It has been proved times innumerable that this odious doctrine was never taught by the Society, and the average Jesuit regards each recrudescence of the charge as an insufferable annoyance, and usually takes no notice of it; but, in our own times, the bogey has presented itself in such an unusual guise, that the event has to be set down as one more item of domestic history. It obtruded itself on the public in Germany in 1903, when a secular priest, Canon Dasbach, an ardent friend of the Society, offered a prize of 2000 florins to any one who would find a defense of the doctrine in any Jesuit publication. The challenge was accepted by Count von Hoensbroech, who after failing in his controversy with the canon, availed himself of a side issue to bring the question before the civil courts of Trèves and Cologne. Apparently von Hoensbroech was well qualified for his task. He was an ex-Jesuit and had lived for years in closest intimacy with some of the most distinguished moralists and theologians of the Order: Lehmkuhl, Cathrein, Pesch and others, in the house of studies, at Exaeten in Holland; so that the world rubbed its hands in glee, and waited for revelations. He was, however, seriously hampered by some of his own earlier utterances. Thus, when he left the Society in 1893, he wrote in "Mein Austritt aus dem Jesuitenorden," as follows: "The moral teachings, under which members of the Society are trained, are beyond reproach, and the charges so constantly brought against Jesuit moralists are devoid of any foundation." Over and above this, he was somewhat disqualified as a witness, inasmuch as he not only had left the Society but had apostatized from the Faith, and, though a priest, had married a wife; he was, moreover, notorious as a rancorous Lutheran (Civiltà Cattolica, an. 56, p. 8.) But the lure of the florins led him on, only to have the case thrown out by one court, as beyond its jurisdiction, and decided against him in the other; the verdict was also heartily endorsed by conspicuous Protestants and Freethinkers. Hoensbroech is dead, but the spectre of "the end justifying the means" still stalks the earth, and may be heard from at any moment.