THE LIFE OF FATHER DE RAVIGNAN.* THE Roman who happened
to be the keeper of the prison at Philippi during a rather memorable visit which St. Paul paid to the city, became a convert to the Apostle's teaching ; but by a curious kind of canonization, the question touching his own per- sonal safety, which the functionary aforesaid, while still a pagan, addressed to his great prisoner, has been elevated into an utter- ance of the profoundest Christian significance. Self-preservation is, doubtless, a natural and healthy instinct, and we scarcely needed a messenger from Heaven to inculcate that all due obedi- ence should be rendered to its dictates. This Philippian gaoler, however, was quite ready, like many other Romans, to subordinate the love of life to the claims of honour, and as a Roman, not to eay a Christian, he would have been amazed on learning that the mere affection for a whole skin which man shares in common with all animal existence had become a cardinal Christian virtue. Yet history has to record the wonderful transformation, and shows how the great principle of self-forgetting consecration to truth and good- ness, which surely ruled in "the mind of Christ," became quite secondary to the principle of intense, even torturing self-regard. Puritanism, Paleyism, Romanism are all tainted with this cor- rupting leaven ; and even a little leaven, as a great authority has reminded us, will leaven the whole lump. As far as we understand, one great end of Christ's mission was to save us from the entanglements, the cauistry, and degrading influence of all forms of selfishness,—especially from that most subtle and ensnar- ing of all its forms, the one which plants in the next world a
* The Life of Father de Rarignan, of the Society of Jesus. By Father de Ponlevoy, of the same Society. Translated at St. Bernie's College, Isrorth Wales. Dublin : W. B. Kelly. 1869. reversionary security of good things, and which in very deed would make heaven the immortality of worldliness. To be good for the sake of goodness, for the sake of God, who is absolute goodness, "hoping for nothing again," except only for this rather consider- able thing, that a day will come in the which the attractive forces of love will cause all hearts to bow before the Crucified,—that was the Christianity of Christ and of St. Paul. To lose ourselves in the absorbing claims of a charity which makes the individual debtor to all humanity, to make our election as chivalrous soldiers for hard work and, it may be, real suffering, in God's battle against evil ; to let the consuming fire of the eternal mercy kindle a hearth, if need be, in our own souls, so that thereby one or many may be thawed out of the icy fetters and cold isolation of indolence or sensuality, this is to put into poor prose the quite romantic poetry of the first disciples and apostles of the Redemptive economy, of the little flock who at length were emboldened to believe that they would carve their names indelibly on the history of the world, that it was their Father's good pleasure to make their thoughts and lives abiding and dominant factors in all the future development of humanity.
The original "Society of Jesus," in accordance with the great beliefs and hopes to which we have just adverted, held that for the furtherance of their holy purposes only two offices were necessary, those of the Prophet and of the Deacon,—that of the Prophet, in order to proclaim to the world that the will of the Maker of all men is inexorably resolved on their compliance with the conditions which are essential to their blessedness here or anywhere, that of the Deacon, as the outward and visible sign that sacrifice, or ministry, is the law in obedience to which alone is there any possibility of welfare far a man or for a nation.
When we open a book like that of the Life of Father de Ptavignan, our first impulse is to exclaim "How all that is changed!" 4 metastasis has taken place, and one certainly not less than occurred in the case of Moliere's "physician," who located the heart on the right side of the thorax. This life of the famous confessor and Notre-Dame orator is, no doubt, a perfectly truthful and, indeed, transparent book. We seem all living under glass now, for Jesuitism itself says, "Look here." Here is a hive of busy bees, and here is one in that hive who certainly was no drone, but, on the contrary, was willing and ready to be mechanic, porter, sick-nurse, purveyor of honey, or act in any other capacity which the necessities of the bee kingdom demanded. We give the original editor and the English translators all credit for honesty and sincerity. We are, for the moment, quite willing to forget all the terrible things which, with too much truth, Mr. Carlyle has prophesied concerning Jesuitism in one of the Latter- Day Pamphlets. But after we have put on our most charitable habit of mind, we can find in this volume, and we say it with all seriousness, nothing higher than a paganized version of Christianity.
The human portion of the life of Father de Ravignan is the early section of it. He was born in Bayonne in 1795, in which town his father held a position of considerable municipal dignity. The record of Ravignan's childhood supplies a charming idyll of domestic sweetness and love. Between the father, who was in his sixtieth year when the future orator was born, and the little son there gradually developed itself a most delightful friendship, and in later years we have some exquisite passages from Ravignan's letters, in which, when now a student in Paris, he recalls the old days of the walks and talks with his "elder companion." Quite happy days of love and sunshine were meted out to the boy Ravignan. Then we follow him with great interest during his student life in Paris, until he at length becomes a magistrate dis- playing very decided legal abilities. Moreover, he was ready to abandon his magisterial functions, and turn a brave and self-sacri- ficing volunteer soldier in the interests of loyalty. Judging from the narrative, we should be inclined to say that up to the twenty- seventh year of his life Ravignan was an exceptionably good Frenchman, pure in life, honourable in the discharge of public duty, a most loving and dutiful son. We might designate him, with all reverence, a member of that Society of Jesus which is the company of all the faithful. As yet, there is no sign in him of that morbid plus quantity, the presence of which renders anything like even an approximate equation of the elements of human life utterly im- possible. But in 1822 this disturbing symptom puts in an ap- pearance, and henceforth the history of De Ravignan becomes that of an excited acrobat who is passionately resolved on achiev- ing all supererogatory feats of which the flesh and will can bear the strain, instead of that of one who is willing to walk on in the path of every-day duty which Mother Earth supplies, with its com- mon tears and common joys. " Religion " takes the place of natural piety, of humanity, of godliness. In a letter to his mother, of this date,—the mother who, beyond all hope, was raised up from what seemed a mortal fever on the eve of his birth,—he thus writes :—" After all, there is but one thing worth consider- ing, and it is not life, nor wealth, nor knowledge ; it is death and immortality." The italics in these last words are our own, but we felt justified in emphasizing them, as they seem to us to furnish the secret motive of the whole after-life of De Ravignan. To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God, was deemed at one time "the whole duty of man ;" but Ravignan has begun to sub- stitute for these self-evident constituents of the blessed life the fear of death and the hope of reward hereafter. To these considera- tions all others must give place ; and from the counsel of a Jesuit father he learned that the one sure and certain way to secure de- liverance from the world, and the salvation of his own soul, was to become a scholar in one of the institutions of the Society of Jesus. A scholar he became, but not without a struggle. The tears of a fond mother, when at length he announced to her his purpose to leave the world, touched his heart very deeply ; but he felt, we are informed, that, like Francis Xavier, he must sacrifice everything to the welfare of his own soul. And certainly he did this. One day, by a solemn act and deed, he deprived himself of all his pro- perty, making over all his earthly possessions to his brother, and he rejoiced to stand in the world alone and a beggar. Then, for thirteen weary years he subjected himself to all manner of afflictive discipline, fasts, penances, self -torturings, such as wearing a girdle round his body stuck full of needles, until at length, in his fortieth year, he was deemed sufficiently mortified to appear in public in the pulpit of Notre-Dame. His effective appearances for years there are pretty generally known ; and the rest of his public story may be told in these few words,—that, amid retreats, hearing of confessions, endless correspondence as to the welfare of the Society, journeys hither and thither, sundry conversions of dis- tinguished Protestants, and personal bodily mortifications which seriously undermined his health, he laboured on until, in his sixty- first year, he sank down in death,—lamented by Rome, the Society, and great multitudes in Paris, including eminent person- ages in the French Court itself.
If we ask ourselves, after perusing a work like the present one, what is the really attractive side of Jesuitism to men of a fearful, yet withal devout habit of soul, the answer, as it seems to us, must be rather of a complex character. In the first place, the Society of Jesus provides for the spiritual safety of all its mem- bers. In the second place, there is a fascination in its very name. It claims to be the society in which the life of Jesus Christ is literally imitated. Jesus had no money of His own, He fettered himself by no voluntary earthly relationships, and His life was one of entire surrender to a higher will. This Society, accordingly, binds itself by the three lifelong vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the obedience, however, involving implicit and unvary- ing submission to the reigning Pope. It thus takes captive that type of character which clings to the letter, and finds a life of prescription, however severe, more tolerable than a life of prin- ciple. As a rule, men of this quality do not affect an easy religion. They want to do some great thing to inherit eternal life, but outward endurance, as Coleridge taught us long ago, however painful, is much less grievous than inward conflict with its self-responsibility, and thus it is notorious that men will rather take the three vows in question, in the literal sense and in subjection to a visible authority, than go alone into the unseen sanctuary, and there silently consecrate themselves to poverty of spirit, purity of heart, and single-eyed obedience to the Father of Spirits. Once more, the gregarious instinct is won- derfully appealed to in the Jesuit fraternity. The Society is a veritable sodality, in which one will reigns supreme. Each brother or father is, indeed, but a member, closely linked to his fellow, and " moved" by the central volition which sits majestically in the capital of Christendom. In this fellowship, they say, behold us dwelling together as brethren of Jesus in unity, while outside all is division, distraction, and lawlessness! Then it has to be noted how the Society professes to minister to two urgent wants of the soul, the need of a present and abiding inspiration and the desire for efficacious and vicarious suffering. It meets the first of these by accepting the "Exercises "of Ignatius as directly heaven-descended, and by fostering the ecstatic habit in which, as in Ravignan's own case, the votary is privileged to hold communion with the Spirit of the Great Founder himself !* As
• A quite tingling sensation came over us when, after reading that the good De Bavignan had been holding communion with " Our Father," and fancying that the phrase meant converse with Clod, we were informed that Ignatius was the father In question. The ascending scale of Jesuit adoration seems, to ignorant persons like ourselves, to be God, Christ, Ignatius, and the all-propitious and all-powerful Mary. regards meritorious suffering, it holds, to take a remarkable example from the volume before us, that a dying husband can, by means of his anguish, purchase the conversion of his wife, with the help of the priestly offices of one of the holy fathers I But a yet further constituent of the Society's attractions is the fact that it is a gigantic spiritual trades' union, which claims to fix all over the world the market-price of salvation, and is wholly unscrupulous as to the means it employs to drive the non-unionists out of the competitive field. As was indicated in this journal some time ago, there is a tremendous infusion of the Broadhead zeal in the Society of Jesus. Again, the seductive influences of the secrets opened in the confessional, ministering as these do at once to the lust of power, and at the same time, to use Mr. Carlyle's phrase, to the " pruriency " which would manipulate the innermost emotions of the human soul, immensely aug- ment the might of the spell which Ignatius weaves round the spirits of his disciples. But, finally, to repeat what has already been advanced, we must in sober earnestness affirm that Jesuitism allures its associates by sparing the cowardice of human infirmity. It saves the soul, indeed, by sliding in a false bottom of faith, by relegating all self-question- ing, all the inner realities of personal struggle, to the will of another. It destroys human responsibility. It keeps the soul from the full consciousness of the life which is hid with Christ in God ; and in this light, Jesuitism must remain for us as the most complete organization the world has ever seen for the annihilation of the spontaneous movements of the mind of man, just as in the great world-drama, from the Protestant stand-point, it has been the most formidable instrument of opposition to all of intrinsically true and noble which Christianity was commissioned to awaken in humanity.
There is no thought meet for an age of thinking men in this volume. Doubtless, in a city like Paris, Father de Ravignan was a very impressive, if not sensational phenomenon. Into the void created by Comtism and sensuality the preacher's fervid and sustained oratory naturally rushed in to supply the vacuum. We accord all honour to the eloquent preacher for his self-denial and devotion ; but to all his penance and propitiatory services we prefer the life and doctrine of St. Paul, who tells us that under the constraint of the love of Christ he was labouring to assure all men not that God needed their poor atonements, but that He was in Christ, conciliating the affections of the world back again to Himself.
Previous page
