among the Hurons were reduced to a desolation. Some extracts from his narrative will present us the most instructive reports and descriptions of the missionary work of the Jesuits: —
“Bressani[1] gives us an approximation to the results of the Jesuit
Huron missions after some sixteen years. ‘I will say only, in one
word, that the number of our neophytes would have been much
more considerable, and that we should in a short time have made
the whole country Christian, if we had had regard only for
numbers and the name. But we had been unwilling to receive a single
adult in perfect health before we had got their language, and had
subjected to long trial, sometimes protracted through years, their
pious resolution to receive baptism and to be faithful to the law
of God, which called them often to grievous difficulties. We sought
to augment the joy of heaven rather than to multiply Christians in
name, and we should have incurred a sharp reproach if any one
among us had deserved to have it said of him, “Thou hast
increased the people, but hast not increased the joy.” So that in the
space of a few years we have baptized about twelve thousand
savages, of whom the greater part are now — as we are confident — in
heaven, because of their sublime fervor and their admirable
constancy in the faith. We had predicted the eclipse of the 30th
January, 1646, which began here an hour and a quarter before
midnight. Our Christians were on the watch; so that when it
occurred one of the more fervent, consulting only his zeal, ran to
rouse some of the savages. “Come,” said he, “see how worthy
our missionaries are of our confidence, and hesitate no longer to
believe the truth which they preach.” A good old man, a fervent
Christian, who knew nothing of the answer of the King St. Louis,
on the subject of the miracle of the holy sacrament, said with much
shrewdness, “that those who doubted the truth of the faith went
to see the eclipse. They have no other evidence than that of their
sight; our faith has better proofs.” Some of our neophytes
have visited the colony of the European heretics. When they
understood that they were reproached for making the sign of the
cross, and for wearing the beads round their necks, not only were
they undisturbed by it, but they themselves took these heretics to
task for their irreligion, with a liberty truly Christian. Some of
- ↑ Memoir of Father Bressani, by Father Martin.
