The Founder of the Society of Jesus .
Tin great Catholic saints form one of the most interesting examples in history of that which is now called sublimation : namely, the transference of the emotional drive which governs human life to new levels of will and desire, and consequent transformation of many distinct types of character, releasing for fresh purposes their various creative powers. - Thus to 'consider the saints need not mean what the descriptive announcement of Professor Van Dyke's boOk calls " the rehabilitation of calumniated worthies " ; but it may well mean for many of us a reintroduction to those heroic per- sonalities, who should be the pride of the Christian. family, and who are only too effectually disguised by the conventional -garments in which pious biographers have draped them.
Professor Van Dyke would not care to be called a pious biographer ; but he is enthusiastic, erudite, and sympathetic, and his special knowledge of sixteenth-century Europe enables him to reconstruct the environment within whichthe genius of St. Ignatius grew and reacted upon life. Thus, if he does not tell all the truth about this rich and many-sided personality, at least he brings into the foreground much which earlier writers slur over or omit ; helping us to realize the complexity of that twice-born nature, so ardent and so austere, so sternly practical and so profoundly mystical, which-lives on for those - who can find it in the pages of the Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius was a member of the lesser Basque aristocracy ; naturally vehement and combative, possessing those military . virtues of courage, self-discipline, tenacity, and the power of dealing with men which afterwards served him well. He never ceased to see the spiritual life in the military terms of disciplined action and organized conflict. The famous meditation of the " Two Standards is central to an under- standing of his outlook ; and the strength of the Exercises lies in their insistence that man must cease to regard himself as the captain of his soul, and willingly become a private in the supernatural ranks. Ignatius retained, too, the born soldier's sense of the distinction between the plan of campaign and the minor operations which serve it. Only the plan of campaign really matters ; and it is a cardinal principle of the Exercises that every human election or choice shall be made _only. in view of that assigned end. All events and conditions, =joys and pains, are indifferent save*in so far as they contribute to this.
In his admirable edition of the Spiritual Exercises, Father Rickaby has a story of a sailor-boy who went to a Jesuit house to make his first Retreat. He was taken to his room, and given a paper containing the great "-Foundation," or first meditation, on which the whole of the Exercises are based.
Man was created for this end ; to praise, reverence and serve the Lord his God; and by this means to arrive- at eternal salvation . . . therefore we must endeavour to establish in ourselves complete indifference with regard to created things, not preferring, so far as depends on us, health to sickness, riches to poverty, honour to humiliation, long life to short life, since order demands that we wish and choose in everything that which will lead us most surely to the end forwhich we were created." boy,'" I've done nothing since you left but walk up and this room, saying Damn it, it's true ! Damn it, it's talc That realistic conviction that nothing matters, sage so as it serves the one aim of _huniail life, coloured the career of St. Ignatius ; from the ferocious austerities Manresa to his self7effacing and inconspicuous death. come from God—I belong to God—I am destined for God, the first axiom _which the Exercises hammier into the The " Contemplation of .DiVine Love " is the last po to which lead. And here they, follow, the cu_ of author's life. - He had the unswerving spiritual iogiC . .• is the mark of real religious genius, wherever found. self7control rare even in "saints and unknown in del- that logic Made hint reject, the mystical consolations intimations of Divine thing's which often came to his bedtime; hecatise loss of. sleep meant loss of elfin "Even the joy rt. spiritual communion was subject to i.•_ct for order_and rule. When later he r th• a`,;an - ,--;r1.1cd education was essential, if he were eve work *defy. and effectively in souls,' he willingly aba the solitude and asceticism of Maniesa; Cut his hair and put on ordinary clothes, and for ten years doubled the of a student with that of a 14-evangelist. Thus, like Oxford Methodists—with whom the early Jesuits have in common--..e developed side by side and wove toge his intellectual, practical, and. spiritual. capacities. supple and selfless life of unlimited service and obedie so unsparing in its demands on every faculty, yet so free rigidity in their use—is at once the ideal of the Sp' Exercises and of the Constitutions of the SOciety of I and explains why. St. Teresa found the early Jesuit Fa , such " prudent and strengthening guides " in the spiritual . Ignatius . was no believer in a Specialized or o spirituality. His one desire for himself and his Company to be useful to souls • and Profesior Van -Dyke's interesting chapters on the formation and h ,wOrk of the shows the steadiness with which this nbjective was kepi view. Musical serVices, fasts and other phYsical pens a rigid rule of food and dress; were all forbidden, as , lik interfere with the varied and incessant dernands. of devoted pastoral work among the sick and poor to which Jesuits were Called. Beginning, much as the inen friars and the Methodists began, as a tiny group of Poor Priests," swayed by a dominant personality; the expansion of the Company soon involVed the inelusios types of endeavour and of character beyond those which Founder contemplated or desired. But the profound Igna spirituality, though often hidden, never died .; and in teachers of the supernatural life as Pere Lallement of seventeenth century, Pere Grou of the eighteenth, and Charles of our own daY;the' lamp iviiieh was lit at Ma continues to enlighten the world.
'EVELYN U.NDEit11
[Miss Underhill will review The Essays and Addresses of
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