om the jurisdiction of the inquisitor, they were driven by
terror if not by fire, into embracing the religion of their conquerors.
If some steadfast chiefs told the missionaries that they would rather go
to hell after death than live for ever with the cruel Christians, the
tribes as a whole, seeing their dreaded idols overthrown and their
temples uprooted, embraced the religion of the stronger God, as they
quailed before his {408} votaries. Little could they understand of the
mysteries of the faith, and in some places long continued to worship
Christ and Mary with the ritual and attributes of older deities. But
nominally a million of them were converted by 1532, and when the Jesuits
arrived a still more successful effort was made to win over the red man.
The important mission in Brazil, served by brave and devoted brothers of
Ignatius, achieved remarkable results, whereas in Paraguay the Jesuits
founded a state completely under their own tutelage.

In the Far East the path of the missionary was broken by the trader. At
Goa the first ambassadors of Christ were friars, and here they erected a
cathedral, a convent, and schools for training native priests. But the
greatest of the missionaries to this region was Francis Xavier,
[Sidenote: Xavier, 1506-52] the companion of Loyola. Not forgetting the
vow which he, together with all the first members of the society, had
taken, [Sidenote: April 1541] he sailed from Lisbon, clothed with
extraordinary powers. The pope made him his vicar for all the lands
bathed by the Indian Ocean, [Sidenote: May, 1542] and the king of
Portugal gave him official sanction and support. Arriving at Goa he put
himself in touch with the earlier missionaries and began an earnest fight
against the immorality of the port, both Christian and native. His motto
"Amplius" led him soon to virgin fields, among the natives of the coast
and of Ceylon. In 1545 he went to Cochin-China, thence to the Moluccas
and to Japan, preaching in every place and baptizing by the thousand and
ten thousand.

Though Xavier was a man of brilliant endowments and though he was
passionately devoted to the cause, to neither of his good qualities did
he owe the successes, whether solid or specious, with which he has been
credited. In the first place, judged by the standards of modern
missions, the superficiality of his work was {409} almost inconceivable.
He never mastered one of the languages of the countries which he visite