Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/286

 L^TARE JERUSALEM

official position and influence. He demanded over and above mere obedience, the spiritual subordination not only o the will but also of thought to the superior. In his mysticism of activity, the quiescent values of the spirit had value only as germs of practical action, and reflection was looked upon as merely the motor impulse to an effort. A life of knowledge he evaluated as a religious pragmatist pure and simple; and he insisted that in all theologically doubtful matters his Society must unanimously side with the weightier authority. In deal- ing with men, the system he employed and fostered was true to the pedagogy outlined in his Exercises. He led thought across the fiery zone of a methodically aroused imagination, and on the other hand subjected imagination to an inescapable control by cooling it in the stream of unemotional thinking* Ignatius as he was at last, domi- nated utterly by the purposes of the Church, by the reasoning and planning undertaken by ecclesiastical theocracy, was a politician in the highest, purest sense. The end to be reached is everything; and whatever values may be in themselves, from the point of view of the soul, the mind and culture, they can all be made to serve the highest end, which is the glory of God, the Divine will, which is to become real inside space and time in the form of the Church.

That a mind so political in its point of view and so purposive had another side is not surprising. This side may be described as reserve, distance the unapproachable energy of one who sets things in mo- tion secretly. During the years he spent in Rome, Ignatius had hardly a friend. He kept his plans strictly to himself, like the general of an army. On days when he was suffering he refused to accept the sym- pathy of those nearest to him. Polanco himself, his secretarial right- hand, could not recall that in all the years of their association Ignatius had given an expression of his confidence. The saint had a premoni- tion of his death. He burned his diaries, concealed the sorrows of his soul behind the wall of silence, and died on July 31, 1556 before mourners could assemble at his death bed. His Society is the im- mortal monument to his personality. This has served, and still serves, the Papacy; and often the Papacy has served it. It became the majes- tic annex of the universal Church and permeated the activity, thought and feeling of that Church for centuries. The Basque saint still lives and shows the world its Master, urbi et orbi.

THE