to duty, of generous readiness to go far beyond the limits of mere duty, of the manful and noble spirit of self-control and self-sacrifice, of that spirit which seeks not self but the good of its neighbor, that spirit which the pupils cannot help seeing exemplified in their masters, if those masters are such men as St. Ignatius intended them to be.[1] Now, St. Ignatius was very explicit on the necessity of setting a good example, and the Ratio inculcates the same in exhorting the teacher to edify the pupils by the example of a virtuous life.[2] Have the sons of Ignatius come up to the expectation of their father? Even the enemies of the Order could not help expressing their admiration for the moral purity of the lives of the Jesuits.[3] Nor can we wonder at this. The solid training in religious life, which we described in a previous chapter, and the daily practice of mental and vocal prayer, must give the religious teacher a self-control that preserves him from the more serious outbreaks of passion, which may prove detrimental to his authority and ruin all salutary influence over his pupils.[4] Professor Paulsen observes
- ↑ See Father Lucas, S. J., in The Spiritual Exercises and the Education of Youth (London, 1902).
- ↑ Reg. com. mag. cl. inf. 10.
- ↑ Thus the Protestant Sir Henry Howorth, who attacked the Jesuits so bitterly in recent years, must confess: "The Jesuits have been a very powerful agency in framing history. They have some things to be proud of. So far as I know, the austerity and purity of their lives was one of the greatest, probably the greatest of all, reforming agencies in the purifying of the clergy of the sixteenth century, and they strenuously leavened religious life with the stricter rules of life, which the Council of Trent tried hard to introduce into the religious world." (The London Tablet, Nov. 23, 1901, p. 817.)
- ↑ On this whole subject it is worth while to read De Badts de Cugnac, La morale des Jésuites (Lille, 1879).
