If Loyola's course of secular study, and if his various engagements as evangelist and as chief of a society, had at all chilled his devotional ardor, or had drawn his thoughts away from the unseen world, this fervor and this upward direction of the mind now returned to him in full force: we are assured that, on this pilgrimage, and "through favor of the Virgin," his days and nights were passed in a sort of continuous ecstasy. As they drew toward the city, and while upon the Siena road, he turned aside to a chapel, then in a ruinous condition, and which he entered alone. Here ecstasy became more ecstatic still; and, in a trance, he believed himself very distinctly to see Him whom, as holy Scripture affirms, "no man hath seen at any time." By the side of this vision of the invisible appeared Jesus, bearing a huge cross. The Father presents Ignatius to the Son, who utters the words, so full of meaning, "I will be favorable to you at Rome." It is no agreeable task thus to compromise the awful realities of religion, and thus to perplex the distinctions which a religious mind wishes to observe between truth and illusion; yet it seems inevitable to narrate that which comes before us, as an integral and important portion of the history we have to do with. And yet incidents such as these, while they will be very far from availing to bring us over as converts to the system which they are supposed supernaturally to authenticate, need not generate any extreme revulsion of feeling in an opposite direction. Good men, ill-trained, or trained under a system which to so great an extent is factitious, demand from us often, we do not say that which an enlightened Christian charity does not include, but a something which is logically distinguishable from it; we mean a philosophic habit of mind, accustomed to deal with human nature, and with its wonderful inconsistencies, on the broadest principles. Some diversities of language present themselves in the narratives that have come down to us of this vision. In that which, perhaps, is worthy of the most regard, the phraseology is such as to suggest the belief that its _exact_ meaning should not easily be gathered from the words. Loyola had asked of the blessed Virgin, "_ut eum cum filio suo poneret_"; and during this trance this request, whatever it might mean, was manifestly granted.