The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1868-03-22
TIE JEsurrs M NORTH AMERICA.

The following remarks are from the Lon
don Spectator, called forth by a criticism on
a recent publication. Although they con-
tain nothing new to us, they are given to
show how disinterested persons recognize
the truly evangelical career of Catholic mis-
sionaries.
Some years ago we read the memoirs of
Rev. Mr.. Perkins, Presby terrain missionary
to Persia. While crossing the rugged road
to Erzeroom, his wife (being in an interest
ing situation,) became suddenly ill, and no
accoucheur being at hand, he called upon a
bullock-d driver for the loan of his team
his own having broken doMn-that the re-
quired aid might be the sooner procured.
The man refused, for, we suppose reasons
sufficient to himself, when the Rev.. Mr..
Perkins forcibly took possession of the We
hicle, and Mrs. P. was triumphantly carried
to her destination! The self-denial of
wife and several children, must have struck
the Mahommedan very forcibly, and, of
course, paved the way for a willing recep-
ton of the New England missionary Con-
trast that with the following:
1t is difficult, amid the whirl of railways,
the hurry of steamboats,, and the hum of a
countless population, to realize New York
as wild village, Quebec mere dot in. the
else unbroken wilderness, and Montreal a
solitude, it's silence broken by the gather
ing together of wild Indians ut the voice of
the French Jesuit.
More than two hundred years have passed
away since LIE Jeunei and his brother Jes-
nit, De NOue, entered the cottage of the
widow of the first settler in Canada, Z" to
offer beneath her roof the long forbidden
sacrifice of the mass" Few were the peo-
pie speaking their own tongue in that wild
land, and fewer still hailed their arrival, for
the fur traders and few soldiers who formed
the sole European population, looked with
a jealous eye on the advent of the Jesuits
among them. Nor were they in the fore
ground of the missionaries thoughts. They
had not left France, with all that France
meant to them, behind, to look after few
stray sheep, but to win, as they fondly
dreamed, q kingdom for the Church The
wild tribes of the Iroquois,. the Hurons, and
the Algonquins were to sit clothed and in
their right mind at the foot of the Cross.
1t was no easy task they. set themselves.
The true Iroquois, or Five Nations, ex-
tended through central New York from the
Hudson to the Genesee. Into their midst,
with their lives in their hands, came the
French Jesuits. The men who went out to
Canada were honest and devoted, burning
with zeal, holding their lives cheap, so that
they might rescue these wild Indians from
the DEVILS grip. BY the very force of their
own devotedness, their purer manners, and
the Christianity which saturated their lives,
a result must have been attained, however
little commensurate with the idea ON which
their mission was founded~l The informa-
ton they have handed downto us of the
innermost life of these wild tribes is in it
self invaluable.
Never had men better opportunity for
forming correct judgment. Determined
to masger the language, determined in its
widest sense to become all things to all
men if by any means some might be
brought into the fold of the Church, the
Jesuit, even such an one as LIE Jeune, bore
the hardships Of an Indians rowing life,
helped to carry the heavy burdens, sat in the
and bore with patience the vile banter worse
than blows heaped on him, spending
months in the midst of q life which had
reached the lowest depths Of social degra-
dation, and ut the close of q toilsome winter
had learned the little progress that could