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Show CHAPTER XII. THE JESUITS AND THE DIGGEE INDIANS. The true idea of an effective religion, the idea which is formulated in the word Christian, is that it should not merely be fully capable of adaptation to the habits of all climates and natures, but that in each locality it is able to meet the wants of all conditions of human life and of all types of minds. Our divine Lord and Master taught the highest lessons of virtue and the most heroic and has exercised so deep an influence on human souls, that it may be truly said his active life of three and one-half years has done more to regenerate and humanize our race than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the discourses and writings of moralists since the world began. Among the believers in the Divinity of Christ, and more especially in the church which he estab lished to perpetuate his doctrine and sacraments, we naturally look to find men, who by their lives and con duct furnish us examples of the influence on their souls of the grace and teaching of the divine Master. But par ticularly do we expect from those whom Cicero called divine men and whom we honor with the exalted title of priests lessons of sublime abnegation, of purity of life, and, when the occasion demands it, of heroic sacrifice. To the credit of the Christian religion and for the honor of our race the centuries proclaim since the resurrection of our Lord the sanctity and heroism of vast numbers of these consecrated men who enobled their generations and died confessors and martyrs. Of these were the mem bers of the missionary orders of the church and among them were many of the order established by Ignatius |