while it gave them efficiency, made them narrow.  They could see the needle on the barn-door,—­they could not see the door itself.  Hence there could be no agreement with them, no argument with them, except on ordinary matters; they were as zealous as Saul, seeking to make proselytes.  They yielded nothing except in order to win; they never compromised their Order in their cause.  Their fidelity to their head was marvellous; and so long as they confined themselves to the work of making people better, I think they deserved praise.  I do not like their military organization, but I should have no more right to abuse it than the organization of some Protestant sects.  That is a matter of government; all sects and all parties, Catholic and Protestant, have a right to choose their own government to carry out their ends, even as military generals have a right to organize their forces in their own way.  The history of the Jesuits shows this,—­that an organization of forces, or what we call discipline or government, is a great thing.  A church without a government is a poor affair, so far as efficiency is concerned.  All churches have something to learn from the Jesuits in the way of discipline.  John Wesley learned something; the Independents learned very little.

But there is another side to the Jesuits.  We have seen why they succeeded; we have to inquire how they failed.  If history speaks of the virtues of the early members, and the wonderful mechanism of their Order, and their great success in consequence, it also speaks of the errors they committed, by which they lost the confidence they had gained.  From being the most popular of all the adherents of the papal power, and of the ideas of the Dark Ages, they became the most unpopular; they became so odious that the Pope was obliged, by the pressure of public opinion and of the Bourbon courts of Europe, to suppress their Order.  The fall of the Jesuits was as significant as their rise.  I need not dwell on that fall, which is one of the best known facts of history.

Why did the Jesuits become unpopular and lose their influence?

They gained the confidence of Catholic countries because they deserved it, and they lost that confidence because they deserved to lose it,—­in other words, because they degenerated; and this seems to be the history of all institutions.  It is strange, it is passing strange, that human societies and governments and institutions should degenerate as soon as they become rich and powerful; but such, is the fact,—­a sad commentary on the doctrine of a necessary progress of the race, or the natural tendency to good, which so many cherish, but than which nothing can be more false, as proved by experience and the Scriptures.  Why were the antediluvians swept away?  Why could not those races retain their primitive revelation?  Why did the descendants of Noah become almost idolaters before he was dead?  Why did the great Persian Empire become as effeminate as the empires it had supplanted?