Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603 -- Fiction
as paths in a garden; who knew what human nature needed, what it could
dispense with, what was its power of resistance; and who had at his
disposal for the storming of the soul an armoury of weapons and engines,
every specimen of which he had tested and wielded over and over again.
Little as Anthony knew it, Father Robert, during the first two days after
his arrival, had occupied himself with sounding and probing the lad's
soul, trying his intellect by questions that scarcely seemed to be so,
taking the temperature of his emotional nature by tales and adroit
remarks, and watching the effect of them; in short, with studying the
soul who had come for his treatment as a careful doctor examines the
health of a new patient before he issues his prescription. And then,
lastly, there were the Exercises themselves, a mighty weapon in any
hands; and all but irresistible when directed by the skill, and inspired
by the enthusiasm and sincere piety of such a man as Father Robert.
The Exercises fell into three parts, each averaging in Anthony's case
about five days. First came the Purgative Exercises: the object of these
was to cleanse and search out the very recesses of the soul; as fire
separates gold from alloy.
As Anthony knelt in the little room before the Crucifix day by day, it
seemed to him as if the old conventional limitations and motives of
action and control were rolling back, revealing the realities of the
spiritual world. The Exercises began with an elaborate exposition of the
End of man--which may be roughly defined as the Glory of God attained
through the saving and sanctifying of the individual. Every creature of
God, then, that the soul encounters must be tested by this rule, How far
does the use of it serve for the final end? For it must be used so far,
and no farther. Here then was a diagram of the Exercises, given in
miniature at the beginning.
Then the great facts that practically all men acknowledge, and upon which
so few act, were brought into play. Hell, Judgment and Death in turn
began to work upon the lad's soul--these monstrous elemental Truths that
underlie all things. As Father Robert's deep vibrating voice spoke, it
appeared to Anthony as if the room, the walls, the house, the world, all
shrank to filmy nothingness before the appalling realities of these
things. In that strange and profound "Exercise of the senses" he heard
the moaning and the blasphemies of the damned, of those rebellious free
wills that have enslaved themselves into eternal bondage by a deliberate
rejection of God--he put out his finger and tasted the bitterness of
their furious tears--the very reek of sin came to his nostrils, of that
corruption that is in existence through sin; nay, he saw the very flaming
hells red with man's wrath against his Maker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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