parents give expression to their sentiments on this point. The testimony of one American father, the distinguished convert from Protestantism, Orestes Brownson, may be given as an instance among many. "We ourselves have four sons in the colleges of the Jesuits, and in placing them there we feel that we are discharging our duty as a father to them, and as a citizen to this country. We rest easy, for we feel they are where they will be trained up in the way they should go; where their faith and morals will be cared for, which with us is a great thing. It is more especially for the moral and religious training which our children will receive from the good fathers that we esteem these colleges. Science, literature, the most varied and profound scholastic attainments, are worse than useless, where coupled with heresy, infidelity or impurity."[1]
However, the Society has been blamed by some for insisting too strongly upon moral and religious training, and for subordinating to it everything else. But how can any one who believes in the existence of God and an eternal life, find fault with this principle? If there is a God, if man has an immortal soul, if there is an eternity of happiness awaiting the good, and an eternity of punishment the wicked, then the "one thing necessary" on earth, and to be aimed at above everything else, is the salvation of the soul. Hence it is that men, who in their religious tenets widely differ from the Jesuits, could not help praising the latter for the attention they paid to the moral and religious education of their pupils. From numerous testimonies we may be allowed to quote a few. "As
- ↑ Brownson's Review, Jan. 1846, p. 87.
