Great as were his material works of mercy, they are eclipsed when compared with the spiritual. It is, indeed, a meritorious work to teach the ignorant, to correct the erring, to pardon injuries, and all this Joaquín García Icazbalceta did in a high degree. Not only did the Lord give him great wealth, but also the inestimable gift of wisdom. The leisures, which his condition of comfort afforded him, were all employed in gathering an immense store of solid doctrine and in placing this at the service not only of the wise, but also of the humble and the ignorant. The devotional books compiled and _printed_ by him have gained an enormous circulation among the faithful and have greatly fomented piety among Mexicans. _Printed_ by him, I have said, and this is true in the full meaning of the word. Convinced that manual labor dishonors no one, he, personally, worked at his printing, and, to his talent and assiduity, the typographic art owes much. All these labors, all these studies, were placed at the service of the Church and of the public by Señor García Icazbalceta. How, except for him, would we know how much the early missionaries did for the civilization and the prosperity of the New World? Thanks to his researches, books, and manuscripts, long forgotten, were reborn, and, in circulating, decked in the typographic beauty of Señor García Icazbalceta’s private press, and adorned with his commentaries and notes, they dissipated many prejudices and made those holy men, the apostles of New Spain, who were despised by the few who recalled them, known to the world. Among them he presents Friar Juan de Zumárraga, how beautiful, how grand! Not without reason did the history of that life, so beautifully written, fly through the world, and, attracting the attention of the highest dignitaries of the Seraphic Order, to which the first Bishop of Mexico belonged, it was translated by one of them into the Tuscan and, in that idiom, circulated about the Vatican and throughout the whole Italian peninsula. Such pious undertakings could not fail to arouse the envy of the world--and of hell. The demon, disguised as an angel of light, clothed in a religious garb, attacked him, as envy ever attacks, with bitterness, with acrimony, with implacable cruelty. What he had published was malinterpreted and _what he had not written_ was thrown into his face; his intentions were calumniated and productions foreign to his genius were attributed to him.