Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/431

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The good priest does not seem to have remembered that his Indians had often seen and taken part in the reality of which he desired a painting. If, instead of teaching the savages that the Great Father of the human race imitated them in the infliction of torture, what would have been the effect upon them of a picture of the benedictive Saviour, the Great Physician, standing in a group of sufferers by every ill and woe, who received from him relief and blessing?

How in contrast with all this was the stark realism of the Puritan meeting-house and worship, without altar, painting, symbol, or ritual!

If space permitted, I might introduce here a sketch of the noble and tragic ministry and career of Father Jogues, a young Jesuit scholar, who arrived at Quebec in 1686, and went among the Iroquois. The narrative of his zeal and fidelity, of his sufferings and mutilations, of his escape from a long captivity, of his reconsecration to his work, and of his final martyrdom, is so thrilling, so wrought in with marvels of heroism and endurance, as well as with variety of picturesque and shifting scenes, that it might be called a romance, if it were not for its fearfully sombre cast and close.

So also is the narrative of Father Bressani, an Italian Jesuit, who in 1642 was put upon desperate service as a missionary among the Hurons. No hero ever did nobler work, in trial and endurance. Captured by the Iroquois, he was tortured and mutilated, but, escaping with life, returned to his work till the scenes of missionary labor