I^ETARE JERUSALEM
in an Instant that passed with lightning-like swiftness the world's meaning. It was in consonance with his soldierly nature that he should see God as the hidden Shepherd o creatures, who in the well- ordered gradations o their hierarchy serve Him. A vision of light which comforted him was often his companion as he went along. Seeing Satan in the form of a snake, he struck at him with his staff. An image of the Trinity as a clavichord of three keys, which came to mind as he was going up the steps of a church, filled his eyes with tears of joy. Often, in sudden flashes of luminous intelligence, he under- stood mysteries with such clarity that he thought no amount of study could have brought him anything comparable. While fully conscious he was wrapped in ecstasy, and felt thereafter that he had been "an- other man with another intellect." During hours when he had to make great decisions, he entered into conversation with his visions. In their presence he stood as if he were in God's school, and there re- ceived knowledge of the right and the strength to do that right. Even so he was afterward to look with cool scepticism on everything un- usual in the religious life and to oppose sharply the yearning for visions entertained by others.
Ignatius had wandered through all the corridors of the labyrinth of the inner man. Of these he made sketches and reflected on how he could build up a system of religious exercises. What he had read and had himself experienced was to become a plan and rule for others. Distinguished ladies of Barcelona were his first pupils, but his urge to conquer men for his principle, "All for the greater glory of God," drove him on. Perhaps he was already then entertaining the idea of found- ing a community; but before proceeding to carry out any such plan he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1523. Political obstacles pre- vented him from working as a missionary there. What he saw of the Holy Places stirred him profoundly; he made careful note of his emo- tions which were to serve him later on as aids in the will-training which his "Exercises" were to foster. Then he returned to Spain via Venice in order to secure the theological education he lacked. He was then thirty-three years old, but he took his place on a school bench to learn Latin. He bore patiently with all the chicanery which the clergy and the Inquisition showered on him, studied in Alcala and Salamanca while begging his daily bread, and "exercised" the souls of his fellow
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