So the little seed of the Word of God was sown in Japan, and from the time of this visit, Jesuits freely entered Japan, and were established by Papal brief as the chief missionaries for that country. Their eminent success is said to have been based upon their invariably laying down a solid educational foundation, and securing the careful training of the scholars who flocked to them. To each mission were attached a public school, in which Christian doctrine, literature, and ecclesiastical and secular music were taught, and wherever unusual capacity was evinced, the missionaries gathered those boys together in their own houses, and there instructed them how to make mental prayer, to practise virtue, to avoid and overcome sin, and excite the spirit of penance. Every Friday the boys went in procession to the churches, singing psalms and motetts. In this way, the fervour generally induced by corporal austerities, and the generous, uncalculating devotedness flowing from the continual thought of Christ's Passion, sprang up in full vigour from the very beginning of the missions, and ripened to its legitimate harvest, while _to die for Christ_ became the habitual aspiration of the child-neophytes of Japan. Meanwhile, no foreboding of coming reverses, or dread of trials which might prove fatal, hindered the generous missionaries from their work. Like the Apostles and their early successors, they went about from day to day, literally fulfilling our Lord's commands to carry neither purse nor scrip, nor to provide two coats, nor to abide in any one place, except for the good of the souls around them. When persecutions sprang up in one town or territory, they took their crucifixes and their breviaries in their hands, and went on to another, doing whatever good was nearest at hand, and leaving all the consequences of it to God to make fruitful or not. As in the early ages of the Church, noble women were continually raised up to do great things for Christ, and to show forth that perfection of love in weakness and childlike faith by which good women so peculiarly glorify God. One of them, Maria Kiogscou, gained two sons, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law to the faith, and her house became the centre of good works and alms-deeds, and a place of meeting for all the upper classes in Osaka, most of whom either actually declared themselves Christians, or shielded and helped those who did. Another noble lady named Julia, being accustomed to frequent the houses of the nobility at Meaco, baptized great numbers of other ladies with her own hands, and instructed a crowd of young people in Christian doctrine. One fact, strikingly like those of the first centuries of the faith, is told of a Japanese physician, who happening to read a book lent by one of the missionaries to a friend of his, became convinced that there was only one true God, but as the book was not one of doctrine, he learnt no more than this for four years. Every morning and evening he knelt down