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Show CHAPTER XV. OEIGI1T OP THE PIOUS FUND. Felicien Pascal, the French publicist, devotes an ar ticle in Le Monde Modern, to an explanation of the mis sionary success of the Society of Jesus, the members of which are known to us as Jesuits. It is rather excep tional for a French freethinker to write calmly and dis passionately of a religious association whose creed and manner of life are in direct antithesis to his own. Much has been written at various periods in their history of the " secrets" of the Jesuits; but, asserts Mr. Pascal, " the great secret of their strength is their sublime disci pline. To this discipline the Jesuits have always owed their marvelous power and their acceptabilty as a chosen body of " highly trained specialists among the ruling classes of Europe and in the savage wilds of Africa and America. ' y Mr. Pascal is experimenting with a social and histori cal fact and is disposed to deal honestly and dispassion ately with its origin. Having no faith in the super natural, it was not to be expected that the French sociol ogist would look beyond the human and the natural for the solution of a great problem. Unquestionably he is right as far as he goes or his negations will permit him to go. St. Paul, the prototype of all missionaries, writ ing to the Corinthians, recounts for their edification his own sufferings and sorrows, his " perils in the wilder ness, in labor and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in many fastings, in cold and naked ness." Further on, this extraordinary man, " called to |