The Old Franciscan Missions of California

The Old Franciscan Missions Of
California

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California
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Title: The Old Franciscan Missions Of California
Author: George Wharton James
Release Date: October 25, 2004 [EBook #13854]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: MISSION SAN LUIS REY, PARTLY RESTORED.]
[Illustration: MISSION SAN LUIS REY. Showing monastery recently
built behind the old Mission arches.]

The Old Franciscan Missions of California

BY
GEORGE WHARTON JAMES
Author of "In and Around the Grand Canyon," "Heroes of California,"
"Through Ramona's Country," Etc.
With Illustrations from Photographs 1913

Dedication
To those good men and women, of all creeds and of no creed, whose
lives have shown forth the glories of beautiful, helpful, unselfish,
sympathetic humanity:
To those whose love and life are larger than all creeds and who discern
the manifestation of God in all men:
To those who are urging forward the day when profession will give
place to endeavor, and, in the real life of a genuine brotherhood of man,
and true recognition of the All-Fatherhood of God, all men, in spite of
their diversities, shall unite in their worship and thus form the real
Catholic Church:
Especially to these, and to all who appreciate nobleness in others I
lovingly dedicate these pages, devoted to a recital of the life and work
of godly and unselfish men.

Foreword
The story of the Old Missions of California is perennially new. The
interest in the ancient and dilapidated buildings and their history
increases with each year. To-day a thousand visit them where ten saw
them twenty years ago, and twenty years hence, hundreds of thousands
will stand in their sacred precincts, and unconsciously absorb beautiful
and unselfish lessons of life as they hear some part of their history
recited. It is well that this is so. A materially inclined nation needs to
save every unselfish element in its history to prevent its going to utter
destruction. It is essential to our spiritual development that we learn
that
"Not on the vulgar mass Called 'work,' must sentence pass, Things done,
that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The
low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a

trice."
It is of incalculably greater benefit to the race that the Mission Fathers
lived and had their fling of divine audacity for the good of the helpless
aborigines than that any score one might name of the "successful
captains of industry" lived to make their unwieldy and topheavy piles
of gold. With all their faults and failures, all their ideas of theology and
education,--which we, in our assumed superiority, call crude and
old-fashioned,--all their rude notions of sociology, all their errors and
mistakes, the work of the Franciscan Fathers was glorified by unselfish
aim, high motive and constant and persistent endeavor to bring their
heathen wards into a knowledge of saving grace. It was a brave and
heroic endeavor. It is easy enough to find fault, to criticize, to carp, but
it is not so easy to do. These men did! They had a glorious purpose
which they faithfully pursued. They aimed high and achieved nobly.
The following pages recite both their aims and their achievements, and
neither can be understood without a thrilling of the pulses, a quickening
of the heart's beats, and a stimulating of the soul's ambitions.
This volume pretends to nothing new in the way of historical research
or scholarship. It is merely an honest and simple attempt to meet a real
and popular demand for an unpretentious work that shall give the
ordinary tourist and reader enough of the history of the Missions to
make a visit to them of added interest, and to link their history with that
of the other Missions founded elsewhere in the country during the same
or prior epochs of Mission activity.
If it leads others to a greater reverence for these outward and visible
signs of the many and beautiful graces that their lives developed in the
hearts of the Franciscan Fathers--their founders and builders--and gives
the information needed, its purpose will be more than fulfilled.
In most of its pages it is a mere condensation of the author's _In and
Out of the Old Missions of California,_ to which book the reader who
desires further and more detailed information is respectfully