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?
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE MISSION OF KENTUCKY.
FROM THE FRENCH.[184]
The Diocese of Bardstown, Kentucky, is a part of that vast extent of country known in our ancient geographies by the name of Louisiana. It is situated in the centre of the United States of North America, and is bounded on the north by the Ohio, on the west by the Mississippi, on the south by the State of Tennessee, and on the east by Virginia.
When, in 1792, it was admitted into the Union as a State, its population was about seventy thousand; but it has since then increased tenfold.