are obeyed there is nothing more to ask, and where they are not obeyed no confidence can be placed. They are, as it were, a wall around the garden of our soul; so long as they are unbroken, though our adversary is always going about, as says St. Peter, moving around us again and again, and seeking to do us evil, he cannot succeed; but if we make a breach in the wall it is easy for him to enter and destroy us. It is certainly true that this has often been verified with regard to our constitutions, taken by themselves, without additions; for without doubt they are a marvelous wall for the virtue of the soul, and when they are observed the soul is safe. Yet there can be no doubt that the observance of the constitutions is much assisted and fortified by the two hours of prayer added in these ordinances. The daily discipline contributes to the same effect, as does also the restriction to a greater poverty, and the rule requiring corporal mortification and a more strictly retired life. All these things are added, over and above the ordinary rules of the Society and its regular constitutions. In the Indias--which, as experience shows, are in all states of life most exposed to laxity of morals and to luxury--such rules are not only desirable, but necessary. In this country it is necessary to give greater care to strengthening the wall of the soul, since perhaps that which in Europe would be sufficient to maintain the religious in the perfect observance of their constitutions is insufficient in the Indias, where causes and occasions for the decay of this wall are well known to be greater. Hence it was a safe and holy counsel to add in these regions to the wall of our constitutions the aforesaid buttresses of prayer and mortification; for if in all countries that is true which the wise man said--"He who observes the law multiplies prayer"--much more necessary will that be where the observance of the law meets with greater difficulties and more obstacles.