The prophecy, moreover, with regard to the church—­that it should be stronger than the others—­has been fulfilled.  A few months before, the church of these Indians had burned down for the second time, together with our house.  The fire broke out in the following manner.  Some of the townspeople were out hunting, and, a dispute arising among the barbarians about the hunt, they came to blows.  Soon after the quarrel, fire was thrown on our house, and destroyed the new church with almost all the furniture.  The relics of the saints and the images were in part saved from the fire by the dexterity of the Christians.  But Ours after no long delay bent themselves to the work again, and erected another church for themselves, at no trifling expense, and with no small labor on the part of the Indians.  This is the seventh church erected in the ten years since the founding of the town.  A further fortune which befell an Indian woman confirmed many in the Christian faith.  She had ventured, without confessing her sins after the manner of Christians, to receive Christ in the communion; after she went home, she began to suffer from such agony in her throat that she thought she should choke to death.  Thus she suffered, complained, an wailed until, having recognized the cause of her suffering, she went to the church that very evening.  She prayed and besought the father to hold back her soul, already departing; and to succor an unhappy woman, whose throat was burned by the host as if by a flaming torch.  When the father heard this, he instantly besought God, and God instantly showed mercy.  She declared her sins, and thereupon all her torment ceased; and by this salutary remedy of confession the maladies of many Indians have been suddenly dispelled by Ours, the name of God or of some saint being invoked.

At the college of Zebu one of the Society, when in the town one day, heard weeping not far away; and when he followed it he discovered a mother bitterly lamenting the death of her new-born infant.  Touched by her grief, the father went a short distance away, and entreated God, in the name of the Virgin Mother, to help this afflicted woman.  Instantly the child revived, without a trace of sickness left upon him.  Whether it was his senses or his soul that had left him, it is surely to the divine goodness that his sudden revival is to be attributed.  The recitation of the Gospel of St. John has also benefited many sick persons; but Ours have found nothing so fit for removing the sicknesses of souls as the salutary Exercises of our blessed Father [i.e., Loyola], which the very heads of each magistracy, the sacred and the civil, have employed—­not alone to private but also to public advantage.  Their example, imitated by some of those in the higher ranks, has been followed by the same results.  The rest of the people have been marvelously stirred up by the renewed fervor of the members of the sodalities, among other things; and by the new confidence given them