o enlivened by it to honour him during the rest
of our lives, hoping, that, out of his abundant mercy, he will bestow on
us a new strength, and fresh vigour, to serve him faithfully and
generously, even to our death."

"May it please the Divine Goodness," he says elsewhere, "that good men,
whom the devil endeavours to affright in the service of God, might fear
no other thing besides displeasing him, in leaving off what they have
undertaken for his sake. If they would do this, how happy a life would
they then lead! how much would they advance in virtue, knowing, by their
own experience, that they can do nothing of themselves, but that they can
do all things by the assistance of his grace!"

He said, "that our most stedfast hold in dangers and temptations, was to
have a noble courage against the foe of our salvation, in a distrust of
our own strength, but a firm reliance on our Lord, so that we should not
only fear nothing under the conduct of such a general, but also should
not doubt of victory." He said also further, "that, in those dangerous
occasions, the want of confidence in God was more to be feared, than any
assault of the enemy; and that we should run much greater hazard in the
least distrust of the divine assistance, in the greatest dangers, than in
exposing ourselves to those very dangers." He added, lastly, "that this
danger was so much the more formidable, the more it was hidden, and the
less that we perceived it."

These thoughts produced in the soul of this holy man an entire diffidence
of himself, together with a perfect humility. He was the only discourse
of the new world; Infidels and Christians gave him almost equal honour;
and his power over nature was so great, that it was said to be a kind of
miracle, when he performed no miracle But all this served only to raise
confusion in him; because he found nothing in himself but his own
nothingness; and being nothing in his own conceit, he could not
comprehend, how it was possible for him to be esteemed. Writing to the
doctor of Navarre, before his voyage to the Indies, he told him, "That it
was a singular grace of heaven to know ourselves; and that, through the
mercy of God, he knew himself to be good for nothing."

"Humbly beseech our Lord," he wrote from the Indies to Father Simon
Rodriguez, "that I may have power to open the door of China to others;
where I am, I have done but little." In many other passages of his
letters, he calls himself an exceedin