of these faithful Japanese Catholics. In America also, that newly-discovered world, the light of the Gospel spread, and overthrew the most abominable idolatry with all its horrors and vices. No people on earth offered up more human sacrifices than the natives of America. The Mexicans sacrificed about twenty thousand human victims every year, and when they had no captives for this purpose, they did not spare even their own children. It is impossible to describe what the heroic missionaries suffered, and what dangers they incurred among those bloodthirsty men. They had to struggle not only against the cruelties and vices of the natives, but also against the insatiable avarice of the European settlers. Yet their labors were crowned with success, and the Christian faith was firmly and permanently established on this Continent. The mission of Paraguay, in South America, especially flourished. The brutish natives, who lived among the wild beasts in the forests, who thought of nothing but plundering, murdering, and revenge, who delighted only in eating human flesh, in voluptuousness and drunkenness, were transformed by the indefatigable missionary priests into devout Christians. They became models of modesty and charity, of innocence and piety, and by their untiring industry and labor changed their wild country into a delicious paradise.
46. [1]The holy men who, with such indefatigable zeal,
- ↑ To what class of men did most of the missionaries belong? Of what order were the Apostles of the Indies, and the first planters of Christianity in China and Paraguay? When, and by whom, was this order established? In what did these religious especially exert themselves? How were they requited for their labor by the enemies of Religion? Did God raise any other orders at that time, and for what purpose? When and how did the Order of Capuchins originate, and by what were they particularly conspicuous? When and by whom was the Oratory founded, and to what does it devote itself? What was the object of the fathers of the Pious Schools, and of other orders? What communities of religious women arose at that time? What do they devote themselves to? What is the origin of the Institute of English Ladies? In what was this epoch especially rich? Can you tell me anything remarkable of St. Charles Borromeo? What do you know of St. Francis of Sales? What did St. Vincent of Paul in general do for the temporal and eternal welfare of his fellow-men? What charitable institutions did he found in particular? Who especially labored in the sixteenth century in Germany and Switzerland for the preservation of the true Faith? Were there any other principal Saints who shone in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and who were they? By what Saints was the female sex distinguished at that time? What Saint did particularly illustrate the eighteenth century? What Religious Order did he found? What did all these Saints especially do, and what did they prove by their works and miracles?
