otector.

It is in addition an entirely special reason for which we believe
we should commemorate in a grateful spirit this immortal event. It
is that Columbus is one of us. When one considers with what motive
above all he undertook the plan of exploring the dark sea, and with
what object he endeavored to realize this plan, one can not doubt
that the Catholic faith superlatively inspired the enterprise and
its execution, so that by this title, also, humanity is not a
little indebted to the Church.

There are without doubt many men of hardihood and full of
experience who, before Christopher Columbus and after him, explored
with persevering efforts unknown lands across seas still more
unknown. Their memory is celebrated, and will be so by the renown
and the recollection of their good deeds, seeing that they have
extended the frontiers of science and of civilization, and that not
at the price of slight efforts, but with an exalted ardor of
spirit, and often through extreme perils. It is not the less true
that there is a great difference between them and him of whom we
speak.

The eminently distinctive point in Columbus is, that in crossing
the immense expanses of the ocean he followed an object more grand
and more elevated than the others. This does not say, doubtless,
that he was not in any way influenced by the very praiseworthy
desire to be master of science, to well deserve the approval of
society, or that he despised the glory whose stimulant is
ordinarily more sensitive to elevated minds, or that he was not at
all looking to his own personal interests. But above all these
human reasons, that of religion was uppermost by a great deal in
him, and it was this, without any doubt, which sustained his spirit
and his will, and which frequently, in the midst of extreme
difficulties, filled him with consolation. He learned in reality
that his plan, his resolution profoundly carved in his heart, was
to open access to the gospel in new lands and in new seas.

This may seem hardly probable to those who, concentrating all their
care, all their thoughts, in the present nature of things, as it is
perceived by the senses, refuse to look upon greater benefits. But,
on the other hand, it is the characteristic of eminent minds to
prefer to elevate th