One would suppose that the "gift of tongues," when once conferred upon Xavier, remained with him, inasmuch as he could not convey his thoughts to the multitudes of people in any other way. But, strange to say, it was otherwise. This miraculous gift was a mere "_transient favor_,"[89] conferred only for a season, during his intercourse with some of the heathen populations of India, and withdrawn as miraculously as it had been given. What strange infatuation it must be to accept it as true that, after he had been divinely endowed with the faculty of preaching to the people of India in their own languages, he should have entered upon his mission to Japan without any knowledge whatsoever of the Japanese language! Although that language is one of the most difficult in the world, and wholly unlike any spoken then or now in Europe, yet that fact was of trifling consequence to such a man as the Jesuits represent Xavier to have been. He undertook this mission as if nothing were in the way, relying, as may be inferred from the Jesuit accounts, upon his miraculous powers to convert to Christianity an idolatrous people he had never seen, and of whom the world at that time knew but little. It is solemnly averred that in _forty days_ (!) he acquired a sufficient knowledge of the Japanese language to translate into it the Apostles' Creed, and an exposition of its meaning by himself. With this he began to preach, and "converted a great number." Still the intensity of his zeal made him impatient, and, being unwilling to await the slow process of appealing to the intelligence of the Japanese people, he resorted again to the familiar expedient of miracles, which had accomplished so much in India. Accordingly, we are told that, "by his blessing, a child's body, which was swelled and deformed, was made straight and beautiful; and, by his prayers, a leper was healed, and a pagan young maid of quality, that had been dead a whole day, was raised to life."[90] The Jesuits have never hesitated to assign to Xavier, as they did to Loyola, the performance of some miracle, when anything had to be done that could be accomplished in no other way. The aggregate number of miracles attributed to them exceed all that are recorded in the Gospels. And neither Xavier nor Loyola ever hesitated to avow their authority to perform them, in verification of the Jesuit doctrine that God had transferred his divine attributes to each of them.