real dignity, such as we do not often see in aged negroes, who are apt to present in its stead a grotesque exhibition of vanity." We are sorry to say that King Denis did not in all respects quite come up to our idea of an aboriginal Uncle Tom. He was quite favorable to the missionaries, especially to the Catholics; and in return for his services received a decoration from Rome itself. He had some of his numerous children educated at the Catholic Mission. But for all that, adds our authority, "King Denis still remains as great a devotee of fetichism as ever; and I would not undertake to say that he does not occasionally turn slave-trader when it suits his purpose." GRATITUDE. "GRATITUDE is the least of the virtues, but ingratitude the worst of vices." "God and our parents can never be requited." A very poor Indian had a good meal given him, Years after, in gratitude, he rescued his benefactor from captivity. A gentleman who fell into the deep sea, was rescued from drowning by a sailor. He ever after treated that sailor with the greatest kindness, and loaded him with presents. A poor Irishman said to a person who had been very kind to him, "You shall be rich with the coin of my heart," gratitude and love, "all your days." A grateful American traveled far to visit the grave of a man who, as his substitute in the war, had been killed. He placed this inscription on the grave, "He died for me." God is your greatest benefactor. He gave, and continues to you, life, eyesight, hearing, friends, food, and all blessings you enjoy. Jesus died for you, etc. What returns will you make? An Indian wanted to give his dog, his gun, his splendid and ornamented rug, the best things he had, to Jesus; but at length he did better, he gave himself. What will you give to Jesus? REMEDIES FOR ANXIETY. "TAKE therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Leave the future; let it rest Simply on the Saviour's will. Leave the future; they are blest Who, confiding, hoping still, Trust His mercy. To provide for every want, And to save from every ill. If we are faithful to the duties of the present, God will provide for the future.-Bedell. We can easily manage, if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed for us. But the load will be too heavy for us if we add to its weight the burden of to-morrow before we are called to bear it.-John Newton. Make a flrm-built fence of trust All around to-day; Fill the space with loving work, Look not through the sheltering bars, God will help in all that comes, One of the most useless of all things is to take a deal of trouble in providing against dangers that never come. How many toil to lay up riches which they never enjoy, to | provide for exigencies that never come; sacrificing present comfort and enjoyment in guarding against the wants of a period they may never live to see.- William Jay. Doth each day, upon its wing, Its allotted burden bring? Load it not beside with sorrow Which may never come to-morrow; One thing only claims thy care: Seek it first in faith and prayer; All thou mayest need beside He thou trusteth will provide. Anxiety is the poison of life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. Why, then, allow it, when we know that all the future is guided by a Father's hand ?—Blair. Oh, ask not thou, "How shall I bear The burden of to-morrow?" Sumcient for the day its care, Its evil and its sorrow. Thy God Imparteth by the way Strength that's sume'ent for the day. THE MONASTERY OF MOLK. A The THE ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages usually selected the sites for their establishments with great taste. Rarely has this been better displayed than when, nine centuries ago, they pitched upon the site for a church the spot now occupied by the magnificent Benedictine Monastery of Mölk, on the Danube, some sixty miles above Vienna. bare granite rock, 180 feet high, juts boldly out into the broad river; and upon its summit is perched the monastery, looking more like a palace than a cloister, with its windows equaling in number the days in the year, its two fine towers, and massive dome covered with copper. present monastery was built in the early part of the last century, upon the site of a church and castle erected there almost eight centuries before. The view from the windows is superb in every direction. The chapel, gorgeous in colored marbles and gold, contains one of the finest organs in Europe; and rejoices in the possession of a crucifix in which is imbedded what is said to be a fragment of the true Cross, presented to it in 1045, by the Margrave, Albert the Victorious. The library, containing more than 20,000 rare volumes, is a magnificent apartment. The Benedictines, perhaps more than any other of the Catholic Orders, have been famous for their literary zeal and industry. The good brothers of Mölk appear also to have cherished a due regard for creature comfort. In 1809, the French under Napoleon were hereabout, and they levied heavily upon the wine-cellars of the brethren, who were compelled to supply 15,000 gallons of wine daily for a week or so. Napoleon also confiscated the greater part of the revenues of the monastery; but they were subsequently restored. In all, there are about ninety monks attached to the monastery; but many of them do not reside there, being engaged as professors in universities, teachers in schools, and other like work. The residents, whose duties resemble those of the Fellows of English universities, devote themselves to literary pursuits, and attached to the monastery is a seminary, in which there are instructors to about forty pupils. A GUILTY Conscience is more terrified by imaginary dangers than a pure conscience is by real ones. Such a conscience is the devil's anvil on which he fabricates all those swords and spears with which the guilty sinner pierces himself. Guilt is to danger what fire is to gunpowder: a man need not fear to walk among barrels of powder if he have no fire about him. BURMESE IDOLS THE pair of gigantic grotesque figures represented in our illustration stand side by side on the right bank of the Irrawaddy, about a dozen miles from the Burmese and British frontier. They are known as Chin Thay, or Sacred Griffins, and are placed near the entrance of a pagoda dedicated to Gautama Buddha. These pagodas are very numerous in this neighborhood, some of them being of great size, usually consisting of a brick superstructure resting upon massive stone foundations. Near the ancient ruined city of Paghan the bank of the river, for a space of eight miles along the bank, extending back for nearly a league, the space is almost covered with remains of this quaint architecture and sculpture. When and by whom these edifices were erected is uncertain. Among the chestnut-covered slopes of the Pyrenees, in the year 1506, this child of destiny was born. He grew up in the castle of his ancestors, strong of body, active of mind, and nourished in chivalric instincts by the heroic traditions of his martial line. He would fain have followed the career of arms, but the hearts of his parents yearned over the child of their old age, and at their desire he embraced the pursuit of letters and the arts of peace. He early won distinction at the University of Paris, and at the age of twenty-two was elected Professor of Philosophy in the capital of France. The subtleties of Aristotle became a passion to the young enthusiast, and around his chair thronged the ardent youth of the University. Here he was brought under the spell of one of the most potent spirits that ever ruled the world. Ten years before, Ignatius Loyola, the gay soldier of FRANCIS XAVIER, THE APOSTLE OF THE INDIES. | fortune, was stricken down by a French ball at the siege of BY REV. W. H. WITHROW. ON a blithe April morning in the year 1541, a gallant fleet dropped down the Tagus from the white-walled port of Lisbon. Many an eye unused to tears was dimmed as the orange-groves and chestnut-forests and vine-clad hills that engirdled the city receded from view. For that fleet bore a thousand men to reinforce the garrison of the pestilent town of Goa in Portuguese India-few of whom were ever again to see their native land. But one heart was unmoved by regret or foreboding, one countenance beamed with delight, one soul glowed with the raptures of religious exultation. For that fleet bore a lonely, serge-clad man, whose fame is destined to live as long as time shall last. For over two centuries he has been canonized among the saints in heaven and invoked on earth, and throughout Catholic Christendom have altars been erected to his name. The memory of Francis Xavier still stirs the soul to high emprise and commands the admiration of mankind, three hundred years after his body has returned to dust. Pampeluna. He rose from his couch the avowed soldier of Christ and His Virgin Mother. He was healed of his wound, he averred, by the touch of St. Peter; but the Apostle, if a good physician, was a poor surgeon, for his patient remained a cripple for the rest of his life. Clad in the filthy gabardine of a beggar, he plunged for months into a solitary cave, where he fasted, and prayed, and tortured both body and mind till he was reduced to the verge of madness. Here he conceived and wrote those " "Spiritual Exercises," consisting chiefly of meditations on the tortures of the damned and the raptures of the saved, which he formulated into the "act of conversion" whereby courtiers were to be changed into confessors, and soldiers into saints. In his retreat Loyola felt himself summoned to be the leader of a great spiritual army-a "religious militia," as he phrased it--which should battle in all lands, and by every weapon, against the enemies of the Pope of Rome and of the Catholic faith. And faithfully he obeyed that call. By the Society of Jesus more than by any other agency was the Protestant Reformation arrested and turned back, and the whole of Southern Europe retained beneath the spiritual despotism of Rome. To prepare himself for his mighty work-to become the teacher of the future teachers of the world-he took his seat, a man of thirty-four, by the side of little boys learning the rudiments of Latin grammar. In prison, in exile, in shipwreck, in sickness, in hunger, in poverty, begging his way through Europe, wandering a pilgrim to Palestine, he cherished his inflexible purpose in his steadfast soul. He sought to attach Xavier to his person and his cause. But the courtly scholar shrank from the scourge, the fasting, the penance of the "Spiritual Exercises," and he laughed them to scorn. Yet the fascination was upon him. That potent spirit wove its spells about him, probed his conscience to the quick, fired his spiritual ambition, and won his heart. Xavier became the disciple of Loyola, and surpassed all his brethren in the fervor of his zeal, the austerity of his devotion, the heroism of his life. To mortify his body, which had once been his pride, he tied cords around his arms and legs till they corroded their way almost to the bone. Twice these penances brought him to the verge of the grave. In the last hour, as it was thought, he was borne into the public squares that by his death he might preach even more effectively than by his life. But he was restored, by a miracle, as he believed, to fulfill a ministry of toil, and trial, and triumph, such has rarely, if ever, been equaled by man. In his five-and-thirtieth year Xavier was summoned by Loyola to become the Apostle to the Indies. "Go, brother," he said, "whither the voice of God calls you, and inflame all hearts with the divine fire within you.— Id y accendedlo todo y embrasadlo en fuego divino." BURMESE IDOLS. Xavier responded with delight to the summons. Passionate sobs, not of sorrow, but of joy, attested the rapture of his soul in accepting the sacred mission. Penniless, alone, clothed but in a ragged cloak, he set out the very next day from Rome to Lisbon. As he descended the rugged slopes of the Pyrenees, he beheld in the distance the towers of his father's castle, where still lived, in the feebleness of extreme old age, the mother who had watched and blessed the years VOL. IV. No. 5.-38. of his childhood and youth. But with that crucifixion of the natural affections which the religion of Rome calls virtue, he repressed the yearnings of his soul and saw her not. The perishing millions of India were awaiting him and he might not pause, even for an hour, to look for the last time on the face of her who loved him best of any on earth. As he stood erect upon the vessel's deck and the white walled convents, tree - embowered, and sunny slopes where Lisbon smiles among her vines receded from his view, a strange light gleamed in his soft blue eyes, a strange joy filled his soul. He was seeking the shores of the "gorgeous Inde" not for its wealth of pearl and gold, not to win renown of arms, or the honors or rewards of civil power, but to tell of the love of Mary and her divine Son to the dusky multitudes of that far-off land. He went forth like the first Apostles | love. He shared their youthful games and amusements. of Christ, with neither purse nor scrip, without money while at the same time he inculcated the holiest lessons of and without food. He fulfilled to the uttermost the morality and religion. vow of poverty of his Order. He was dependent for the bread he ate and for change of raiment on the charity of the soldiers and sailors of the fleet; his couch was a pile of ship's cordage; and the nausea of sea-sickness, aggravated by the coarse, refuse food on which he subsisted from choice probably as much as from necessity, wasted away his frame. Yet, notwithstanding his own illness, he ministered with the utmost devotion to the scurvy-smitten crew of the infected vessel, performing with alacrity the most loathsome offices, even for the unthankful and the unworthy. Before the filming eyes of the dying he held the crucifix and spoke of a Saviour's love. To the reprobate and the vile he declared the judgments of God's law. He sought to restrain their wickedness, and even invented innocent pastimes for their amusement, to divert them from their passionate and quarrelsome gambling. With the officers of the ship he discussed philosophy and politics, war and commerce, with all the grace of an accomplished scholar and polished courtier. After a voyage of five weary months the fleet reached the coast of Mozambique. Beneath the burning sun of Africa an epidemic broke out, and carried death and dismay among the passengers and crews. Xavier was indefatigable in his ministrations to the sick and dying. The former he nursed with a woman's tenderness; to the latter he gave the last consolations and rites of religion. At length he was himself stricken down by the infection, and well-nigh fell a victim to his service of love. Whenever he was able to leave his couch, "he crawled," says the chronicler of his life, "to the beds of his fellow-sufferers to soothe their terrors or assuage their pains." He was raised up, however, from the gates of death to be the messenger of life to the millions of India and Japan. His great, loving heart yearned over all the victims of want and woe. He sought out the worst forms of suffering as other men seek out pleasures, in order that he might relieve the pangs of wretchedness. For this purpose he took up his abode in the lepers' hospital with the lazars and outcasts of mankind. But he sought especially, constrained by a passionate charity, the moral lepers of soci ety-those smitten with the most deadly infection of sin. Even in the haunts of dissipation and profligacy his saintly presence was found, unstained amid the surrounding pollution-like a sunbeam illuminating the vilest places-and secking by his pungent wit and keen irony to shame from their vices, or by his earnest beseeching to woo them to purity of life. Nor were his efforts unavailing. By the strange spell of his influence even dissolute men were reclaimed from vice to virtue, and the very pariahs of society were elevated to the dignity of men, and often to the fellowship of saints. After a year of successful toil at Goa, Xavier learned the existence of beings of still more abject and urgent misery than any he had yet encountered. They were the wretched pearl-divers of the Malabar coast. Their need was a call his soul could not resist. He sought their burning shore, and among these degraded people his bell rang out its call to prayer and its warning of doom. Impatient of the slow mode of preaching through an interpreter, he committed to memory translations of the Creed, the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, and recited them with impassioned earnestness and often with streaming tears. For fifteer months he toiled among these wretched fishermen, lodging in their squalid huts, sharing their simple fare of rice and water, consoling their sorrows and inspiring the hope of immortality beyond the grave. He slept, it is said, during this period, but three hours out of the twenty-four. Such zeal was not without its sure reward. Many a lowly cottage bore the consecrating sign of the cross, and many a humble neophyte received Christian baptism. Soon reared their altars to the worship of the Son of Mary. In such success Xavier's soul drank supreme content. After many sufferings by sea and land, Xavier reached the scene of his future labors thirteen months after leaving Lisbon. At Goa he found the greatest obstacles to the conversion of the pagans to be the profligacy and wicked-upon that arid coast no less than five-and-forty churches ness of his Catholic countrymen. A greed for gold and thirst for pleasure had utterly corrupted the ruling race. Lust and extortion and cruelty found their victims in a conquered and helpless people. Even the ordinary restraints of civilized society were wanting to shame into the semblance of decency the orgies of vice of the European inhabitants. Appalled at the profligacy and corruption of society, Xavier sought first to reform the morals of the Christians before he attempted the conversion of the idolaters. It is recorded, indeed, that some of the latter who had forsaken their false gods were so shocked at the vices of their masters that they returned again to the worship of idols. Despairing of reclaiming the veterans in vice, Xavier resolved to try to rescue the children from its polluting power. Arming himself with a large hand-bell, he roamed bareheaded through the streets of Goa, calling aloud on the parents to send their children to be catechised. Even in the vilest of men there is one chord, their love of their offspring, that promptly responds if skillfully touched. The strange spectacle of this saintly man, clad in rags like an eremite from the wilderness, with his noble and expressive countenance, pleading for these neglected children, touched even the stoniest natures. A multitude of all ages followed him to the church. With impassioned eloquence he probed their consciences and sought to awaken in them a desire for a better life. He won the hearts of the little children by his more than father's tenderness and His faith and that of his humble converts was destined to undergo a severe trial. A hostile invasion uprooted the newly planted churches, and drove the Christian neophytes to take refuge among the desolate sand-bars and rocks of the Gulf of Mansar. Thither Xavier accompanied them, sustaining, consoling, directing them; and procuring | succor in their utter poverty from the viceroy at Goa, seven hundred miles distant. Eager to win new victories for the Cross, Xavier penetrated the jealous barriers of the kingdom of Travancore. The story reads like a romance, yet it is sustained by ample authentic testimony. This solitary, serge-clad, unprotected man, by his lofty faith, his fiery zeal, his tireless energy, overthrew the im memorial idolatry of the realm, and substituted the Christian religion in its stead. The Rajah and his courtiers were among the foremost converts. The idol temples were thrown down and Christian churches rose everywhere throughout the land. Yet, this national conversion was not unopposed. The Brahmins, after the manner of the priestly caste, persecuted with fire and sword the convert to the Christian faith. They also procured, or encouraged the aid of a foreign invader. The ancient chivalry of his martial line flamed up in the soul of the professed apostle of peace. Grasping a crucifix, he led the van of the defensive army, and with flashing eye and thrilling tones delivered to destruction the opposing hosts. He won the gratitude of the nation and received the title of the "great father" of the rajah. The intoxicating draught of power seems to have fevered even the unworldly soul of Francis Xavier. The late obscure and humble priest demanded and obtained the recall of the proud Viceroy of Portuguese India, Don Alphonso de Sousa, who had incurred, righteously it may be, his displeasure. Nor was he without other, and perhaps justifiable, secular ambition. The Island of Manaar, a dependency of the Kingdom of Jaffna, had been converted to the Christian faith and incurred, therefor, a bitter persecution. Six hundred of the islanders were massacred, together with the King's son. Xavier procured the equipment of a Portuguese expedition to dethrone the persecuting King, and to annex his dominions. But the warrior-priest no longer led the way to victory. The expedition was defeated, and Xavier departed to seek more appropriate fields of spiritual conquest. After strengthening his soul by devout meditation and baffling an army of fiends-so reads the record-at the traditional tomb, on the Coromandel coast, of St. Thomas, the first missionary to India, Xavier set sail for the populous Portuguese port of Malacca. In luxury and sensual immorality it surpassed even the wickedness of Goa. Like a stern Hebrew prophet-a Jonah preaching to the Ninevites-he wandered through the crowded bazars calling on men everywhere to repent; his warning bell pealing above the din of trade and the music of mirth. The faithless generation, however, laughed his warnings to scorn. But, blending his stern denunciations and fiery zeal with keen wit and courtly accomplishments, he at length overcame all opposition. Altars rose in the public squares, and confession and prayer succeed profligacy and cursing. The eager missionary pressed on to the Moluccas, far in the unknown Eastern seas. Scarcely had he reached the island of Amboyna, when a piratical Spanish fleet menaced its shores. The plague was on the vessels. With a burning charity that embraced enemies as well as friends, Xavier boarded the ships, ministered day and night to the sick and dying, brought succor to their bodies and preached repentance to their souls. Thus he melted even the stern hearts of pirates, and, with the weapons of love, repelled a wanton invasion. Despite all remonstrance, he hastened on his perilous mission of proclaiming the Gospel to the barbarous tribes of the savage neighboring islands. "If these lands," he exclaims, with a keenness of reproach that still echoes across the centuries, "had scented woods and mines of gold, Christians would find courage to reach them; nor would all the perils of the world prevent them. They are dastardly and alarmed because there are nothing to be gained but the souls of men. But shall love be less hardy and less generous than avarice?" No! he boldly answered, and to the warning that he would probably perish by the hands of the inhabitants, he replied, in the heroic spirit of a martyr: "That is an honor to which such a sinner as I am may not aspire; but this I will say, that whatever form of torture or of death awaits me, I am ready to suffer it ten thousand times for the salvation of a single soul." Even the most awful terrors of nature shook not this steadfast soul. Amid the shakings of an earthquake, the convulsions of a volcano, the rain of falling rocks, and the peals of loudest thunder, he calmly ministered at the rocking altar and exhorted his shuddering audience to flee from the wrath to come. But he also, with the characteristic casuistry of his Order, wrought upon their bodily fears for the good of their souls. The streams of molten lava, he assured them, were the outburst of the fiery river of hell, the lightning's glare was the reflection of its lurid flames, and the crashing thunders were the echoes of its groans of everlasting torment. The convulsions of the earth were caused, he averred, by the flight of the demons before the archangel's sword. Even the haughtiest His was a spirit born to rule. natures recognized his genius of command. The town of Malacca was besieged by a powerful Mohammedan fleet and army. The proud chivalry of Europe cowered before the insolent threats of the Moslem. In a weather-beaten bark Xavier entered the harbor. It was like the coming of Saint Iago to the aid of the Christians in a hard-fought conflict with the Moors. He seemed like a supernatural | presence that put lions' hearts into the bosoms of the garrison. He sent forth the fleet with the assurance of victory. It met with shipwreck and disaster. The fickle multitude now menaced with death him whom they had just hailed as a deliverer. But he upbraided their cowardice and reanimated their souls. The crisis of fate drew near. Full of faith, and inspired with a lofty courage, Xavier knelt in importunate prayer at the altar. At length, springing to his feet, he exclaimed, in the spirit of prophecy: "Christ has conquered for us !" Soon the victorious fleet re-entered the harbor. Salvoes of cannon, a triumphal procession, and the chanting of the Te Deum, celebrated the victory. But Xavier, his task accomplished, turned his back on the grateful town. Human applause had no charms for him. Spurning wealth and pleasure and homage and power, the zealous missionary sought only the spiritual succor of the perishing millions around him. In crowded bazars or loathsome lazarettos, that lonely, way worn form might be seen, swinging his faithful bell; his majestic countenance and pathetic eyes appealing with strange power to even stony hearts; his great soul yearning with love and sorrow for the sinning and the suffering, and his pleading voice calling on all men everywhere to repent. With a profound and subtle sympathy he accommodated himself to every condition-the loftiest and the lowliest : now banqueting in the palace of the rajah, and now sharing the rice and ghee of the humblest ryot or the outcast pariah; reasoning of high philosophy with the Brahmin pundit in the temples of Vishnu and Siva, or pointing the self-tormenting faquir to the Divine Sufferer who has taken away the sins of the world. He became all things to all men if by any means he might save some. After five years of wandering through the two Indies and the neighboring archipelago, Xavier returned to Goa, the seat of Portuguese empire in the East. It was also the See of the Romish hierarchy. Here, too, the dread Inquisition repressed the hated crime of heresy with as relentless and cruel a hand as even the iron rule of Torquemada. In appearance Xavier was a mendicant. But his fame had spread from the Indies to the Yellow Sea, and to the islands of Japan. A native of that far-off country, whose conscience was burdened with many crimes, for which he had in vain sought expiation, heard of this great wonder. With two servants he set out to seek from this divine teacher, as he believed him to be, that peace of conscience which he could not find at home. In spite of storms and shipwreck he proceeded in his eager quest to Malacca, and then to Goa, a journey of eight thousand miles. In these men Xavier saw, he believed, the means for the conversion of Japan. After a course of religious instruction they became not only Catholic Christians, but members of the Order of Jesus. Japan had only four years before been discovered by the Portuguese. But Xavier was impatient till he had conquered it for Christ. |