Why did the Jewish nation steadily retrograde after David?  Why did not civilization and Christianity save the Roman world?  Why did Christianity itself become corrupted in four centuries?  Why did not the Middle Ages preserve the evangelical doctrines of Augustine and Jerome and Chrysostom and Ambrose?  Why did the light of the glorious Reformation of Luther nearly go out in the German cities and universities?  Why did the fervor of the Puritans burn out in England in one hundred years?  Why have the doctrines of the Pilgrim Fathers become unfashionable in those parts of New England where they seemed to have taken the deepest root?  Why have so many of the descendants of the disciples of George Fox become so liberal and advanced as to be enamoured of silk dresses and laces and diamonds and the ritualism of Episcopal churches?  Is it an improvement to give up a simple life and lofty religious enthusiasm for materialistic enjoyments and epicurean display?  Is there a true advance in a university, when it exchanges its theological teachings and its preparation of poor students for the Gospel Ministry, for Schools of Technology and boat-clubs and accommodations for the sons of the rich and worldly?

Now the Society of Jesus went through just such a transformation as has taken place, almost within the memory of living men, in the life and habits and ideas of the people of Boston and Philadelphia and in the teachings of their universities.  Some may boldly say, “Why not?  This change indicates progress.”  But this progress is exactly similar to that progress which the Jesuits made in the magnificence of their churches, in the wealth they had hoarded in their colleges, in the fashionable character of their professors and confessors and preachers, in the adaptation of their doctrines to the taste of the rich and powerful, in the elegance and arrogance and worldliness of their dignitaries.  Father La Chaise was an elegant and most polished man of the world, and travelled in a coach with six horses.  If he had not been such a man, he would not have been selected by Louis XIV. for his confidential and influential confessor.  The change which took place among the Jesuits arose from the same causes as the change which has taken place among Methodists and Quakers and Puritans.  This change I would not fiercely condemn, for some think it is progress.  But is it progress in that religious life which early marked these people; or a progress towards worldly and epicurean habits which they arose to resist and combat?  The early Jesuits were perhaps fanatical, strict, ascetic, religious, and narrow.  They sought by self-denying labors and earnest exhortations, like Savonarola at Florence, to take the Church out of the hands of the Devil; and the people reverenced them, as they always have reverenced martyrs and missionaries.  The later Jesuits sought to enjoy their wealth and power and social position.  They became—­as rich and prosperous people generally become—­proud,