THE CROSS IN THE DESERT.
Some few years ago a pilgrim sailed across the blue waters of the Mediterranean, smitten with the love of the cross, and bearing in his hand “the banner with the strange device.”
It was a lovely summer’s evening. The fierce African sun was sinking to his rest behind the hill on which the ruins of the old city of Hippo stand; and as the pilgrim, who had climbed to its summit, stood gazing around him, the glow of the western sky bathed his dusty garments in a golden light, touching the ruins with a splendor of its own, and lighting up the sea, that heaved gently down below, with the brightness of amber and gold.
This, then, was all that remained of the proud old city whose name Augustine had made famous to the end of time!
These crumbling walls were once the school where he taught, the halls where his youthful eloquence fired the hearts of the great scholars of the day; here were the baths where he lounged in his idle hours with pleasure-loving companions; here the streets where every day he came and went from Monica’s quiet home to the busy haunts of learning, of sophistry, and science; here was the place where she had wept so bitterly over him, the spot where that salutary fountain of a mother’s tears had had its source; here he had sinned; hence he had gone forth in search of truth, and, having found it, hither he had come back, transformed into a confessor and a doctor of the church; here, finally, he died, full of years, leaving behind him a name great amongst the greatest saints whom the church has raised to her altars.
And what now remained to Africa of this light which had shed such glory on her church? Where did his memory live? And the faith that he had practised—whither had it fled?
The pilgrim sat down upon a stone, and, after indulging in reflections such as these for some time, he rose and descended slowly towards the plain.
Was it a fancy born of recent musings, or did he hear a voice issuing from the massive fragment of a wall which still supported a majestic dome, once probably the thermæ of the luxurious and wealthy citizens of Hippo? Did he really see a light burning, or was it an hallucination born of the mystic hour and the suggestive surroundings? He drew closer, looked in, and beheld two white-bearded Arabs placing each a light on the highest point of the wall. Was it some idolatrous rite, a spell, or an incantation they were performing?
“What are you doing?” inquired the pilgrim.
“We are burning lights to the great Christian,” was the reply.
“Who is that? What is his name?”
“We do not know it; but we honor him because our fathers taught us to do so.”
So, then, the memory of Augustine survived in the land, though his name had perished!
The pilgrim murmured a prayer to the great Christian, as the Arabs called him, and turned away, carrying in his heart a hope that he had not known an hour ago—a hope that Augustine was still watching for the resurrection of the cross in the land of his birth, and hastening its advent by his intercession at the throne of Him whom he described as “patient because he is eternal.”
It is a fact, as striking as it is consoling, that within the last few years the faith has been making rapid conquests amidst the barbarous nations, where in the days of S. Augustine, and long after, it flourished so magnificently. Perhaps it is more surprising that this result should not have been universal after nearly half a century of the rule of a Catholic power; but the mistaken policy of the French government, and, alas! we must add, the evil example of the French themselves, instead of breaking down existing barriers, have raised new and insurmountable ones against the spread of Christianity amongst the conquered tribes. France proclaimed her intention of not alone tolerating, but protecting, Islamism throughout her African dominion. She carried this policy so far for many years that it was made punishable by French law to convert a Mussulman to the Catholic faith, whilst, on the other hand, it was perfectly lawful for any number of Catholics to turn Mussulmans. The priests who went out as missionaries were thwarted at every step by the French authorities. “Our adversaries, the men who worry us and stand in the way of our making converts, are not the Arabs or even their marabouts,” said one of these devoted men to us only a few days ago; “it is our own countrymen, Frenchmen calling themselves Catholics, whom we have chiefly to contend against.” And he went on to describe how, during the famine of 1867, when the Arabs were dying like flies all over the country, the French authorities were constantly on the alert to prevent the missionaries baptizing them, even in extremis. They actually sent detachments of spahees to the various places where the poor famine-stricken creatures congregated in greater numbers to die; and when the priest was seen approaching them, as they lay gasping in their agony, the soldiers rushed forward to stop him from administering the sacrament of regeneration. One little missionary father contrived to outwit the authorities, however, and, in spite of the lynx-eyes that were fixed on him, he managed to baptize numbers from a little bottle of water hid under his burnose.
No wonder the Arabs make small account of men who set such pitiful store by their religion. They, call the French “sons of Satan,” and the French priests and good Christians among the seculars will tell you themselves that the name is well deserved; that the employees of the government, military and civil, make the most deplorable impression on the natives, and by their lives present a practical example of all the vices which it is the boast of civilization to destroy. They are so untruthful that the French missionaries declare they surpass even the Arabs in lies. The Arab is abstemious by nature, and the law of the Koran compels him to the most rigid sobriety; the Christians give him an example of excesses in eating and drinking which excite his disgust and contempt.
There is a legend current amongst the Arabs in the French dominions that on a certain day Mahomet will arise and precipitate the sons of Satan into the sea. When a Frenchman, in answer to this prophecy, points to the strength of his government, its enormous resources, the power of steam, and the monuments he has built in Algeria, the Mussulman with grim contempt replies in his grave, sullen way: “Look at the ruins of the old Roman monuments! They were mightier than any you have raised; and yet, behold, they lie in ruins throughout the land, because Allah so willed. It is written: Allah will cast you into the sea as he did the Romans.”
All those who can speak from experience agree that there are no people so difficult to evangelize as the Mussulmans; the pure idolater is comparatively an easy conquest to the missionary, but it requires almost the miraculous intervention of divine grace to make the light of the Gospel penetrate the stolid fatalism of the Mahometan.
One of the greatest obstacles to the reception of truth in the Arab is the intuitive pride of race which arms him against the idea of receiving religious instruction from a race of men whom he despises with a scorn which is actually a part of his religion, and who in their turn look down on the children of the desert, and treat their manners and customs with contempt. In order to overcome this first obstacle towards the success of their ministry, the missionaries conceived the idea of identifying themselves, as far as possible, with the natives, adopting their dress, their manner of eating and sleeping, and in every way assimilating outwardly their daily lives to theirs.
They tried it, and the system has already worked wonders. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? If faith can move mountains, cannot love melt them? Love, the irresistible, the conqueror who subdues all hard things in this hard world—why should it fail with these men, who have human souls like our own, fashioned after the likeness of our common God? Just five years ago a handful of priests, Frenchmen, gone mad with the sweet folly of the cross, heard of how these Arabs could not be persuaded to receive the message of Christ crucified, but repulsed every effort to reach them. They were seized with a sudden desire to go and try if they could not succeed where others had failed; so they offered themselves to the Archbishop of Algiers as missionaries in his diocese. The offer was gladly accepted; but when the first presented himself to obtain faculties for saying Mass in the villages outside Algiers and in the desert, the archbishop signed the permission with the words visum pro martyrio, and, handing it to the young apostle, said: “Do you accept on these conditions?”
“Monseigneur, it is for that I have come,” was the joyous reply. And truly, amongst all the perilous missions which every day lure brave souls to court the palm of martyrdom, there is not one where the chances are more in favor of gaining it than in this mission of Sahara, where the burning sun of Africa, added to material privations that are absolutely incredible, makes the life of the most fortunate missionary a slow and daily martyrdom. His first task, in preparation for becoming a missionary, is to master the language and to acquire some knowledge of the healing art, of herbs and medicine; then he dons the dress of the Arabs, which, conforming in all things to their customs, he does not quit even at night, but sleeps in it on the ground; he builds himself a tent like theirs, and, in order to disarm suspicion, lives for some time in their midst without making the least attempt at converting them; he does not even court their acquaintance, but waits patiently for an opportunity to draw them towards him; this generally comes in the form of a sick person whom the stranger offers to help and very frequently cures, or at least alleviates, cleanliness and the action of pure water often proving the only remedy required. The patient, in his gratitude, offers some present, either in money, stuffs, or eatables, which the stranger with gentle indignation refuses. Then follows some such dialogue as this: “What! you refuse my thank-offering? Who, then, pays you?”
“God, the true God of the Christians. I have left country and family and home, and all my heart loves best, for his sake and for his service; do you think you or any man living can pay me for this?”
“What are you, then?” demands the astonished Arab.
“I am a marabout of Jesus Christ.” And the Mussulman retires in great wonder as to what sort of a religion it can be whose marabouts take neither money nor goods for their services. He tells the story to the neighbors, and by degrees all the sick and maimed of the district come trooping to the missionary’s door. He tends them with untiring charity. Nothing disgusts him; the more loathsome the ulcers, the more wretched the sufferer, the more tenderness he lavishes on them.
Soon his hut is the rendezvous of all those who have ailments or wounds for miles round; and though they entreat him, sometimes on their knees, to accept some token of thanks for his services, he remains inexorable, returning always the same answer: “I serve the God of heaven and earth; the kings of this world are too poor to pay me.”
He leads this life for fifteen months before taking his vows as a missionary. When he has bound himself to the heroic apostleship, he is in due time ordained, if not already a priest, and goes forth, in company with two other priests, to establish a mission in some given spot of Sahara or Soodan, these desolated regions being the appointed field of their labors. The little community follows exactly the same line of conduct in the beginning of its installation as above described; they keep strictly aloof until, by dint of disinterestedness and of devotion and skilful care of the sick, they have disarmed the fierce mistrust of the “true believers,” and convinced them that they are not civil functionaries or in any way connected with the government. The Arab’s horror of everybody and of everything emanating from French headquarters partakes of the intense character of his fanaticism in religious matters. By degrees the natives become passionately attached to the foreign marabouts, who have now to put limits to the gratitude which would invest them with semi-divine attributes. The great aim of the missionaries is of course to get possession of the children, so as to form a generation of future missionaries. Nothing short of this will plant the cross in Africa, and, while securing the spiritual regeneration of the country, restore to that luxuriant soil its ancient fertility. Once reconciled to civilization by Christianity, those two millions of natives, who are now in a state of chronic suppressed rebellion against their conquerors, would be disarmed and their energies turned to the cultivation of the land and the development of its rich resources by means of agricultural implements and science which the French could impart to them. Nor is it well to treat with utter contempt the notion of a successful rebellion in Algeria. At the present moment such an event would be probably impossible; but there is no reason why it should be so in years hence. The Arabs are as yet not well provided with arms and ammunition; but they are making yearly large purchases in this line at Morocco and Tunis, and the study of European military science is steadily progressing. The deep-seated hatred of the Mussulmans for the yoke of the stranger is moreover as intense as in the first days of their bondage; and if even to-morrow, unprepared as they are materially, the “holy war” were proclaimed, it would rouse the population to a man. The marabouts would get upon the minarets, and send forth the call to every son of Mahomet to arise and fight against the sons of the devil, proclaiming the talismanic promise of the Koran: “Every true believer who falls in the holy war is admitted at once into the paradise of Mahomet.” The number who would call on the prophet to fulfil the promise would no doubt be enormous, and the French would in all human probability remain masters of the desert; but a kingdom held on such tenure as this state of feeling involves is at best but a sorry conquest. If the Gospel had been, we do not even say enforced, but simply encouraged and zealously taught, by the conquerors, their position would be a very different one in Algeria now. After all, there is no diplomatist like holy church. “Our little systems have their day” and fall to pieces one after another, perishing with the ambitions and feuds and enthusiasms that gave them birth, and leave the world pretty much as they found it; but the power of the Gospel grows and endures and fructifies wherever its divine policy penetrates. No human legislation, be it ever so wise, can cope with this divine legislator; none other can take the sting out of defeat, can make the conquerors loved by the conquered, and turn the chains of captivity from iron to silk. Even on the lowest ground, in mere self-interest, governments would do well to constitute themselves the standard-bearers of the King who rules by love, and subdues the stubborn pride of men by first winning their hearts. The supremacy of this power of love is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than amidst these barbarous Arab tribes.
The story of every little dark-eyed waif sheltered at the Orphanage of S. Charles, lately established outside Algiers, would furnish a volume in itself; but an incident connected with the admission of one of them, and related to us a few days ago by a missionary just returned, is so characteristic that we are tempted to relate it. The archbishop was making a visitation in the poor villages sixty miles beyond Algiers; the priest presented to him a miserable-looking little object whose parents still lived in a neighboring desert tribe, but who had cast off the child because of its sickliness and their poverty. Could his lordship possibly get him taken in as an orphan? The thing was not easy; for every spot was full, and the fact of the parents being still alive militated against the claim of the little, forlorn creature. But the archbishop’s heart was touched. He said he would arrange it somehow; let the boy be sent on to Ben-Aknoun at once. This, however, was easier said than done; who would take charge of him on such a long journey? His grace’s carriage (a private conveyance dignified by that name) was at the door. “Put him in; I will take him,” he said, looking kindly at the small face with the great dark eyes that were staring wistfully up at him. But the priest and every one present exclaimed at the idea of this. The Arabs are proverbial for the amount of light infantry which they carry about with them in their hair and their rags; and the fact of their presence in myriads on the person of this little believer was evident to the naked eye. The archbishop, however, nothing daunted, ordered him to be placed in the carriage; then, finding no one would obey him, he caught up the little fellow in his arms, embraced him tenderly amidst the horrified protestations of the priest and others, carried him to the carriage, seated him comfortably, and then got in himself and away they drove. A large crowd had assembled to see the great marabout depart, and stood looking on the extraordinary scene in amazement. A few days later several of them came to see the priest, and ask to be instructed in the religion which works such miracles in the hearts of men, and to offer their children to be brought up Christians.
This Orphanage of S. Charles is the most precious institution which Catholic zeal has so far established in Algiers. It comprises a school for boys, and one for girls conducted by nuns. The description of the life there sounds like some beautiful old Bible legend. It is a life of constant privation, toil, and suffering, both for the fathers and for the sisters; but the results as regards the children are so abundant and consoling that the missionaries are sometimes moved to exclaim, “Verily, we have had our reward!”
The full-grown Arab is perhaps as wretched a specimen of unregenerate human nature as the world can furnish. Every vice seems natural to him, except gluttony, which he only acquires with the spurious civilization imported by his conquerors. He is relentless and vindictive; false, avaricious, cruel, and utterly devoid of any idea of morality; yet the children of these men and women are like virgin soil on which no evil seed has ever fallen. Their docility is marvellous, their capacity for gratitude indescribably touching, and their religious sense deep, lively, and affective. They accept the teaching of the missionaries and the nuns as if piety were an inherited instinct in them; and the truths of our holy faith act upon their minds with the power of seen realities.
One of the fathers told us, as an instance of this, that the children were allowed to play in the fruit garden once when the trees were in full bearing; and not a single fig, orange, or any other fruit being touched, some visitor asked the children in surprise if they never pulled any when their superiors were not looking; but they answered in evident astonishment: “Oh! no; God would see us, and he would be angry!” We quite agreed with the narrator that such a general example of obedience and self-denial from such a principle might be vainly sought for in our most carefully-taught schools in Europe and—would it be a calumny to add?—America. The children also show a spirit of sacrifice that is very striking, the girls especially. If they are ill and some nauseous medicine is presented to them, the little things seize the cup with avidity, and with a word, such as “For thee, dear Jesus!” drain it off at once. They realize so clearly that every correction imposed on them is for their good that it is nothing rare to see them go to the presiding father or sister and ask to be punished when they have committed some little misdemeanor unobserved. One little mite of six felt very sulky towards a companion, and, after a short and vain struggle to overcome herself, she went to the nun and begged to be whipped, “because she could not make the devil go away.” Their vivid Oriental imaginations paint all the terrible and beautiful truths of the faith in colors that have the living glow of visible pictures. They have the tenderest devotion to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and nothing pleases them more than to be allowed to spend their hour of recreation in prayer before the tabernacle. Their sense of gratitude for the blessing of the faith makes them long with an indescribable yearning to share it with their people. All their prayers and little sacrifices are offered up with this intention. Those among them who were old enough to remember the wretchedness they were rescued from, speak of it continually with the most touching gratitude to God and their instructors. One of their greatest pleasures is to count over the good things they have received from God. A sister overheard two of them one day summing them up as follows: “He gives us bread and the sunshine and a house; he has preserved us from dying in the night-time; he prevents the sea overflowing and drowning us; he has given us monseigneur and our mammas [the nuns]; he came on earth to teach us to be obedient; he brought us the Gospel; he has given us the Blessed Virgin to be our mamma, and then our angels, and then the Holy Father; he forgives us our sins; he has given us sacraments for our soul and body; he stays always with us in the chapel; he is keeping our place in heaven; he looks at us when we are naughty, and that makes us sorry, and then he forgives us.” And so they go on composing canticles out of their innocent hearts that must make sweet music in His ears who so loved the little ones.
The deaths of some of these little barbarians are as lovely as any we read of in the lives of the saints. One of them, who was baptized by the name of Amelia, has left a memory that will long be cherished in Ben-Aknoun. She was dying of a lingering, terrible disease; but her sufferings never once provoked a murmur. She was as gay as a little bird and as gentle as a lamb; her only longing was to see God. “And what will you do besides in heaven?” asked one of her companions. “I will walk about with the angels,” she replied, “and be on the watch to meet our mammas when they come to the beautiful gates.” In her sleep she used to pray still; many a time the nuns found her muttering her rosary with clasped hands while sleeping the sound sleep of a tired child. She fought against death as long as she could, insisting on getting up and going to the chapel, where sometimes she would lie exhausted with pain and weakness on the step of the altar, breathing her prayers softly until she dropped asleep. Her only fear was lest she should not make her First Communion before she died; but her extreme youth (she was not quite eight years old) was compensated for by her ardent piety. They gave her our Blessed Lord after giving her Extreme Unction. The expression of her face was seraphic in its joy and peace. All her little companions were kneeling round her bed, their eyes fixed in admiration on the beaming countenance of the dying child. One of them, called Anna, who was her chosen friend, an orphan from a remote desert tribe like herself, drew near to say good-by. The two children clasped each other in silence; but when they parted, the tears were streaming down Amelia’s cheeks. “Why did you make her cry, my child?” whispered the nun to Anna reproachfully. “I did not do it on purpose,” was the reply. “I only said, ‘O Amelia! you are too happy; why can’t you take me with you?’ and then we both cried.” The happy little sufferer lingered on in great pain for another day and night, constantly kissing her crucifix, thanking those around her for their kindness and patience.
Towards the evening of the second day the pains grew rapidly worse, and she entreated to be carried to the chapel, that she might look once more upon the tabernacle. The nun took her in her arms, and laid her on the step of the altar, when her sufferings instantly ceased, and she sank into a sleep which they thought was the last one. She was carried back and laid on her bed, but soon opened her eyes with a look of ecstatic joy, and cried out, gazing upwards, “See! how beautifully it shines. And the music—do you hear? Oh! it is the Gloria in Excelsis.” No one heard anything; only her ears were opened to the heavenly harmonies that were sounding through the half-open doors of Paradise. She continued listening with the same rapt expression of delight, and then, clasping her little hands together, she cried, “Alleluia! alleluia!” and fell back and spoke no more. She had passed the golden portals; the glories of heaven were visible to her now.
What wonder if the apostolic souls who reap such harvests as these count their labors light, and rejoice in the midst of their poverty and self-imposed martyrdom!
But there are homelier and less pathetic joys in the Orphanage every now and then than these blessed deaths. When the boys and girls have learnt all they need learn, and have come to the age when they must leave the fathers and the nuns, they are perfectly free to return to their native tribes; and it is a convincing argument in favor of the strength of their newly-acquired principles and affections that they almost invariably refuse to do so. The proportion of those who go back to the old life is one in every hundred. The next thing to be considered is what to do with those who refuse to go back. The plan of marrying the orphans amongst each other suggested itself as the most practical method of securing lasting results from their Christian education. The chief difficulty in the execution of this plan was the reluctance of the Arab girls to marry men of their own race; they had learned the privileges which women owe to Christianity, and they had no mind to forego their dignity and equality, and sink back into the degraded position of an Arab’s wife. “We will not marry to be beaten,” they argued. “Find us Frenchmen, and we will marry them and be good wives.” No doubt they would, but the Frenchmen unfortunately could not be induced to take this view of the case; and it required all the influence of their superiors to make the girls understand that Christianity, in raising woman from the condition of a slave to that of man’s equal, compels him to respect and cherish her.
The way in which the courtship and marriage proceed between the sons and daughters of the great marabout (as the archbishop is called) is curious in its picturesque simplicity.
A band of fifteen couples were lately married from the Orphanage of Ben-Aknoun. The fathers informed the archbishop they had fifteen excellent boys who were about to leave, and whom they wished to find wives for and settle in the nearest Christian village. The archbishop asked the superior of the girls’ school if she could supply fifteen maidens who would go and share the humble homes of their brother orphans.
The superior replied that she had precisely the number required—girls who must leave the shelter of the convent in a few months, and whom she was most anxious to see provided for. The grapes were ripe, and the vintage, which was close at hand, would furnish an opportunity for a meeting between the parties. So one morning, in the cool, sweet dawn, they set out to the vineyard, the maidens conducted by a sister, the youths by one of the priests; the latter took one side and culled the grapes, while at the other side the maidens gathered up the branches and bound them into bundles. As they went they sang hymns and canticles to lighten their labor; and when the day’s task was done, they left the vineyard in two distinct bands, as they had come, and returned to their separate convents.
“Well,” said Mgr. de la Vigerie to the presiding father next day, “have the young men chosen each his maiden, and is the choice approved?”
“Alas! monseigneur, they did not even look at each other,” replied the disconsolate matchmaker. “They never raised their eyes from their work. Sister C—— and I watched them like lynxes.”
“You have brought up the children too well, my good father,” cried the archbishop in despair. “What is to be done with them now?”
“Have a little patience, my lord, and it will come in good time,” replied the father encouragingly.
Next day the two bands of maidens and youths sallied forth again to the vineyard, and so every day for a week.
Then the father came in triumph to the archbishop to announce the successful issue of the scheme. One by one the youths had plucked up courage and peeped through the tendrils of the vine, and, thanks to some magnetic sympathy, two dark eyes had been simultaneously raised to meet theirs, and they smiled at each other. A little further on the green leaves were fluttered by a whisper asking the fair one’s name; she told it, and another whisper told her his. So the flower blossomed in the thirty young hearts, and the priest and the sister who watched the gentle growth looked on delighted.
But what wily diplomatists they are, these holy missionaries! How they know the human heart, and how cunningly they can play upon it! Not a word did they say; but, feigning complete blindness to the pretty little comedy, marshalled the laborers home as if nothing had occurred to change the still current of their young lives. A month went by, and then, when the time came for the youths to leave the Orphanage, the father inquired, with seeming innocence, if they thought of marriage by and by.
The question was evaded at first shyly; then by degrees the confession came out—they had each determined to marry one of the maidens of the vineyard. The father threw up his hands in amazement, shook his head, and expressed grave doubts as to the possibility of their obtaining such a prize. These maidens were pearls worthy to be set in fine gold; they had been reared like delicate plants in the shadow of the sanctuary; their hearts were pure as lilies, guileless as the flowers of the field; they were strong in faith and adorned with all the virtues. Were poor Arab youths worthy of such wives? But, brave with the boldness of true love, the suitors answered in one voice: “We will be worthy; we will work for them and serve them faithfully; we will love them and be fathers and mothers to them! Give us the maidens of the vineyard!”
The missionary heaved a sigh, looked mightily perplexed, but promised to speak to the archbishop and see what could be done. After several solemn interviews, in which the young men were severely catechised and warned, and made to pledge themselves to strive with all their might to make the maidens happy, to treat them reverently, and serve them humbly, the archbishop undertook to intercede for them. The fair ones, being of the race of Eve, were a trifle coy at first; but soon the truth was elicited, and each confessed that, since she needs must marry some one, Ben-Aïssa, or Hassan, or Scheriff, would be less distasteful than another. So the great affair was settled, and soon came the day of the weddings. The archbishop himself was to perform the ceremony.
The fathers and sisters were afoot before sunrise, you may be sure; for what an event was this! Fifteen Christian marriages celebrated between the children of this fallen race of idolaters! And now see! the two processions are approaching the church, the bridegrooms draped in the native white burnose, with the scarlet turban on their heads; the brides clad in spotless white, a soft white veil crowned with white flowers covering them from head to foot. Slowly, with the simple majesty inherent in their race, they advance to the altar and kneel side by side before the archbishop, who stands awaiting them, robed in his gala vestments. He looks down upon the thirty young souls whom his love has brought here to the foot of the altar—the altar of the true God; thirty souls whom he has had the unspeakable joy and happiness of rescuing from misery in this life and—may he not hope?—in the next. He must speak a few words to them. He tries; but the father’s heart is too full. The tears start to his eyes and course down those careworn cheeks; he goes from one to the other, and silently presses his hands on the head of each. The marriage rite begins; the blessing of the God of Abraham is called down upon this new seed that has sprung up in the parched land of the patriarch, once so fertile in saints; the music plays, and songs of rejoicing resound on every side as the fifteen brides issue from the church with their bridegrooms.
And now do you care to follow them to their new homes, and to see where their after-life is cast? The earthly providence which has so tenderly fostered them thus far follows them still into the wide world where they have embarked.
The archbishop’s plan from the start was to found Christian villages in the desert, and to people them with these new Christians educated by the missionaries. The cost of founding a village, including the purchase of the land, the building of twenty-five huts, furnishing the inhabitants with European implements of labor, building a little church and a house for the fathers and one for the sisters, an enclosure for the cattle, a well to supply that first element of life and comfort—pure water in abundance—amounts to forty thousand francs (or say eight thousand dollars), and this only with the utmost economy. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith—that glorious institution, to which Christendom owes a debt that can only be paid in heaven—comes nobly to the assistance of Mgr. de la Vigerie. He supplies the rest himself out of the resources of his apostolic heart, so inexhaustible in its ingenious devices of charity; he prays and begs, and sends his missionaries all over the world begging.
One of them has lately come over to Paris on that most heroic of Christian enterprises—a begging tour—and has brought with him a little black boy from Timbuctoo, who had been bought and sold seven times before falling into the hands of these new masters for the sum of three hundred francs. He is not yet ten years old—a mild-faced little fellow, who, when you ask him in French if he likes the father, answers by a grin too significant to need further comment, as he turns his ebony face up to Père B—— and wriggles a little closer to him. Père B—— told us the child belonged to a man-eating tribe, and turned up the corner of his lip to show some particular formation of the teeth peculiar to that amiable race of gourmands. He says that the same charming docility which marks the young Arabs is observable in most of the savage tribes; they are far more susceptive and easily moulded and impressed than the children of the civilized races.
The capture and purchase of these unhappy little slaves all along the coast and in the northern parts of Africa is part of the mission which brings the fathers the greatest consolation. It is of course attended with immense risk, sometimes danger even to life; but the human merchandise which they thus obtain “is worth it all and ten times more,” the Père B—— declared emphatically, as he dilated on the fervor of these poor children’s faith and the intensity of their gratitude. The great and constant want for the carrying on of the mission is—need we mention it in this XIXth century, when we can scarcely save our own souls, much less our neighbors’, without it?—money. People say money is the root of all evil; but really, when one sees what precious immortal goods it can buy, one is tempted to declare it the root of all good. The archbishop has recently sent one of his missionaries, the Père C——, to beg in America, and we are heartily glad to hear it. A French priest, speaking about begging for good works the other day, said to the writer: “I wish I could go to America and make the round of the States with my hat in my hand. They are a delightful people to beg of. Somehow they are so sympathetic to the Catholic principle embodied in begging for our Lord that they take all the sting out of it for one; but, oh! what a bitter cud it is to chew in Europe.” We hope the good father’s experience did not represent the general one on the latter point, but is well founded as to the generous spontaneity of our American fellow-Catholics towards those who have “held out the hat” to them in the name of our blessed Lord. Sweet bond of charity! how it welds the nations together, casting its silver nets and drawing all hearts into its meshes! It matters not whether the fisher come from a near country united to us by ties of blood or clanship, or from some distant clime where the very face of man is scarce that of a brother whom we recognize; he comes in the name of our common Lord, and asks us to help in the saving of souls that cost as dear to ransom as ours. He may labor sometimes all the night, and take nothing; but the dawn comes, when he meets Jesus in the persons of those generous souls who love him and have his interests at heart, and are always ready to befriend him; and then the net is cast into deep waters, and the draught is plentiful. Can we fancy a sweeter reward to stimulate our zeal in helping the divine Mendicant who holds out his hand to us for an alms than the scene which at this moment many multitudes of these faithful souls may contemplate in imagination as they have helped to create it.
A gathering of small, low houses—huts, if you like—set in smiling patches of garden round a central building whose spire, pointing like a silent finger to the skies, tells us at once its character and destination. The time is towards sundown; the bell breaks the stillness of the desert air, and with its silvery tongue calls the villagers to prayer. The entire population, old and young, leave their work and rise obedient to the summons; the children quit their play and troop on together, while the elders follow with grave steps. The priest is kneeling before the altar, where the lamp of the sanctuary, like a throb of the Sacred Heart within the tabernacle, sheds its solemn radiance in the twilight. The father begins the evening prayer; pardon is asked for the sins and forgettings of the day, thanks are offered up for its helps and mercies, blessings are invoked on the family assembled, then on the benefactors far away. One who assisted at this idyl in the desert declares that when he heard the officiating priest call down the blessing of the Most High on “all those dear benefactors whom we do not know, but who have been kind and charitable to us”; and when the voices of the Arabs answered in unison, repeating the prayer, he felt his heart bursting with joy at the thought that he was included amongst those on whom this blessing was nightly invoked.
The Litany of Our Lady is then sung, and the assistants quietly disperse and go home. The cattle are lowing in the park. The stars, one by one, are coming out in the lovely sapphire sky. Angels are flying to many of the white huts with gifts and messages. Some are speeding afar, eastward and westward, bearing graces just granted in answer to those grateful prayers; for who can tell the power of gratitude with God, or his loving inability to resist its wishes—he who was so lavish in his thanks for the smallest act of kindness, nay, of courtesy, when he lived amongst us, and who declared that even a cup of cold water should not go without its reward?