of this on competent authority, whatever it may cost, with His grace I will not shrink from it.  I call competent authority the approbation of good and holy men, and one like the cardinal, who knows the country, knows all our affairs now, and has every quality of mind and heart to be a competent judge in this important matter.  Though you have made me your plenipotentiary, yet this is an individual affair, one we did not contemplate, one of the highest import to our salvation and sanctification, and must depend on God and our individual conscience.

“Even before making this proposition to you I asked advice from my spiritual director, and he approved of it.  You may be confident that in every step which I take I endeavor to be actuated by the spirit of God, and take every means to assure myself of it, so that hereafter no scruple may trouble my conscience, and God’s blessing be with me and you also.”

He writes thus towards the end of September:  “The more I think of our difficulties the more I am inclined to believe that they may have been permitted by a good God for the very purpose of a work of this kind.  If wise and holy men say so, and we have the approbation of the Holy See, is it not a mission offered to us by Divine Providence, and ought we not cheerfully to embrace it?”

And on October 5:  “I hope God has inspired you with some means of coming to my help.  Indeed, it is a difficult position, and the best I can do is to throw myself constantly on Divine Providence and be guided by Him.  You will remember, and I hope, before this reaches you, will have answered my proposition in my last note, whether or not you would be willing to form an independent band of missionaries to be devoted to the great wants of the country.  I have considered and reconsidered, and prayed and prayed, and in spite of my fears this seems to me the direction in which Divine Providence calls us. . . .  With all the difficulties, dangers, and struggles that another [community] movement presents before me, I feel more and more convinced that it is this that Divine Providence asks of us. If we should act in concert its success cannot be doubted—­success not only as regards our present kind of labors, but in a variety of other ways which are open to us in our new country. . . .  If you are prepared to move in this direction it would be best, and indeed necessary, not only to write to me your assent, but also a memorial to the Propaganda—­to Cardinal Barnabo—­stating the interests and wants of religion and of the country, and then petition to be permitted to turn your labors in this direction. . . .

“Such a course involves the release of your obligations to the [Redemptorist] Congregation, and this would have to be expressed distinctly in your petition, and motived by good reasons there given.”

Further on in the same letter he adds:  “Since writing the above I have had time for more reflection, and consulted with my spiritual adviser, and this course appears to be the one Divine Providence points out.”