"The greater part, however, are less frank: Jesuitism acts powerfully through the medium of those who are supposed to be strangers to it; namely, the Sulpicians, who educate the clergy, the Ignorantins, who instruct the people, and the Lazarists, who direct six thousand Sisters of Charity, and have in their hands the hospitals, schools, charity-offices, &c.
"So many establishments, so much money, so many pulpits for preaching aloud, so many confessionals for whispering, the education of two hundred thousand boys, and six hundred thousand girls, the management of several millions of women, form together a powerful machine. The unity it possesses in our days might, one would suppose, alarm the state. This is so far from being the case, that whilst the state prohibits association among the laity, it has encouraged it among the ecclesiastics. It has allowed them to form a most dangerous footing among the poorer classes, the union of workmen, apprentice-houses, association of servants who are accountable to priests, &c. &c.
"Unity of action, and the monopoly of association, are certainly two powerful levers.
"That which constitutes the gravity of this age, I may even say its holiness, is conscientious work, which promotes attentively the common work of humanity, and facilitates at its own expense the work of the future. Our forefathers dreamed much, and disputed much. But we are labourers, and this is the reason why our furrow has been blessed. The soil which the middle ages left us still covered with brambles, has produced by our efforts so plentiful a harvest, that it already envelopes, and will presently hide the old inanimate post that expected to stop the plough.
"And it is because we are workmen, and return home fatigued every evening, that we need more than others the repose of the heart. Our board and fireside must again become our own; we must no longer find, instead of repose, at home, the old dispute which has been settled by science and the world; nor hear from our wife or child, on our pillow, a lesson learnt by heart, and the words of another man.
"Women follow willingly the strong. How comes it, then, that in this case they have followed the weak?
"It must be that there is an art which gives strength to the weak. This dark art, which consists in surprising, fascinating, lulling, and annihilating the will, has been investigated by me in this volume. The seventeenth century had the theory of it, and ours continues the practice."
We shall not follow the writer in his review of Jesuitical influences in the seventeenth century, though it contains much that might excite remark and deserve attention. We hasten to the more urgent question—the state of matters as they exist at the present hour.
The root of the evil, as Michelet thinks, lies in the position of the priesthood. We are far from adopting all his views, and would decline any indiscriminate condemnation of a body of men who, under any form of Christianity, must do good in many quarters, and must contain numerous examples of faithful and fervent piety. But in so far as the system of the Romish church is vicious and injurious, it is of vital moment that we should trace the effect to its cause. Much evil, we think, is ascribable to the doctrines of that church, and of every other that too highly exalts the powers and functions of the priest as compared with the people. But, dismissing these for the present, the peculiar discipline of the Romish system deserves our immediate consideration; and here our attention is first attracted by a striking characteristic, the CELIBACY of the clergy. Let us hear how so important a peculiarity is thought to operate by this acute observer:—