LIFE OF FATHER LAW.*

To all who are interested in understanding the secret of the- power which the.. Jesuits have wielded in the Roman Com- munion during the last three hundred years, this book should be one of value and interest. It is popularly supposed that that power has been due mainly to the extraordinary astute- ness with which the Society has been organised and systema- tised ; to an almost preternatural worldly wisdom on the part of its founders. We hold this to be a mistake. No doubt, one great secret of the strength of the Jesuits has been the perfect discipline of the Order ; but this has been mainly an indirect cause of their success. It is the type of character- which that discipline turns out—a type most perfectly seen in the Francis Xaviers and Francis Borgias—but unmis-

takably also in the innumerable lesser lights of the Order, which has been the direct source of a power which has arrested. the attention of all historians of modern times. With whatever

characteristics that are distasteful to Protestant English- men, the Jesuits have stood forth as living protests against a

common and baneful fallacy of these latter days. That fallacy —pointed out with penetrating insight by Mill in his " Re- presentative Government "—is the conception that external legislation or systematisation may be regarded as in them- selves final remedies for social or political disorder. In point of fact, as Mill pointed out, the best system will not take the place of the moral character of individuals. A judiciary system may be perfect ; but if the judges are corrupt, justice

will not be administered. The best poor-laws in the world,

will not compensate for the loss among the rich men of a nation of the sense of the duty of charity. The formation- or preservation of traits in national or corporate character are really among the most important and indispensable wheels in the machinery of any practical system. And this the Jesuits have pre-eminently seen. Ignatius Loyola, in founding his Order, had primarily in view the formation of a certain type of character. His followers were to carry to

perfection, in the religious life, the characteristics of the soldier—prompt obedience, regular drill, readiness for self- denial and for concerted action. The name he chose was.

military—the Company of Jesus. Like all other founders of Religious Orders, he held up the type of Catholic sanctity for imitation; but the ascetic training was reduced to a kind of internal drill ;—what had been left in other Orders- in great measure to individual choice was for the Jesuit prescribed in detail for all alike. Spiritual evolutions were practised to order and in concert. The Jesuits were the picked men, the Imperial Guard, chosen to deal with the great insurrections against Rome which Luther had inaugu- rated. The greater freedom and greater individualism of the Benedictines was discarded. The more elaborate ceremonial of the Dominicans—unsuited for a time of warfare—was passed over.

The result was the loss of much which is winning in the type of man fashioned. The Jesuits could never give

us a Fra Angelico di Fiesole. Their intellectual work—

especially in mental science—is often painfully narrow. The best philosophical thought is too individual to be executed to order, or on principles of military obedience. But these are the defects of their qualities; and had they been absent, the- Order would have lost in strength far more than it would have gained in breadth. It was eminently suited to the emergency which gave it birth. What was needed in a time of religious revolt was the soldier's character—his promptness, practicalness, detachment, concentration on one object, namely, victory. Those who are acquainted:

with the discipline of the Order know can relentless it is in exacting these qualities. None can go through•

the novitiate without acquiring them. There is indeed' much elaborate system, but most of it is directed towards forming its men. The founder saw that a certain type

* The Life of Augustua Henry Low, Priest of the Society of Jesus. By -Vali), Schreiber. London : Burns and °atop. 1E0.9. ••of character was essential to the success of the work which the Jesuits proposed to do ; that the best designs for machinery would be useless if the most important wheels broke or would not act. And so, before all things, he worked -at forming this type. As long as such men are turned out the Society must be a power. That it does not cease to -produce such men in our own century and country, the work before us is an unanswerable proof.

Augustus Law seems, from his natural character, to have been well adapted to Jesuit training. The abundant speci- mens of his writing preserved in this book show exactly the -nature which the Order could deal with most successfully. 'Indomitable energy, an agreeable and attractive presence, an -.entire absence of speculative ability, nothing of the artistic • temperament, deep religiousness, an instinctive auntie to a life -of regular discipline, detachment of mind and promptness of • obedience,—these qualities he shows from the first. They made him a good sailor on board the ' Excellent '; and from the time when he joined the Roman Church, it seemed almost as foregone conclusion that the punctual and exemplary midshipman should, like St. Ignatius himself, transfer the sphere of his future campaigns from the defence of his -country to the defence of his Church. Shortly after his recep- tion we find him leading, on board-ship, a life which had a good deal of the future Jesuit in it. The rule of the day is preserved in his own handwriting, and we set it down as the -best iadieation of the habits and character of the man :— "A SHORT RULE OF LIFE FOR THE EXCELLENT.'

" 6.30. Rise and dress, not forgetting to make the sign of the • 4-Cross directly I awake, and to let the first words uttered be 'Jesus, -Mary.' Offer myself and all that belongs to me to God, and make acts of faith, hope, charity, and thanksgiving. Whilst washing and dressing repeat the De Profundis, Miserere, Gloria in Eceeelsis,

• or any other psalms or prayers I know. After being dressed, let me go up into the study, or into as retired a place as I can, and say my prayers. Let them be from my heart. Let the Litany of the Holy Name, or some other litany, be said amongst them. A little before 7.30 let me make my spiritual communion, and 'then make my meditation.

"At 8, breakfast. On fasting and abstinence days, no butter. Let we be as temperate as I can, and always offer up something to Jesus.

"After breakfast, meditate again on the same subject, or some

• other devotions. After Divisions at 8.30, repeat a Pater Noster and Ave Maria, and offer up my day to God. Make an act of con- trition and love of God, and say a Hail Mary every time the bell strikes, without detriment to the duty I am engaged in.

" At noon, examination of conscience, acts of faith, prayers for • the dead, offerings of the Precious Blood, with hymn. When that • -is finished, spiritual reading or Lives of Saints.'

" At 1 p.m., as after Divisions (see above).

"From 3.45 to 4.30, meditate for ten minutes on same subject as in the morning, then spiritual reading or Lives of Sante.' "After dinner, until 6, free time ; 6 to 7, Latin ; 7 to 8, free time, letters, &c. ; 8 to 8.30, tea ; 8.30 to 9.30, Euclid, gunnery, logarithms, &a.; 9.30 to 10, rosary ; 10 to 10.30, spiritual reading, night prayers, and bed.

It is not to our purpose to trace Father Law's career in detail. "'The reader may find it in the pages before us—a career chiefly ..of the foreign missionary, full of incident end variety. It is the .character that we are chiefly concerned with here. From the bright, graphic, boyish descriptions of his first voyage, written to his father, to the pathetic letters penned during his last ,lingering illness in the wilds of Africa, far from the appliances • of civilised life—an illness brought on by the hardships of the journey undertaken in order to introduce Christianity into the country of Uwzila, near Zambesi River—every word he 'wrote exhibits the noble nature of the man. A touch, perhaps, there is here and there of pride and self-sufficiency—we could fancy an impatient critic calling him a prig ; but the character of the man, and the unflagging hopefulness, energy, and zeal of which these were the incidental faults, arc given in his last -words to his companion, Brother Hedley : " I do not think I • could despair, even if I tried." The story of his death is full of pathos. With one solitary white companion, left to the mercies of the Kafirs, he was struck down by fever, and lingered on, hoping against hope that his fellow-missionaries might find them, and rescue them • from the death which was otherwise almost inevitable. On October 12th, 1880—six weeks before he died—he writes to his father :— " DEAMEBT FATREE,—I am not far off my end. I trust in the infinite mercy of God. God bless you ; you were the moans of giving me the holy faith best love to all. I die of fever ; 'but if I could have had proper nourishment I think 1 could easily have got right. But God's will is sweetest. Jesus ! Mary 1— '-Your west affectionate son, I. H. LAW, S.J." On the same day he writes instructions to his fellow- missionaries as to the best course to be pursued after his death. Two weeks later came the beginning of the end.

" About the middle of October Father Law's strength rapidly declined. He could scarcely crawl upon his hands and knees to the door of his hut. Soon he fell into a sort of lethargy, succeeded by delirium. In his lucid intervals he used to ask Brother Hadley to speak to him of our Lord's Passion and death, in order to

encourage him and prepare him for his last hour Dysentery, from which he was suffering, took a most dangerous form, and his fever, which had been intermittent, never left him. Then there were clear symptoms of yellow-fever, and, after that, no hope existed of his recovery. Brother Hedley rendered him all the services in his power ; but he, too, was prostrated by fever and reduced to a state of extreme weakness. An immense abscess formed on his knee, so that he was unable to leave the couch on which he lay to fetch anything to eat. Thus these two brave missionaries lay perfectly helpless together in the same bed—if. indeed, a skin laid on the top of a few planks can be called a bed— left entirely to the mercy of one of the natives who some- times allowed them to remain without a meal for twenty-four hours. He was frequently unconscious, bat was in full possession of his senses when the end came. When he felt that he had not many hours to live ho asked the Brother to beg pardon in his name for all the scandal he might have given. Towards evening on November 25th, Brother Hedley fancied that he was dying. He began to recite the prayers for the departing, to which Father Law responded by signs. Soon after sunset he calmly expired. Brother Hedley remained through the night where he lay by the side of the dear

Father's remains When the morning dawned, and he removed the handkerchief he had laid over the face of the dead, he was shocked to find that the rats had already begun to gnaw it. Calling the Kafir's, he bade them inter the remains of his companion ; but the superstitious natives shrank from touching the corpse of a white man. They refused to remove it until the brother had fastened a rope around it ; then it was dragged out of the hut, and buried after what manner and in what place Brother Hedley was never able to discover?'