The Jesuit Missions | Page 6

the difficulties were too great for them. And, after invoking
'the light of the Holy Spirit,' they decided, according to Sagard, 'to send
one of their members to France to lay the proposition before the Jesuit
fathers, whom they deemed the most suitable for the work of
establishing and extending the Faith in Canada.' So Father Irenaeus Piat
and Brother Gabriel Sagard were sent to entreat to the rescue of the
Canadian mission the greatest of all the missionary orders--an order
which 'had filled the whole world with memorials of great things done
and suffered for the Faith'--the militant and powerful Society of Jesus.
CHAPTER II
THE JESUITS AT QUEBEC
The 15th of June 1625 was a significant day for the colony of New
France. On that morning a blunt-prowed, high-pooped vessel cast

anchor before the little trading village that clustered about the base of
the great cliff at Quebec. It was a ship belonging to the Caens, and it
came laden to the hatches with supplies for the colonists and goods for
trade with the Indians. But, what was more important, it had as
passengers the Jesuits who had been sent to the aid of the Recollets, the
first of the followers of Loyola to enter the St Lawrence--Fathers
Charles Lalemant, Ennemond Masse, Jean de Brebeuf, and two lay
brothers of the Society. These black-robed priests were the forerunners
of an army of men who, bearing the Cross instead of the sword and
labouring at their arduous tasks in humility and obedience but with
dauntless courage and unflagging zeal, were to make their influence felt
from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the sea-girt shores
of Cape Breton to the wind-swept plains of the Great West. They were
the vanguard of an army of true soldiers, of whom the words
Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die,
might fittingly have been written. The Jesuit missionary in North
America had no thought of worldly profit or renown, but, with his mind
fixed on eternity, he performed his task ad majorem Dei gloriam, for
the greater glory of God.
The Jesuits had sailed from Dieppe on the 26th of April in company
with a Recollet friar, La Roche de Daillon, of whom we shall presently
hear more. The voyage across the stormy Atlantic had been long and
tedious. On a vessel belonging to Huguenots, the priests had been
exposed to the sneers and gibes of crew and traders. It was the viceroy
of New France, the Duc de Ventadour, a devout Catholic, who had
compelled the Huguenot traders to give passage to these priests, or they
would not have been permitted on board the ship. Much better could
the Huguenots tolerate the humble, mendicant Recollets than the Jesuits,
aggressive and powerful, uncompromising opponents of Calvinism.
As the anchor dropped, the Jesuits made preparations to land; but they
were to meet with a temporary disappointment. Champlain was absent
in France, and Emery de Caen said that he had received no instructions
from the viceroy to admit them to the colony. Moreover, they were told
that there was no room for them in the habitation or the fort. To make

matters worse, a bitter, slanderous diatribe against their order had been
distributed among the inhabitants, and the doors of Catholics and
Huguenots alike were closed against them. Prisoners on the ship, at the
very gate of the promised land, no course seemed open to them but to
return on the same vessel to France. But they were suddenly lifted by
kindly hands from the depths of despair. A boat rowed by men attached
to the Recollets approached their vessel. Soon several friars dressed in
coarse grey robes, with the knotted cord of the Recollet order about
their waists, peaked hood hanging from their shoulders, and coarse
wooden sandals on their feet, stood before them on the deck, giving
them a wholehearted welcome and offering them a home, with the use
of half the buildings and land on the St Charles. Right gladly the Jesuits
accepted the offer and were rowed ashore in the boat of the generous
friars. On touching the soil of New France they fell on their knees and
kissed the ground, in spite of the scowling traders about them.
The disappointment of these aggressive pioneers of the Church must
have been great as they viewed Quebec. It was now seventeen years
since the colony had been founded; yet it had fewer than one hundred
inhabitants. In the whole of Canada there were but seven French
families and only six white children. Save by Louis Hebert, the first to
cultivate the soil at Quebec, and the Recollets, no attempt had been
made at agriculture, and the colony was almost wholly dependent on
France for its subsistence.