who have this duty only through charity. This is the law of charity,
_primum mihi secundum tibi_; and this should be observed more among
religious than among other ministers who are not included among
them--in the first place, because these religious did not choose to
take up this ministry as under just obligations to do so, but merely
through charity, which looks first to itself and then to its neighbor;
in the second place, because a simple-minded minister who is withdrawn
from the world, and given to prayer, and a careful observer of his
religion, and who will make the Indians feel that he lives as a saint,
is worth more than twenty who are inattentive to their duties, and
who cannot remain an hour in their cells. These virtues and other
similar ones, without which a religious can not maintain himself,
can ill be acquired by the religious when they go alone and are so
separated as you wish. Would to God that I might see in every house
for Indians, not four such as are in Batan, but six or eight, and not
one, as your Lordship says, because I should expect more fruit from
these six or eight quiet ones than from eighty heedless ones. For as
St. Paul said, speaking to the Corinthians, _Regnum dei non est in
sermone sed in virtute_; for chattering is chattering, and teaching
through works is the true teaching. There are no people in the world
who have so great need of good ministers as have the Indians, or
who notice as much as they do the life which these ministers lead,
and the example which they set them. For one religious to be alone,
although he be a St. Paul, is unsafe; and so it is proper that in this
region we should permit the superiors of each community to govern
their religious and arrange for them as it seems best to them; for,
since they came to convert these souls, it is to be believed that
they will not fail to do so if they can. But they will not, and very
rightly, consent to ruin themselves through maintaining the religious
instruction; but this is not unfavorable to religious instruction,