| Show The Old Missions of Southern California Of all the points of interest that attract the traveler in that wonderful land of sunshine there are few that appeal more strongly to the lover of art of romance or of history than do these Old Missions Almost in ruin as many of them now are they stand as striking monuments to the zeal of the early Fathers of the Catholic Church those men who so eagerly obeyed the command of old “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” What traveler is there who is so devoid of imagination as to stand under the arches of those mission buildings so beautiful even in their ruin and gaze down the dim corridors without fancying that they echo once more the footsteps of those devoted men who gave their lives to seek and to save those whom they believed to be lost? Who can look up at those dismantled towers and broken bells and not hear in imagination the sweet tones of the Angelus call again the throngs of dusky natives to evening worship? What traveler is so narrow in his religious creed as not to revere the self sacrifice the devotion the true faith of those early fathers who sought to bring light to those who sat in darkness? If one is to realize how great was the of these men self-sascrifi- ce their devotion how faith one must study their strong how entire the history of these missions one must follow back along the years back to the time when the civilization of the New World was only a dream For the very beginning of this mission movement that has meant so much to the western world we must go back to Spain at the first of the 13th Century Here lived St Francis striving to establish a religious order later known as the Franciscan Brotherhood who were the founders of the California Missions St Francis wished to establish an order whose members would be more devoted to religion and more than the members of any order then existing an order whose only purpose should be to work for God and help man Indeed so entire must be their devotion and so arduous must be their efforts to help humanity that it was not believed possible for these men to be true to their creed Such a high ideal could not be compreg hended in that selfish and age For some years St Francis besought the powers of the Church to permit the existence of this new order but it was not deemed advisable Not until 1208 did the Church yield to his earnest en- self-sacrifici- ng ease-lovin- |
