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He called twelve to be apostles, and sent forth seventy as missioners an arrangement in which we see the New Testament counterpart of the choosing of these seventy-two elders, to rule and judge the Israelites, and thus share the responsibility of Moses. The account given us of their appointment is singularly interesting.
It cannot be disputed that the aim of the Mission was to sow disloyalty as well as to gain converts, though the allegation that incitement to assassinate the Queen was part of the programme is not quite conclusively proved. Of the two chief missioners, Parsons and Campian, it is at least tolerably certain that the latter, an amiable enthusiast, was quite innocent of complicity in any such design.
After a pause, the original band, augmented by several North Island clergy, crossed to the South Island and went through Canterbury and Otago. Nelson was the last diocese to be worked, but special farewell visits were made by individual missioners to parishes in which they had laboured in the earlier part of the course. One missioner, at least, gave himself permanently to the New Zealand Church.
Another object of intense amazement was the first clock brought by the missioners to the country of the Hurons. They called it 'The Captain of the Day, and many were the inquiries each time they came, how often he had spoken since their last visit. Lest they should lose the benefit of any of his remarks, they sometimes waited hour after hour to hear him speak again.
Seeing the harvest so great, and the labourers so few, he wrote earnestly to Father Ignatius in Italy, and to Simon Rodriguez in Portugal, for a supply of missioners.
So saintly a life attracted the attention of all, gained their esteem, caused many to embrace the Institution, and procured for them many establishments, notably the one at Paris. Angelo of Pisa, one of the missioners sent by St. Francis, was the first warden of the Parisian convent.
Securely fastened with strong ropes they lay at the foot of the scaffolding ready to be drawn up into place, and standing about in a half circle were missioners, pupils, and workmen. The Apostolic Prefect, dressed in festal robes, and attended by the small acolytes, Willy Brown and the Chinese Joseph, had blessed the crosses.
Thus, missioners giving missions or parish retreats are excused from the whole Office; so, too, are priest combatants in the battle line; but when in rest camps they are bound to say the Hours. A priest engaged in saying his Office, if he receive an urgent call to a dying person may not have time to finish his Office before midnight.
When you visit the places where those learned fathers once flourished, and see with your own eyes the evils their dissolution has caused; when you hear the inhabitants telling you how good, how clever, how charitable they were; what will you think of our poet laureate for calling them, in his History of Brazil, "Missioners whose zeal the most fanatical was directed by the coolest policy"?
It may be urged that The Bible in Spain disproves these conclusions; but The Bible in Spain was a peculiar book. It was a chronicle of Christian enterprise served up with sauce picaresque. It pleased and astonished everyone, especially those who had grown a little weary of godly missioners.
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