The Spirit of the Early Missionary [pp. 794-802]

THE SPIRIT OF THE EARL Y MISSIONARY.
written or printed pages cannot speak, of the apostolic deeds
of those early times, of the spirit that actuated those heroic
soldiers of Christ: of Marquette, of Rasle and Father GrAvier,
of Rend Goupil and his sainted biographer, Isaac Jogues, ofbut who may name them all, or find words to tell of their glorious doings, that Christ and his church might be known? It
is not so much of these men that I am thinking, nor of the region of their labors, as of the missionary spirit they so gloriously
set forth. And as I think there comes the conviction that of
this spirit will be born a new apostolate in the ancient fields
of their work-an apostolate to the non-Catholic people of Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.
In the cathedral yard at Vincennes there stands an old, long,
one-story brick building, much dilapidated and long unused. It
was once the diocesan seminary. In that humble building some
of the older priests who now minister in the diocese were educated. The young seminarist of to-day would laugh to think
it a building fit to use as a place of studies. We have moved
into grander halls'tis true, but the spirit of the missionary life
was there; that burning zeal for souls which led the cultured
physician, Goupil, even as a layman, to leave France and go as
a donna-a companion catechist to the missionary-to the wilds
of'America. Nor do I believe that our young men, when the
time is ripe and the field has been opened up for such labors,
will be found wanting in spirit and zeal and readiness to work
in this portion of the Lord's vineyard; else were they recreant
to the true ministry of the priesthood and unworthy of the inheritance left us by those stalwarts of old-the missionaries of
the earlier day.
Engaged last season in the diocese of Peoria-the very writing of the name Peoria shadows forth.a picture of the untiring
labors of Father Gravier-in missionary work, our labors took
us to the banks of the' Illinois at Spring Valley. Near by are
the cities of La Salle and Ottawa, and between them the historic
spot Starved Rock, situated at the entrance of a series of cafions
vast and wonderful-all the more so as one finds them hidden
here in the midst of a prairie country. They are not unlike some
of those vaster carlons that one meets with along the La Platte
River in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Here, in front of
Starved Rock, in the valley that skirts the river, many thousand
Catholic braves on one occasion heard Mass-men to whom the
faith came at the preaching of the word of God by the missionaries in those heroic days.
1894.1
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