Subsequently his tours extended to Ceylon—to Malacca—to the Molucca group—to Japan. At Kagoshuma, the most southerly small island of Japan, his converts were threatened with death. Moving on to the north he met with a better reception, though he found his ascetic ideal not so acceptable here as it had been in India. Still thirsting for more worlds to conquer for Christ and His Church, he projected a visit to China, and collected large sums of money for an extensive mission in the Celestial Empire, when he was stricken down with fever while on his way thither. He died at Sanchan, in the fortyseventh year of his age (a.d. 1552). The extraordinary amount of work accomplished by Xavier during so short a lifetime, and the passionate enthusiasm that was the inspiration of it, have enshrined his name in the hero-roll of the Church Universal. The story of his fruitful travel from country to country reads like an echo of the account of St. Paul's journeyings in the Acts of the Apostles. On the other hand, we must accept his glowing reports of his successes with caution. What, for instance, are we to think when we find him writing in one of his letters, "In the space of four months I made Christians of more than 10,000"?[1] Either this is gross exaggeration, or the Christianity was very superficial, or we have a miracle that throws Pentecost into the shade.
Now it was the great missionary Xavier who introduced the Inquisition into India. He did this in the burning earnestness of his zeal, not because he imagined that he could convert it into an engine for forcing the heathen into the Church—any such object was not in its province; but because he desired to have certain impediments to the growth and what he deemed the health of the Church removed out of its way. This institution was not invoked to plough up fallow ground; it was demanded in order to remove rocks of offence. In a letter written towards the end of the year 1545, Xavier begged the King of Portugal to establish the Inquisition in order to
- ↑ Ibid. p. 280.
