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- Four hundred millions! Who are they? Our brethren; bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. What are they? Heathen, athwart whose gloomy night of error no ray of light ever shines; idolaters, bowing down to senseless images, the workmanship of their own hands. What are they? Men, created by God; fallen, ruined, helpless; victims, morally, of a foul and relentless malady; sinking into guilt and woe unutterable, inconceivable; immortals, objects of the divine compassion, subjects of Christ's mediation, into the mysteries of whose redemption angels desire to look, and for whose eternal salvation all heavenly intelligences are moved with a profound and ceaseless solicitude. (en)
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