able to give instruction in theology. He fulfilled this office most
satisfactorily and profitably to his students, for his intellect and
erudition were very profound. On holidays and feast-days he rested
by going from village to village, preaching each day two, three,
or four sermons. His manner of treating persons was very gracious,
and consequently he aroused all Avila to fervor, ecclesiastics as
well as laymen. All regarded him as their apostle and teacher, and
so treated him, whether present or absent. Leaving that employment,
he went forth to the Filipinas, where he arrived, as we have said,
in June of the year one thousand five hundred and ninety-five. During
the voyage he was not idle, but rather kindled the fervor of all on
the ship with discourses and sermons, as I was told in his praise
by the commander of the fleet, and by the father commissary of the
Holy Office in the province of Pintados, the associate of the right
reverend bishop of Sebu. I conducted him to Leite where I left him
with Father Cosme de Flores as foundation-stones of Christianity in
that region, where they accomplished the fruitful results that I have
described. In Mindanao his greatest affliction was to find himself
alone, foreseeing, from his great labors and little strength, that
he had not long to live, and knowing that at his death he had no one
who might aid and console him. He thus expressed himself a very few
days before he died, to a soldier to whom he had just administered
extreme unction: "Render thanks to God that you have had some one to
administer to you at this hour the holy sacraments; unhappy wretch
am I, who have no one to do as much for me." But God our Lord, who
is a faithful friend, supplied this want, according him a glorious
death, with abundant consolation from heaven. A few of his pious and
devout followers received his body, burying it in the very chapel
where he celebrated mass--without funeral rites, but with grief and
tears, and concern that his bones should be preserved until borne