capital and enterprise. The Encyclopædia Britannica was originally planned by Mr William Smellie, one of those erudite printers, who, during the last century, mingled with and adorned the literary society of Edinburgh. Hastening daily from the compositor's frame to the student's bench, he passed with distinction through the curriculum of arts, and thenceforth steadily prosecuting his studies, although he never abandoned his calling, he eventually became a copious and popular writer, and the chosen associate of such men as Lords Monboddo and Kaimes, Hume, Burns, Gregory, and Dugald Stewart. Having sketched the plan of the Encyclopædia, he at the same time edited and printed the first edition of it, the multitudinous articles of which it was composed proceeding, with comparatively few exceptions, from his own pen. As a monument of individual attainment and industry, it was a sufficiently remarkable performance, and is to this day a literary curiosity; but from the necessities of the case, it was, while a respectable, yet even for the time a very defective, compilation. A second edition was issued within a few years, on a larger scale, but still on the miserably inadequate basis of entrusting to one or two individuals a range of literature and science more than sufficient to engage the pens of an academy. Matters were somewhat improved in the third edition, under the superintendence of Mr Colin Macfarquhar, also a printer, who, although not equal to his predecessor in literary ability and taste, yet, as is evident from the circumstance that he called in the aid of various accomplished contributors (among others, Dr Gleig, afterwards Bishop of Brechin, and Dr Doig of Stirling, one of the first classics of his time), was more than his equal in practical judgment. Mr Macfarquhar, however, having died while the edition was in progress, Dr Gleig succeeded to the direction, and under his management the work first began to assume that high literary character which it has since maintained and so signally developed. Dr Gleig immediately enlarged the staff of contributors, and succeeded in enlisting the services of (among others) Professor Robison, whose reputation, always high, has recently been signalised by the intimation that his professorial prelections were largely influential in delivering the mind of Chalmers from that philosophical scepticism by which, when a student, he was for a time disturbed.* His accession at once stamped the character of the scientific department of the work, and raised it in that respect to the level of its French competitor, with which previously, in its philosophical portions, it had contrasted so unfavourably. The numerous papers, indeed, which he wrote for this edition were so admirable, that after the lapse of half a century their value is but slightly impaired, so that, with a few notes and addenda, most of them maintain their places in the latest issue of the Encyclopædia. It is impossible, at the present time, to estimate the influence which the Encyclopædia by these papers-combining as they did the highest science and most acute reasoning, with the most reverential regard for divine truth-must have exercised on the educated mind of the country at the beginning of the present century, and how much it did to stem the tide of philosophical infidelity which was then being poured over Christendom from the poisonous fountains of the French Encyclopædists.† "The Edinburgh Professor," says Dr Hanna, "of whom he at once entertained the profoundest admiration, and to whom he was most largely indebted, was Dr Robison."-Memoirs of Dr Chalmers, vol. i. pp. 43, 44. See also Dr Chalmers' own references in his "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. pp. 29, 30. The article on Physics, and the latter part of that on Philosophy, contain the substance of the lectures to which Dr Chalmers confessed himself so much indebted. |