lege, though true enough, have helped you much. They say that he is a nobleman's son, of Biscay; that he has been an officer, brave and chivalrous, and that he made a noble defense at Pampeluna in the late war. And they have got a story about his lameness; how he was wounded at that siege, and how he was such a vanity-loving man at that time that, after his leg had been set and got well, he had it broken again and re-set merely because he thought it not quite so well shaped as it might have been made. However, as I have said, this would not have taught you much as to what kind of a man he now is. Be sure this man is more than he looks; how self-possessed he is, and yet not forbidding, and what measured musical speech is his such qualities are not vulgar ones. Xavier begins to be a good deal with him. There is a certain chiseled statuary symmetry about the man, attractive but not satisfying: Xavier admires him, but does not very much like him either; he is so spiritual, so unworldly; caring so little for pleasure, and talking so much about the soul. He is not austere, indeed, at least toward others, though exceedingly so toward himself; but he is so unexcitable; if not an iron, yet a marble man. And, besides, he is so uncouth in his dress, so dirty, so slovenly; altogether so singular. Xavier ventures to rally him, to ridicule him; but not very harshly, the stranger is so solemn and so meek. The lame man likes Xavier, though he does not like his way of living, for Xavier is becoming very gay. He takes many opportunities, both when Xavier is busy and when he is alone, to ask him, what it will profit him if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul. As they walk together after lectures, and Xavier eagerly urges some scheme of amusement, he is only answered by the words, Francis, what shall a man receive in exchange for his soul? These words, so often, so calmly, so solemnly said, troubled Xavier; and the more so as he is getting into difficulties otherwise by his worldly pleasure-hunting life. The lame man is quite as kind as he is solemn, and as able to help him out of his difficulties as he is willing. Xavier learns by degrees how his monitor was once as he is now; how he was brought up at court and as a soldier; and how he lived in pleasure for thirty years of his life, and how he now counts himself to have been dead while he so lived; and how a great change came over his spirit on his recovery from an illness, and then reading the "Life of Christ" and the "Lives of the Saints," so that from that time old things began to pass away and all things became new to him; and how, mindful of sick-bed vows, he went to the abbey of the Benedictines at Mountserrat, and hung up his sword there, and set forth with a staff and a wallet, and all lame as he was, walked bareheaded and barefooted straightway to Jerusalem. Xavier finds that though he is a tutor and his friend but a pupil, his proper place is at his scholar's feet. And so there he sits; and when he learns that this man's anxiety to become a scholar, and at the same time to discipline himself in humility, was so great that at the age of thirty-three, noble as he was by birth, and having served so conspicuously in the wars, he goes to a common day school at Barcelona, and begins at the beginning of his grammar just as any other of the scholars, and bears all manner of jests from the boys with the greatest good humor; when, I say, Xavier learns all this, and sees how strict he is in all observances of the Church, how self-denying and how pure, he begins to believe he has been ridiculing a saint unawares. He begins to listen to him in quite another spirit, and thus listening he learns, and learning he loves. He associates with him oftener; they become to be seldom apart. The peculiar penetrating speech of the stranger distils itself upon Xavier's heart as dew, and freshens it in its feverishness; he grows to like nothing so well; nay, now he cannot do without it. For a change has come over Xavier's soul; new powers are awakening within him; his eyes are being enlightened; the visible is growing dim, the invisible is coming out into the day. He struggles hard with his new thoughts, but ultimately vainly; for after five years' daily intercourse Xavier yields himself as heartily as tardily to the solemn influence of that strange, mean-looking, lame pen sioner of St. Barbara-IGNATIUS LOYOLA. In company with five others these men at length band together, and on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, 1534, they repair to the subterranean chapel of Montmartre, and there, amid the darkness, at dead of night, dedicate themselves by ing is bitter. So disciplined in selfdenial has he become that, though passing within sight of his paternal halls on his way to the ship, and feeling that his widowed mother's blessing would have been a joy indeed, and the sight of his saintly sister, the noble Abbess of St. Clare, yet he has denied himself this conference with flesh and blood lest he should be turned aside by it from yielding to the high call solemn vows to become missionaries of the Church, and to preach the Gospel till they die to every man they meet. Full of enthusiasm are they, overflowing; but such is their self-control and clear insight that they repress all for a while, that they may more duly prepare themselves for so great a work by extraordinary spiritual exercises. Not until 1536 do they propose a missionary crusade, and then only into Palestine; and this mainly for self-ing of a Christian missionary; and now education. When, however, they find that the war which is waging between the Venetians and the Turks prevents all thought of this, they offer themselves to the pope, without remuneration and without reservation, to be sent on any evangelical mission to any part of the world he may please. Their offer is tardily accepted; and it is seven long years before their plans are effectively completed. These seven years of Xavier's life I pass over, only observing that they were spent in all kinds of mortification and self-sacrifice; in most diligent performance of all priestly duties, and in the education of himself in medicine, and such other arts and sciences as he deemed would be most profitable amid uncivilized peoples. He lived in Italy the while; at Venice and Vicenza, at Bologna and at Rome; in hovels and in hospitals; reducing himself almost to death by his voluntary sufferings; incessantly tending the sick, and preaching to the people wherever they would listen to him, in market-places and at crosses, in the corners of the streets and in churches; exhibiting to us throughout as striking an instance as we can meet with anywhere of an ecclesiastical zealot and a Christian ascetic. Xavier's lot has fallen to the East; we will now, then, turn to him as he is stepping on board the ship which is to carry him to India. It is his thirty-fifth birthday; and there you see him, a plain priest, with no followers of any kind, no baggage, no purse nor scrip; with his Bible and his Breviary, a small vessel of silver, and that crucifix which hangs from his neck, his sole instruments of warfare: a tall, sinewy, fresh-colored man; of most gentle looks, and long hair hanging down over his friar's frock. A thousand companions in that noble ship has he, and he only of the thousand is calm, he only smiles. But for him the vision of the future is more sweet than the memory of what he is leavVOL. XII.-6 that he is on the very eve of being borne a myriad of miles from the land of his fathers, and thus removed finally from all temptation of drawing back, and irrevocably destined to this great sacrifice and labor of love, he is joyous rather than sad, as knowing that God is able to keep that which he has committed unto him unto that day when he shall receive mother, and sister, and brothers, and what is worth a hundred times as much, in the new paradise of God. And so they sail; and five months are they in doing that which is now done in as many weeks, getting to the Cape of Good Hope; but Xavier, considering the ship as his parish, finds work of charity for every hour of the day, and the employment of prayer for half the hours of the night. When on land for the last seven years, since he had been a disciple of Loyola's, he had lodged mostly in hospitals and lived mostly on alms; and so now, here in this ship, he gives up his own cabin to the sick, and divides his allowance from the admiral's table among those worse off than himself. He catechises and converses, visits and preaches, as often as he may; he prays with the whole crew every Sunday, and there is no day in which he does not pray for them. An apostolic primitive spirit there seems to be in him from the first; and when they put in at Mozambique, on the eastern coast of Africa, to winter there, his labors are increased, and only terminated by his own serious illness. He has a local fever; is near to dying; but recovers sufficiently to set sail again in March. Slowly they sail, touching here and there every now and then, not at all in modern fashion, until they land at Goa, which was the place of his present destination. This Goa was the Portuguese capital in India. A bishop of it had been appointed by the pope a few years before, and there was a college of two years' standing. It was a sad place spiritually. Along the coast and a little inland there were indeed forty villages of Nestorian Christians, (who, Luther said, hold a creed differing but a shade from the orthodox,) and these did not disgrace their name so much as the Catholic Christians of Goa. But still on the whole Christianity was but poorly exemplified in this region; so poorly that Xavier's spirit was instantly moved within him to reformation. So he sets about first the reformation of his own countrymen at Goa, before he attempts to convert the surrounding heathen. And the first thing he does for this end is, that he takes a bell and goes through all the streets, as a common crier, and summons all the masters and heads of families for the love of God to send their children and slaves to be catechised in church. Like Jonah in Nineveh seems he to the sinners of Goa; thrown upon them from the ocean to preach to them of coming wrath and instant repentance. A strange and perchance a crazy man they think this new priest; a troublesome man at least, intruding upon them the world to come, and anxieties about their souls. But the children and the poor soon learn to love him, and they crowd about him, and in a few months he seldom can go to church without being followed by disciples more than he can teach. For a year he continues catechising, and preaching, and visiting the sick; turning many to righteousness as much by the singular simplicity and sanctity of his life as by the fervid eloquence of his speech. The improvement, too, of the children improves the character of the parents; and Xavier strengthens this effect by the boldest and wiliest methods of personal influence and intercourse. Strange is it to read of the devices he adopts, and how he becomes as different persons to different men, in order to save some from sin; and how successful he is. All men honor him, though some also fear him; and though there is a large mass of hardened wickedness in the place, which he cannot influence, yet in scarcely more than a year Goa assumes the appearance of a European city. But the ministry of a town was not the vocation of Xavier. He must out into the wilds; for if ever there was a missionary in spirit it is he. Repose formed no element of his character, and none seemed to welcome hardship so heartily as he. News is brought him that six hun dred miles off there are some baptized natives, ignorant exceedingly, and yet longing to be instructed. They were the poor creatures engaged in the pearl fishery, Paravas, a people peculiar for their wretchedness. All about them he finds utterly miserable: themselves, their country, their dwellings, their mode of living; no one comfort or visible blessing. Xavier's language, however, writing from among them to Ignatius, breathes only of thankfulness and joy, and deep delight in the work he was engaged in. He lives just as they do, on rice and water; associates with them as one of themselves; learns their rude utterances; teaches them little arts; becomes in every way their friend. He gradually preaches to them of God, and even of Christ, symbolically chiefly; he teaches them letters; and then to read simple words which he writes; he gets them to build little chapels, and interprets the creed and crucifix to them; and within a year finds such a change among them for the better as refreshes and inspires his own soul. After fifteen months he leaves them and returns to Goa for assistance. After having re-organized the college for the education of the natives there, (of whom there were then sixty students,) and having so arranged as that the college is henceforth given up to his society, (by the name of the College of St. Paul,) he goes back to the Paravas, taking with him several missionary assistants. He finds them in a most melancholy condition in consequence of having been attacked and plundered by a neighboring tribe: many have been driven from their homes, and multitudes are dying of starvation. Xavier, whose faith works very much by love, gets from the nearest Portuguese station twenty boat-loads of provisions, and distributes them among the blessings of the people. As soon as the first pressure of misery is relieved he betakes himself again to spiritual duties. And a remarkable life is that which he seems ever to lead here, personally and pastorally. All but three hours and a half of the twenty-four he wakes and works. Except these hours for sleep, the night is given to the improvement of his own soul through meditation, and prayer, and discipline; as soon as dawn lights up the waters Xavier calls his people to worship; all day he teaches the children and the new converts; visits the sick; goes inland to other villages; and at twilight again summons all to worship and vesper benediction. So he lives a while, staying with them until he sees them re-settled; stations some of his followers among them, and then goes on with others into the kingdom of Travancore, where (his own letters tell us) he once baptized ten thousand (read one thousand) persons in one month. enter into details with regard to the places he visited and the work he appears to have done at each, for their very names are strange to us. It must suffice to say that I have never read of so much labor endured in the cause of Christianity by any one man, out of the apostolic records, as by Francis Xavier. We have glimpses, too, of his interior life during this period, through passages in his letters to Loyola, which have been carefully preserved; and if one may take these as faithful exhibitions of Xavier's mind, and interpret them as one would similar words used by one of ourselves, we may assuredly say that this man is no inconsiderable Christian; that he is a saintly man; a man of prayer and of self-denial beyond all example of succeeding times. But even with great allowance for the great difference of language which there generally is between men of different countries and tempera may be a southern scale of expression to a northern one, one cannot but say that Xavier herein displays a zeal and a piety, a daring and a charity, which all his lamentable errors of belief and his sad superstitious infirmities cannot justly reduce to the standard of ordinary Christians. He gets thirty chapels built. The people destroy their idols and their temples. The Brahmins hate him and threaten his life. He is shot at; they burn down the houses about him; he has sometimes to sleep in the woods, and at others we find him surrounded by a guard of converts both by day and by night. He does service (as Schwartz after him) to the king of the country by going out to use his influence and that of his followers with a tribe of plundering invaders, and thus obtained (as Schwartz too) the friend-ments, and having reduced as much as ship of the king, and the name of the Great Father. The king, however, does not come over to the faith, though he grants permission to the missionaries to preach it where they will. Xavier avails himself of this opportunity zealously. He travels about to this place and to that, night and day, preaching and catechising, baptizing and celebrating the eucharist; a more unweariable man you shall not find under the sun. Little acquainted with the language of the people as he is, (and Xavier never was a good linguist,) he has a marvelous faculty of making an impression upon the minds of rude men; he exercises, if any one ever could or can, a kind of spiritual magnetism over men; he infuses his earnest thought into others with little help of articulate utterance, and makes his own feelings, as it were, infectious. I know of no one of whom are recorded such instances of communicative energy as of Xavier; no one who seems to have had so much influence over uncivilized people as he; none who by this alone has so thoroughly entitled himself to the appellation he was known by among his own, the Thaumaturgus (Wonderworker) of the later ages of the Church. At length in September, 1545, he goes to Malacca, which was then, as it is now, the central mart of India, China, and Japan. This he makes his center, while he goes on a missionary tour which lasted a year and a half. It would be useless to But he is not He returns to Malacca in 1548. Here for a while he is stationary, but not idle; for here, as before at Goa, he assiduously attempts the reformation of the nominal Christians; and here, again, you might see him, bell in hand, going through the streets and crying loudly, Repent. here long enough to make a great impression now. His stay, however, is not altogether vain; for while here exercising his accustomed office of priest and spiritual overseer of all the baptized, a Japanese, of the name of Angeroo, addresses himself to Xavier as a penitent. He had come more than a thousand miles on purpose to see him. He was a person of consideration in his own country, of noble birth and rich, but obliged to live an exile in consequence of having killed a man in quarrel. Remorse of conscience brought him to Xavier, whose fame had spread even further than his home, and he found in Xavier's words the hope of forgiveness by a greater tribunal than that of his country. Xavier holds the most fervent, though the most gentle talk with him; and tests the sincerity of his new resolutions by directing him to go as a student to the college of Goa, and await his arrival, which shall be shortly. Angeroo sets out for Goa, Xavier for Ceylon; thence he visits his old and first converts of the pearl fishery; and then travels along the coast to Goa. He represents this journey as a most successful one, and one that fills him with thankfulness and joy. As soon as he arrives at his old quarters at the Hospital he sets himself earnestly to the instruction of his Japanese convert. This man believes, and is baptized, (by the name of Paul,) and henceforth becomes to Xavier almost what Timothy was to the greatest of the apostles. Rapidly, indeed, does the scholar, who is of a noble nature, ripen under such warmth and light; and as he feels more of the influence of the faith in his own soul he feels increased longings to have it imparted to his countrymen. He pleads for them to Xavier. Xavier's heart was not such as could long hold out against the cry, "Come over and help us," even though it should be wafted as now over a dreary distance of three thousand miles. To Japan he will go; but not instantly; Goa needs his presence; his own spirit, too, wants the refreshment to be obtained by participation in full Christian ordinances, by converse with fellow - Christians, by tranquil contemplation. To these he gives himself up a while, more especially as he would wish to wait for some assistants from Europe shortly to arrive. And such of his letters and memoranda as have been preserved, relating to this period, would seem to intimate that here in the college gardens of Goa he enjoyed revelations, not of truths, but of feelings, apparently as unsuitable to be uttered in words as those which were granted to the apostle to whose honor this institution was dedicated. But he was not even now only a visionary; he was also what he was always, a laborer; accessible at all times to spiritual applicants; even amid his devotions, to children; and content to be interrupted at any time by the necessity of even only catechetical instruction; and spending half of all his waking hours in the hospitals and huts of the town. But in a few months five other members of the society arrive; and having stationed these, he feels himself at liberty to set out on his cherished mission to Japan. He takes with him Angeroo, or rather Paul, and after a short stay at his old quarters in Malacca, arrives in Japan in August, 1549. We know little, indeed, of the details of Xavier's labors here; but had he done nothing else but what he did in Japan, he would have been the most wonderful of all missionaries. It is, indeed, by this mission that he is best known in Europe. All this country had only been known to the Portuguese seven years, and there was nothing of Christianity in it when Xavier arrived. The Japanese were then, and are now, a loquacious, sharp-witted, luxurious, busy people; social, mercurial; Athenian, superstitious extremely. Indeed, never could a country be more wholly given up to idolatry with all fervor of worship than was Japan when Xavier entered it. It contained innumerable temples of innumerable deities. No time is to be lost. Having learned by unwearied application on the voyage, a little Japanese from his noble convert, (at whose house he now is lodged,) Xavier translates the Apostle's Creed and an exposition of it, and distributes copies; in time he preaches short sermons. His convert procures him an audience of the king, who permits him to teach. But he soon withdraws his patronage, and Xavier goes to Firando in 1550, leaving Paul with the converts, and a translation of the life of our Saviour taken entirely from the Gospels. His way of traveling would have struck you as strange; he traveled on foot, and barefoot; carrying all that belonged to him in the world on his back. A strange sight truly was this toiling, travel-worn man; no carriage of any kind nor servant; no state, no pomp, no comfort even; literally of apostolic guise. All he had on earth was a mat to sleep on and a wallet; a few papers and a cruciform staff, and the sacred symbols and their vessels. And had you seen him pacing wearily and footsore, solitary yet singing, across the dreary and dangerous wastes of Japan, you could not but have called to mind, in spite of some strange differences, the noble prototype of all missionaries, minding himself to go afoot from Troas unto As |