Saint Francis Xavier, Apostle of India and Japan (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI In the Venice of India (1542) IN one of the numerous letters which the Apostle of India has left us, and in which he has so artlessly laid bare the secrets of his soul, he tells us that when he arrived at Goa he found it peopled with Christians. The city, which later times called the Golden, and not without exaggeration compared to Venice, was fair to behold, he writes. He marveled at its monasteries, its cathedral, its hospitals and churches, and thanked God that in the midst of so many unbelievers he found such striking evidences of piety and faith. Ten years after his landing in Goa, Xavier was to close his heroic career of apostle and his unparalleled series of victories and conquests for the Faith on a lonely island off the China coast. For ten years only his hands would be able to hold up the torch of truth, for, giant though he was, they would not be able to bear any longer the titanic burden which his zeal and his charity would place upon them. But while-the torch burned in his hands it was to light a continent with its imperishable flame. From Goa the light was to spread to Calicut, to Travancore, to the capes and the headlands of the southernmost extremities of India. Malacca, the Spice Islands, the isles of far Japan would behold its' beams. Scarcely had the Saint touched the shores of India and knelt to kiss the soil he was to win for the King whom Master Ignatius had made him know so well and love so tenderly, than he longed to begin his work of herald and apostle of Christ. All the Saints are sealed with one common sign, their supereminent love of God. It is to that they owe their sanctity. That is the secret of their great 34 aess, the comer stone on which they rear the edifice of their holiness. The apostolic...