Loyola's First Disciples.
Now comes his fourth and last week, and with it there comes a great change in the subjects of his meditation. He is to dismiss all gloomy ideas, all images of terror; the gates of Hades are to be closed, and those of a new life opened. It is morning with him, it is a spring-time that has come to him, and he is to surround himself with light, and flowers, and odors. It is the Sabbath of a spiritual creation; he is to rest, and to taste in that rest the prelude of the everlasting joys. This mood of mind he is to cultivate while seven suns rise and set upon him. He is now perfected, and fit to fight in the army of the Great Captain. A not unsimilar course of mental discipline, as our history has already shown, did Wicliffe, Luther, and Calvin pass through before they became captains in the army of Christ. They began in a horror of great darkness; through that cloud there broke upon them the revelation of the "Crucified;" throwing the arms of their faith around the Tree of Expiation, and clinging to it, they entered into peace, and tasted the joys to come. How like, yet how unlike, are these two courses! In the one the penitent finds a Saviour on whom he leans; in the other he lays hold on a rule by which he works, and works methodically and regularly as a piece of machinery. Beginning on a certain day, he finishes, like stroke of clock, duly as the seventh sun of the fourth week is sinking below the horizon. We trace in the one the action of the imagination, fostering one over-mastering passion into strength, till the person becomes capable of attempting the most daring enterprises, and of enduring the most dreadful suffering. In the other we behold the intervention of a divine Agent, who plants in the soul a new principle, and thence educes a new life. The war in which Loyola and his eight companions enrolled themselves, when on the 15th of August, 1534, they made their vow in the Church of Montmartre, was to be waged against the Saracens of the East. They acted so far on their original design as to proceed to Venice, where they learned that their project was meanwhile impracticable. The war which had just broken out between the Republic and the Porte had closed the gates of Asia. They took this as an intimation that the field of their operations was to be in the western world. Returning on their path, they now directed their steps towards Rome. In every town through which they passed on their way to the Eternal City, they left behind them an immense reputation for sanctity by their labors in the hospitals, and their earnest addresses to the populace on the streets. As they drew nigh to Rome, and the hearts of some of his companions were beginning to despond, Loyola was cheered by a vision, in which Christ appeared and said to him, "In Rome will I be gracious unto thee." The hopes this vision inspired were not to be disappointed. Entering the gates of the capital of Christendom, and throwing themselves at the feet of Paul III., they met a most gracious reception. The Pope hailed their offer of assistance as most opportune. Mighty dangers at that hour threatened the Papacy, and with the half of Europe in revolt, and the old monkish442orders become incapable, this new and unexpected aid seemed sent by Heaven. The rules and constitution of the new order were drafted, and ultimately approved by the Pope. Two peculiarities in the constitution of the proposed order specially recommended it in the eyes of Paul III. The first was its vow of unconditional obedience. The society swore to obey the Pope as an army obeys its general. It was not canonical but military obedience which its members offered him. They would go to whatsoever place, at whatsoever time, and on whatsoever errand, he should be pleased to order them. They were, in short, to be not so much monks as soldiers. The second peculiarity was that their services were to be wholly gratuitous; never would they ask so much as a penny from the Papal See. It was resolved that the new order should bear the name of The Company of Jesus. Loyola modestly declined the honor of being accounted its founder. Christ himself, he affirmed, had dedicated to him its constitution in his cave at Manressa. He was its real founder; whose name, then, could it so appropriately bear as his? The bull constituting it was issued on the 27th of September, 1540, and was entitled Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae, and bore [the statement] that the persons it enrolled into an army were to bear "the standard of the cross, to wield the arms of God, to serve the only Lord, and the Roman Pontiff, His Vicar on earth."—Wylie's "History of Protestantism."