Great as were his material works of mercy, they are eclipsed when compared with the spiritual. It is, indeed, a meritorious work to teach the ignorant, to correct the erring, to pardon injuries, and all this Joaquín García Icazbalceta did in a high degree. Not only did the Lord give him great wealth, but also the inestimable gift of wisdom. The leisures, which his condition of comfort afforded him, were all employed in gathering an immense store of solid doctrine and in placing this at the service not only of the wise, but also of the humble and the ignorant. The devotional books compiled and printed by him have gained an enormous circulation among the faithful and have greatly fomented piety among Mexicans. Printed by him, I have said, and this is true in the full meaning of the word. Convinced that manual labor dishonors no one, he, personally, worked at his printing, and, to his talent and assiduity, the typographic art owes much.
All these labors, all these studies, were placed at the service of the Church and of the public by Señor García Icazbalceta. How, except for him, would we know how much the early missionaries did for the civilization and the prosperity of the New World? Thanks to his researches, books, and manuscripts, long forgotten, were reborn, and, in circulating, decked in the typographic beauty of Señor García Icazbalceta’s private press, and adorned with his commentaries and notes, they dissipated many prejudices and made those holy men, the apostles of New Spain, who were despised by the few who recalled them, known to the world.
Among them he presents Friar Juan de Zumárraga, how beautiful, how grand! Not without reason did the history of that life, so beautifully written, fly through the world, and, attracting the attention of the highest dignitaries of the Seraphic Order, to which the first Bishop of Mexico belonged, it was translated by one of them into the Tuscan and, in that idiom, circulated about the Vatican and throughout the whole Italian peninsula.
Such pious undertakings could not fail to arouse the envy of the world—and of hell. The demon, disguised as an angel of light, clothed in a religious garb, attacked him, as envy ever attacks, with bitterness, with acrimony, with implacable cruelty. What he had published was malinterpreted and what he had not written was thrown into his face; his intentions were calumniated and productions foreign to his genius were attributed to him.
The fruitful writer replied never a word, nor even attempted to defend himself. At the suggestion of a prelate he cut out one chapter, an entire chapter, from his most cherished work; a chapter which cost him long years of study and diligent labors. Nor did his sacrifices end here. On seeing that those who were most embittered against him were ministers of that Church of which he was an obedient and submissive son and which he desired to defend, he broke, forever, his learned pen. Ah, beloved members of the conferences of San Vicente, how many injuries a misguided zeal inflicts! To the unjust and uncharitable attacks of which he was the victim, we owe it that most important works upon the Mexican Church remained unfinished, that documents of the highest interest lie mouldering in dust, that your learned President General dedicated the last years of his life only to the compilation of dictionaries and to grammatical studies, which could scare no one.
The Lord has already rewarded his ardent charity, his obedience to the prelates of the Church, his readiness to forgive even those injuries which most deeply wound one who is conscious of being a fervent Catholic and a conscientious historian. Without the sufferings of illness, without the bitterness of the final agony, sudden death, though not unforeseen, which is accustomed to be the punishment of sinners and the recompense of the righteous, lately snatched him away. Although a layman, he exercised, upon the earth, an apostleship more fruitful than that of many who are called by God to the highest destinies; and on receiving him to his bosom, the Lord without doubt has given him that reward, which he offered to those, who, without occupying a high place in the Church, duly fulfil their mission, and, being the last in the hierarchic scale, come to be first in heaven.
That which he could not gain in this world by his persistent efforts and courteous appeals to men, he will gain, we trust, in the better land by his prayer to the Almighty—the regeneration of the conferences of San Luis Potosí. May heaven rekindle your fervor, reanimate your charity, and infuse that zeal, as ardent as prudent, and that respect to the ministers of the Church, which animated Don Joaquín García Icazbalceta through his mortal life. Pray for him, and try to imitate him.
MEXICO’S PROTOMARTYR.
Today, it is fifteen months since I terminated the longest pilgrimage of my life, arriving at the shores of that enchanted Japan, in which our Mexican protomartyr was crucified. Terrible are, in all times, the seas of the Far East. The cyclones, which, in the century of Vasco de Gama and Francis Xavier, engulfed so many ships, have not lost their force; and the most that modern science can do is to predict them by a few hours, to indicate their probable course, and to teach mariners, if their vessels are capable of such speed, to fly before these messengers of death.
Just so, steaming at full speed before one of these tremendous hurricanes, our vessel was sailing the night before we reached the desired haven of Nagasaki. Although we were considerably in advance of it, our velocity was not so great but that the effects of what is called the anticyclone overtook us. The waves tossed, the wind whistled, and while, on the one hand, I promised Felipe de Jesús, if he saved me from peril, to honor him in an especial manner on the next centenary of his martyrdom, on the other hand, my thoughts transported me to that galleon of imperishable memory, which, through these same seas, bore the saint, three hundred years ago, to the very coasts whither we were bound. Before entering fully upon the brilliant epic, which through good fortune, it falls to me to narrate to you this happy day, I desire to carry you also on board of it.