Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/410

390 glorious triumph, to be shrouded in the most dismal and appalling disaster. The Récollets, as before stated, celebrated the first Mass within the territory of Canada.

By the request, or at least by the consent, of the Friars, three Jesuit Fathers, the first of their Order in Canada, came to undertake the mission there in 1625. This was fourteen years after their brethren, Biard and Masse, had come to Acadia. Two more Fathers joined them in 1626. Up to this time Huguenots had been free to share in the enterprise of colonization in New France, but after 1627 the privilege was rigidly restricted to Catholics. The brief episode of the English possession of Canada, on its seizure by Kirk, threatened to thwart the whole project of the French missions. But the field was restored to the original adventurers in 1632. The Récollets then resigned their honorable and peaceful beginnings in a consecrated work; two more Jesuits joined those already in their forest sanctuaries, and thenceforward the record of endeavor and endurance, of constancy and patience, of single-hearted zeal and of martyrdom, protracted through long years of misery, pain, and all mortal extremities, is written under the title of “The Jesuit Missions in New France.” The heroism of piety and zeal, certified by absolute self-renunciation and consecrated fidelity to vows and obligations, finds its loftiest and consummate examples in the world's whole annals of holy purpose and endeavor in the work of the Jesuit Fathers in New France. Protestantism, in none of its forms or sects, has a match for them. No preferences, prejudgments, animosities, or entailed