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MISSION SAN LUIS REY, PARTLY RESTORED.

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 ofCalifornia," "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 whodiscern the manifestation of God in all men:

To those who are urging forward the day when profession willgive place to endeavor, and, in the real life of a genuinebrotherhood of man, and true recognition of the All-Fatherhood ofGod, all men, in spite of their diversities, shall unite in theirworship and thus form the real Catholic Church:

Especially to these, and to all who appreciate nobleness inothers I lovingly dedicate these pages, devoted to a recital of thelife 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 theirhistory increases with each year. To-day a thousand visit themwhere ten saw them twenty years ago, and twenty years hence,hundreds of thousands will stand in their sacred precincts, andunconsciously absorb beautiful and unselfish lessons of life asthey hear some part of their history recited. It is well that thisis so. A materially inclined nation needs to save every unselfishelement 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 atrice."

It is of incalculably greater benefit to the race that theMission Fathers lived and had their fling of divine audacity forthe good of the helpless aborigines than that any score one mightname of the "successful captains of industry" lived to make theirunwieldy and topheavy piles of gold. With all their faults andfailures, all their ideas of theology and education,--which we, inour assumed superiority, call crude and old-fashioned,--all theirrude notions of sociology, all their errors and mistakes, the workof the Franciscan Fathers was glorified by unselfish aim, highmotive and constant and persistent endeavor to bring their heathenwards into a knowledge of saving grace. It was a brave and heroicendeavor. It is easy enough to find fault, to criticize, to carp,but it is not so easy to do. These men did! They hada glorious purpose which they faithfully pursued. They aimed highand achieved nobly. The following pages recite both their aims andtheir achievements, and neither can be understood without athrilling of the pulses, a quickening of the heart's beats, and astimulating of the soul's ambitions.

This volume pretends to nothing new in the way of historicalresearch or scholarship. It is merely an honest and simple attemptto meet a real and popular demand for an unpretentious work that