“No sooner,” he writes, “had they been cleansed by the waters of baptism, than the divine goodness shed upon them such delight, and brought them to such a sense of God’s beneficence towards them, that through pious and spiritual joy they melted into tears. In all the virtues they made such a progress as to afford us a pleasant and useful subject of conversation. They also learned to read and write, and diligently attended at the appointed seasons of prayer. When inquired of by me what subject of contemplation affected them most, they answered, the sufferings of our Lord; and, therefore, to this contemplation they chiefly applied themselves. They studied also the articles of faith, the means of redemption, and the other Christian mysteries. To my frequent inquiries what religious rites they found profited them the most, they always answered, confession and communion; adding, also, that they did not see how any reasonable man could hesitate to assent to and obey the requirements of Christian discipline. Paul of the Holy Faith, one of the number, I once heard bursting out, with sighs, into these exclamations: ‘O miserable Japanese! who adore as deities the very things which God has made for your service!’And when I asked him to what he referred, he answered, ‘Because they worship the sun and the moon, things made to serve those who know the Lord Jesus; for to what other end are they made, except to illuminate both day and night, in order that men may employ that light in the worship and to the glory of God and his Son?’” He mentions, in the same letter, that the voyage to Japan was so dangerous, that not more than two vessels out of three were expected to arrive there in safety. He even seems to have had some temptations to abandon the enterprise; but in spite of numerous obstacles put in his way, as he will have it, by the great adversary of mankind, he determined to persevere, especially as letters from Japan gave encouraging information of the desire there for Christian instruction, on the part of a prince of the country who had been much impressed by the efficacy of the sign of the cross, as employed by certain Portuguese merchants, in driving the evil spirits from a haunted house. Another letter of Xavier’s, written from Kagoshima, in Japan, and dated in November, 1549, about three months after his arrival, gives an account of his voyage thither.