STILLNESS, like God, did not answer but was sensed as present in the valley of the boiling lake in Unzen, on the day of extreme cold when the Christians were tortured in December 1629.

Japan was eradicating foreign religions. One witness was Cristóvão Ferreira, a Portuguese Jesuit priest who lived in Japan from 1609 until when Christianity, the introduction of which had initially been tolerated, was drastically expelled. A secret