There has been no going back. Fifty years ago, when the groundwork of rebuilding the 700 institutions that had been destroyed by the suppression had to be commenced all over again, there were but 15,000, to-day there are 52,692.
St. Ignatius was born in 1491. The first College of Coimbra was founded in 1542. From 1542 to 1773 is a period of 231 years. The suppression lasted from 1773 to 1814 (41 years). The new work continued from 1814 to 1899, a period of 85 years.
Among the colleges founded in the chief cities of the world are Loyola College, at Loyola in Spain; St. Omer's College, in Belgium, the link between Europe and America; Stonyhurst College, in England; Clongoes Wood, Ireland; Mangalore, in India, the only first-grade college in the district; Melbourne, Australia; St. Ignatius College, California, the pioneer of Pacific coast missions and of the Rocky Mountains; at Kansas City the only boarding college in the far West; St. Ignatius, at Cleveland, Ohio, one of the latest Western colleges; Spring Hill College, at Mobile, Alabama; Georgetown College, at Washington, D.C.; Holy Cross College, at Worcester, Massachusetts; St. John's College, at Fordham, New York; St. Francis Xavier's College, in New York City.
In the proportion mentioned above, in the same period (that is, a period of 231 years), there will be in the Jesuit colleges 263,690 pupils.
St. Ignatius died July 31, 1556. He was sixty-five years of age. At the age of thirty he hung up his sword at Montserrat, and, with ready mind and heart and pen, in thirty-five years he achieved the gigantic work of the founding and developing the Order. The educational work was projected and advanced in a brief period of fifteen years, from 1542 to 1556.
He was a man of prudence and deliberation, and of unswerving decision.
Vigilant and patient, whenever he appeared account had to be taken of the man; and so with his Order, whenever it appears it is to be recognized either by foes to oppose it or friends to love it and forward its work. It has its churches—its missions—its colleges. In its churches it is faithful to the teaching of Christ and His Church, loyal ever to the Vicar of Christ; in its missions, unbounded in zeal and personal self-sacrifice; in its colleges, it aims ever at the solid and thorough training of complete Christian education. Ignatius of Loyola made his Order to go on without him, and it goes on just as he made it.
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