Pioneers and Founders

Since the great efforts that Britain had made between the years 500 and 1000 to bring the knowledge of the truth into the still heathen portions of the Continent, -since the days of Columban and Gal, of Boniface and Willibrord, -there had been a cessation of missionary enterprise. The known portions of the world were either Christian, or were in the hands of the Mahommedans; and no doubt much of the adventurous spirit which, united with religious enthusiasm, forms the missionary, found vent in the Crusades, and training in the military orders. The temper of the age, and the hopelessness of converting a Mahommedan, made the good men of the third 500 years use their swords rather than their tongues against the infidel; and it was only in the case of men possessing such rare natures as those of Francis of Assisi, or Raymond Lull, that the possibility of trying to bring over a single Saracen to the faith was imagined.