PAUL FEVAL ON THE JESUITS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 313, 18 April 1879, Page 16

PAUL FEVAL ON THE JESUITS.

(Miss Sadlier's translation.) " Ox the 7th of August, 1814, Pius VII. re-established the Society of Jesus throughout the world." '' The order obeyed this mandate which said to them, as of. old Jesus said to Lazarus : ' Arise and walk.' " 41 But did they, too, arise from a tomb ? Not entirely." 44 The order was dead through absolute obedience, but that its members were living we find striking proof in history. In 1775, one year after the death of the unfortunate king who had had If. de. Choiseul for a minister, in full view of Paris, of the university, of Parliament, and of philosophy, Pere Beauregard, a Jesuit, mounted the pulpit of Notre Dame, and you shall see that his voice was indeed that of a living man. He spoke, or rather prophesied, as follows :—: — 'Itis to royalty, to religion that the philosophers are opposed. The axe and the hammer are in their hands. Your temples, O Lord ! will be plundered and destroyed, yeur feasts abolished, your name blasphemed, your worship jtroscribed. To the holy canticles which resounded through the sacred arches shall succeed ribald and infamous cbants. 44 ' And thou 1 obscene divinity of Paganism, thou comest to usurp the place of the Eternal God, to seat thyself on the throne of the Holy of Holies, and to receive the perjured incense of thy blind adorers.' 41 Was it possible to announce more clearly than this, eighteen years in advance, the advent of the Goddess of Reason, adored under the likeness of a Pompadour of the rabble, to foretell the hour when the blood of the members of Parliament, flowing in torrents, should expiate, if possible, the support they had lent to the enemies of the altar and the throne 1 41 Nbn prcevalchvnt. Impiety has worked well ; the Jesuits are not immortal ; but they have not died. They have a promise of eternal martyrdom which is equivalent to immortality ; for it is necessary to live in order to suffer." "Xavier, the likeness or reflection of Christ, had performed countless prodigies ; in him was personified the genius of enthusiastic piety ; he commanded men and things from the heights of his love ; what he would have accomplished in China, if God had permitted him to touch its shores, ail sanctified as he was by the grand victories of Japan and India, none can estimate ; but Xavier was dead. " It was necessary to replace this divine talisman which he had won from heaven* by the effoits of human prudence, aided by divine grace, without which all work is vain. 44 It is on this account that Ricci. less supernatural than Xavier, excites, however, more interest throughout the pages of this Christian ' Odyssey." He is but man, struggling with the Chinese Empire* that enormous trifle, with every imaginable weapon ; he is at once, i* one may use the illustration, an apostle and an adventurer — a Saint Paul and a Robinson Crusoe : sublime, industrious, subtle, and daring, playing with the eclipse like Christopher Columbus ; disdaining not the smallestdetml necessary to the accomplishment of his object : profiting by the lrigh-road, but guessing which side-paths to traverse ; intrepidly pUrcing his way, bnt in the face of an obstacle, drawing back withoat a demur, only to try another route ; entitled to tv-ice the privileges of all diplomatists, but gaining every inch of ground at the price cf himself, his entire self, dispensed with an able economy, with an inexhaustible prodigality."