S. FRANCIS XAVIER:

THE APOSTLE OF THE INDIES.

"There are who roam,

To scatter seeds of life on barbarous shores."

WORDSWORTH.

[Authorities:-The life and character of Xavier are best traced in his letters, which exist chiefly in a Latin translation, and have formed the foundation of the principal biographies. Of these I may name the copious memoir by the Père Bouhours, rendered into English by Dryden, and the "Vita Francisci Xavieri," by Horace Turselline, or Tursellinus, of which a quaint English version exists. Reference may also be made to Lucena and Faria, but for the English reader the most accessible and most comprehensive is the "Life and Letters of S. Francis Xavier," by Henry James Coleridge. (2 vols., 1876).]

S. FRANCIS XAVIER.

WHAT

CHAPTER I.

HAT are the qualities which make a man great? Are they not earnestness, breadth of sympathy, fortitude in adversity, temperance in prosperity, unshaken intrepidity, fertility of resource, and steadfastness of aim? Do we not find them exhibited by a Columbus, and a Bacon, a Newton, and a Gustavus Adolphus, a Luther, and a Milton,— by all those men who either in Thought or Action have largely influenced the world and helped forward the work of intellectual and moral progress? But then, these men have also been gifted with the divine power which we call genius, and there seems to remain yet another order or class of great men, who, without that rare endowment, have possessed and manifested all the moral elements of greatness men who have sacrificed everything in life for the promotion of a noble cause or in the discharge of a solemn Duty, men who have devoted themselves to the defence of right and justice against triumphant Wrong and Tyranny, men who have laboured for the Faith they have believed, or the Country they have loved. To this order of Great Men belongs, if I mistake not, Francis Xavier. Protestant prejudice may set him aside because he was a servant of the Roman Church and a member of that powerful ecclesiastical organization which, under the name of the Jesuits, has attained an evil repute by no means undeserved. But we

must learn, and we should rejoice, to recognise true greatness wherever it presents itself; and no one who traces Xavier's career with an impartial judgment will deny that, whatever the defects of his creed, he was pre-eminently a Great Man. He was, in the truest sense of the term, a Christian Apostle. Like S. Paul, in labours most abundant; in perils oft; counting nothing as gain which did not assist in bringing souls to CHRIST. A Hero of the Cross, gentle yet resolute, filled with a boundless love of his fellow-men, of an energy which never wearied, of a daring which never faltered, he was one of the greatest Missionaries which the Christian Church has ever produced. In the cause of the Gospel he travelled some twenty thousand miles in heathen lands, and founded Christian communities which at his death numbered two or three hundred thousand members. A man of ordinary mental capacity, he had the amiability of a Heber, the passionate enthusiasm of a Martyn, the patriarchal simplicity of a Schwartz, the linguistic gifts of a Morrison, the faculty of winning native confidence of a Patteson. He preached and he printed; he contended publicly with the sages of heathendom; he reformed the lives of his own countrymen (the hardest work, alas! of a Christian missionary); he founded churches and presided over colleges; he catechised, and baptised; he visited the sick; he ministered to the poor; he travelled and translated; and all this, single-handed, and poor even to poverty. Was he not, then, a Great Man?

Francis Xavier was born in 1506, the year in which Columbus died. The name which he bore came from his mother, the heiress of the noble houses of Azpilqueta and Xavier. His father, Juan de Jasso, was also of noble birth, and for his learning and prudence was appointed Privy Councillor to King John of Navarre. The youngest of many children, he was carefully brought up in those traditions of Christian chivalry and religious enthusiasm which flowed from Spain's eight centuries of warfare against the Saracens. According to his biographer, Turselline, he was of an excellent constitution and comely person, of a quick wit, and more inclined to his book than children usually None more innocent, none more pleasant, none more affable than he: hence he was beloved by all, both at home

are.