Book Description

Excerpt from Mission Work Among the Negroes and the Indians: What Is Being Accomplished by Means of the Annual Collection Taken Up for Our Missions The Church, which to thc Catholic, is the voice of God, wishes you to put in the hands of the self denying workers in that rougher portion of the Lord's vineyard, the funds they need to carry on the work they have in hand. These holy missionaries would carry the glad tidings of salvation to the benighted children of the forest. They would plant in their midst schools In which young Indian boys and girls may be trained in civil learning; and churches into which all may be gathered round the altar of God, and taught to know and worship ln spirit and in truth Jesus Christ, their Redeemer, whose children they are, and, equally with us, heirs of eternal life. Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven It IS the humility and the meekness of Jesus that IS to Wln for us the great prize of eternal life for which each one, in his own way, is daily striving. Blessed are the meek, for they Shall possess the land. It IS the beauty of our soul not the color of our Skin that will be the Ieal test of our right to gaze upon the glory of God In paradise. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they Shall see God. Such then, in brief, 15 the object for which this collection IS tobe taken up at all the Masses on the First Sunday In Lent - a noble and a blessed work, and full of richest merit for all who approach it in the Spirit of Christian charity, and with kindly feelings toward those of their brethren, who, as you know too well, are utterly unable to help themselves. The heroic self abnegation of those priests and nuns who have gone forth into a sort of voluntary exile to spend themselves and be spent for Christ In the service of the forsaken and despised Indian, whose lot, to some extent, they share, is worthy of our highest admiration; for this, Dearly beloved, is not a field of labor which all would willingly select this life of perpetual self Sacrifice, ending only in death. The very nobility of the sacrifice they have made is in itself one of their strongest claims on your generous support, for (do not forget it), but for this their heroic self denial, you would not easily find a means of discharging a debt you owe a race which for two long centuries has been so cruelly dealt with f - a race, too, that has proved itself time and again, in council and on battle field, as brave, as skillful, and as magnanimous as your own. And. Yet, to our Shame, be it spoken, nearly all that are left of this Singular, and in some respects, mysterious people, are now. Wanderers upon the wild prairie, eking out, as best they can, a miserable existence on the paltry pittance that is doled out to them, and are to day, practically speaking, as destitute of religious instructions as were their pagan forefathers. Oh! Dearly Beloved, what a commentary is this sad spectacle on the boasted superiority of our Christian civilization! Take heed, lest Christ' S words on witnessing the faith of the centurion, and the. Want of it on the part of those to whom He was Speaking, may one day rise up in judgment against you: I say to you that many Shall come from the East and the West, and Shall Sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob In the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom Shall be cast out into exterior da1 kness there Shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com