THE JESUITS AND THEIR WORKS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 186, 20 October 1876, Page 7

THE JESUITS AND THEIR WORKS.

,4 (Concluded.) In America conquests gave place to missions, and missions gave birth to civilisation. The renowned " Reductions of Paraguay " were commenced in 1610 and flourished until the suppression of the Order in 1767. The difficulties they encountered from the Indians, the noble efforts they made to protect their wretched proteges from the horde of infamous Spanish and Portuguese adventurers, who overran the continent, and the triumphant success which attended their heroic devotion and self-sacrifice is unparalleled in the history of the world. The following is from the " Encyclopedia Britannica " : — " The Indians' were collected into two villages ; each village had its church and its curate, who was assisted by one or more priests. The curate was nominated by the Father Superior, who exercised a vigilant superintendence over the whole. The curate gave his attention to religious offices, while the assistant priests managed secular matters, '.directing the labor of the Indians who cultivated the ground, and training others to the crafts of the weaver, mason, carpenter, goldsmith, painter and sculptor, for the fine arts were by no means neglected. The punishments were mild, and they were always accompanied by such admonition as a parent would address to a child whom he is chastising. Crimes were in truth rare. Private property did not exist. The produce ■of the community was stored in magazines from which each family

was supplied according to its wants, special provision being made for widows and orphans." From " Chambers' Encyclopedia " we extract the following passage on the same subject : — " The legislation, the administration and the social organisation of the settlement were shaped according to the model of the primitive Christian community, or rather of many communities under one administration ; and the accounts which have been preserved of its condition appear to present a realisation of the idea of a Christian utopia. Above all, their pstablishments in the southern continent, in Brazil, Paraguay, and Uraguay, and npon the Pacific coast, in California, and in the Philippine Islands, were missions of civilisation as much as of religion." " Sir John Bowring recognises in the condition of the native population of the Philippine Islands in tlie present day the results of the sound judicious culture of which the early Jesuit Fathers laid the foundation." To the Order we are indebted for the discovery and introduction into Europe of Peruvian or "Jesuit's bark." The name of Cinchona was given to the plant because in 1638 the Countess of Cinchona, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, was cured of an intermittent fever by its use. We have endeavored to show, however imperfectly, and confining ours?lves solely to Protestant authorities, some of the benefits bestowed by the Society of Jesus on an ungrateful world — a ■world which rewards them, as it did their Divine Master, with calumny, persecution, and even death. " For the greater glory of God," as well as for the temporal and eternal happiness of others, " they shun delights and live laborious days ; and by way of recompense there is hardly a country of Europe from which they have not at some time or another been ignominiously driven." We will conclude with an extract from " Lecky's History of Rationalism in Europe/ 11., p. 162, which clearly shows why tyrants and despotic governments have such a horror of the Jesuits : " The marvellous flexibility of intellect and the profound knowledge of the world, that then, at least, characterised their Order, soon convinced them that the exigencies of the conflict were not to be met by following the old precedents of the Fathers and that it was necessary in every way to restrict the overgrown power in the sovereigns. They saw, what no others in the Catholic Church seem to have perceived, that a great future was in store for the people, and they labored with zeal that will secure them everlasting honor to hasten and directjthe emancipation. By a system of the boldest casuistry, by the fearless tise of their private judgment in all matters which the Church had not strictly defined, and above all, by a skilful employment and expansion of maxims of the schoolmen, they succeeded in disentangling themselves from the traditions of the past, and in giving an impulse to liberalism wherever their iniliiuicc extended."