SECOND ARTICLE.
During the centuries of persecution, then, the Northern heavens grew darker and darker, and the storm-clouds thickened on the horizon. God was at work behind that dark and heavy cloud-wall planning the most terrible campaign that was ever executed. The heedless, sinning empire little thought what fire and tempest would sweep over it when that storm-cloud should burst. It considered itself a veritable part of the rock-built earth, and immovable while the world lasted; that it would only perish when the universe should cease to exist. But behind that fiery storm-cloud that hangs heavy and threatening in the Northern skies, there is a mightier God than paganism knows of, who will sweep the Roman power away as the leaves are swept by the autumn blasts. The moment of vengeance is fixed. Whilst the cry of the martyrs’ blood has been sounding in the ears of God, he has been preparing for that moment of wrath. But there was another cry, too, rising up to heaven from the length and breadth of the empire, and calling down vengeance and wrath. It was the cry of sin—a never-ceasing, clamorous, many-voiced cry—going up night and day from city and town and hamlet over the wide area of Roman dominion. The corruption, then, deep and universal, of the Roman Empire was the second cause of the barbarian invasion. Of this we have still to speak.
We must remark at the outset that, when we speak of the corruption of the Roman Empire, we are not referring to that period of history which preceded Christ. We wish to speak of that period which immediately preceded the great invasion of the Northern barbarians in the fifth century. We are about to point out another object which God evidently had in view in sending down his wild warriors, and why their course was one of fire and devastation. In a word, we are about to speak of that moral rottenness which had eaten through the very vitals of the Roman Colossus, and which God, unable to bear it longer before his high heaven, infecting, as it was, the very universe with its pestilent stench, sent his messengers of wrath with flaming sword and fiery torch to cleanse away from the afflicted earth. We must insist upon God being an active power in the world. We are no followers of Professor Seeley, who lectures to the young men of Cambridge on the Fall of the Roman Empire as if God had had no hand in it. However ingenious Prof. Seeley may be, he will never convince us that God does not make and unmake empires. We want no new theory of the Fall of the Roman Empire and the Invasion of the Barbarians. The grandest and the truest was given us long ages ago by St. Augustine in his immortal work De Civitate Dei, and it has satisfied all Christian thinkers up to the present day. Prof. Seeley asks what is the cause of the decaying condition of the empire? “It has been common,” he says, “to suppose a moral degradation in the Romans, caused by luxury and excessive good fortune. To support this, it is easy to quote the satirists and cynics of the imperial times, and to refer to such accounts as Ammianus gives of the mingled effeminacy and brutality of the aristocracy of the capital in the fourth century. But the history of the wars between Rome and the barbaric world does not show us the proofs we might expect of this decay of spirit. We do not find the Romans ceasing to be victorious in the field and beginning to show themselves inferior in valor to their enemies. The luxury of the capital could not affect the army, which had no connection with the capital, but was levied from the peasantry of the whole empire, a class into which luxury can never penetrate. Nor can it be said the luxury corrupted the generals, and through them the army.... Whatever the remote and ultimate cause may have been, the immediate cause to which the fall of the empire can be traced is a physical, not a moral, decay.”[179]
This specimen of Mr. Seeley’s philosophy of history gives us a very low opinion of his powers of penetration. If the professor could see a little further below the surface, he would surely discover that a frightful moral decay was the underlying cause of the physical decay. He cannot persuade us that, if the capital were so corrupt, the generals and the army would still maintain a manly and a vigorous character. If the central heart be corrupt, a corrupting influence will flow out over the whole body. It was so, beyond doubt, with the Roman Empire in past days; it has been so with another mighty empire in our own times. Moral corruption flowed out from the capitals of both empires, and destroyed the vigor, courage, and all the manly virtues of their peoples. And then the messengers of God came. They came from the North in both cases, and terrible was the devastation which God gave them power to effect. In both cases they were irresistible, simply because he who beckoned them on and was hid in the smoke of battle was the God of battles himself. This is the theory which a Christian professor at least will naturally follow. There is something far more satisfactory in this, both to the intellect and to faith, than in any theory that can be suggested by the naturalistic views of men of Mr. Seeley’s school. We wonder if the young men who sat under Mr. Seeley at Cambridge were satisfied when the professor summed up his theory of the fall of the empire in these words: “Men were wanting; the empire perished for want of men”? To go no further than that seems to us pitiably shallow indeed. We are not at all captivated by Mr. Seeley’s view. We feel far more satisfied in believing the grand, old Christian theory, viz., that the empire perished at the hands of God for its savage cruelty to the holy martyrs and for its widespread corruption and revolting crimes.
We have already endeavored to sketch out the history of the age of blood: it now remains for us to give a picture of the corruption in which the empire lay steeped at the period previous to the descent of the barbaric hordes. But we most honestly state that we cannot do more than give a faint portraiture of what is so offensive to Christian purity of mind. To point to the life in this case, even if we were able to do so, would be too painful for Catholic ideas. The picture would necessarily be too frightful for the eye of modesty to gaze upon. It would be a dreadful exposure to the light of day of the blackest and the most shameful side of fallen human nature. Of necessity, then, must the painting be in somewhat dim outlines. But even so, it will sufficiently answer our present purpose.
For well-nigh five centuries, then, had Christianity been at work over the length and breadth of the Roman Empire, and yet paganism and its demoralizing influence were not dead. We know well how boldly and triumphantly the apostles went from the Cenacle to the conversion of the pagan world. The heavenly fire that had come down upon them had lodged itself in their hearts. It shot its wondrous power through their whole bodies, darting forth from their eyes in living light, issuing from their mouths in burning words, nerving them up to brave tortures and racks. They went forth, did that little band from the Cenacle, fire-girt and heaven-inspired, to the most arduous task ever confided to mortal men. Their wondrous success we need not here recount. It was such as only men with God in their midst could effect. They no longer knew fear of earthly powers; they quailed not in the presence of the terrors of death. Nothing could withstand them in their course. The demons of paganism fled before them; a thrill of horror ran through the vast Pantheon of pagan worship, and the idols trembled on their pedestals. Like the Titans of old, those messengers of the Crucified scaled the Olympus of paganism, and hurled down the false gods that were enthroned there. Hell and Olympus mingled their groans at the sounding blows which were levelling the idols of false worship and shaking the universe. But was, then, paganism utterly destroyed? Did it never recover from the shock which it received at the hands of the apostles of Christ? Did the darkness flee away before the bright torches of light which Christians held up in the midst of cities and towns and on every hill-top, and never return? Did the demons who lurked in the pagan temples and spoke by the mouths of the idols plunge into the deep abyss at the approach of Christ’s preachers, and never come back again? It is usual to think that something like this was the case. But it is far from the historic truth. We must admit, indeed, that the success of the first apostles of Christianity was the most amazing fact which we have ever read of in history. The light of divine truth flashed with miraculous swiftness through the world. Thousands of persons abandoned the idols of paganism, and joined the strange, new standard of the Cross. But yet paganism, continued to exist and to spread its baneful influence—it was not a dead thing. It had become welded into the very substance of the empire. It was associated with so much of the grand historic past.
The Roman could not read of the warlike glories of his country without finding them mingled with the worship of Jupiter and Mars. He could not take up the verses of his immortal poets without meeting at every page with the gods and goddesses of Olympus. The laws of the empire recalled pagan gods; the customs and festivals and games kept their remembrance fresh in the mind. We do not wonder, then, that paganism was not easily destroyed. It would almost seem that the life of the empire and the life of paganism were one; that the pillars of the pagan temples were, so to speak, identical with the pillars of the state. When we bear all this in mind, we are not so much surprised to find that paganism was still a living thing more than eighty years after the first Christian emperor had taken the Labarum for his military standard, and had lifted Christianity out of the dark caves of the Catacombs to place it on the throne of the Cæsars. We are also more prepared for what we read regarding the Emperor Honorius. When in 404 he visited Rome, in order to celebrate his sixth consulate, pagan temples still surrounded the imperial palace, the sanctuary of Jupiter Tarpeius still crowned the capital, and from sacred edifices still standing on every side a whole host of pagan gods yet looked down, as of old, on Rome and the world. So real a thing was paganism still even in the fifth century that the pagan poet Claudian, who had been appointed to celebrate in verse the occasion just referred to, could with impunity and, we suppose, with apparent propriety, point out the gods as seeming to guard the imperial palace by their divine presence and smile propitiously upon one who was the heir of so many Christian emperors.[180] Some years later a work was written by an unknown author who lived in the time of Honorius or of Valentinian III., giving a topographical description of Rome, and mentioning those monuments which had been spared by the fire and sword of the Goths. The writer enumerates as still existing 43 pagan temples and 480 cediculæ. The Colossus of the Sun, a hundred feet high, still towered aloft close by the Coliseum, where so many holy martyrs had poured out their blood for Christ. The statues of Apollo, of Hercules and Minerva still stood, as of old, at the crossings and in the public squares. Still the fountains flowed under the invocation of nymphs. And this, though Constantine and Theodosius had wielded the sceptre of the empire, and SS. Sylvester and Damasus had sat in the midst on the throne of Peter. Time passes on, and with it the age of the great fathers of the church. Those days which Christianity filled with its spirit, when Gregory and Chrysostom and Basil and Jerome and mighty Augustine preached and taught, go by with their brightness and their glory, and yet in 419, in the time of Valentinian III., we find Rutilius Numatianus celebrating the greatness of pagan Rome, the mother of gods and heroes. Christianity had been throwing bright gleams of light over the whole world for these 400 years, the voices of the great fathers of the church had been thundering in the principal cities of the empire, yet Claudian and Rutilius Numatianus were as though they had caught no glimpse of the light which shone around them nor heard a sound from Hippo or Milan. Claudian had found a cord of that Latin lyre which was broken to pieces on the day when Lucan opened his own veins in the bath. Though living in Christian times, he was as pagan as his great model, and his imagination revelled amid the fabled splendors of Olympus and the baseless fictions of mythology. He can sing of the rape of Proserpine whilst the cultus of our Blessed Lady is taking possession of the temple of Ceres at Catana. He invites the graces, the nymphs, and the hours to prepare their garlands for the fair spouse of Stilico, though she had, in hatred and contempt of the gods of paganism, snatched the golden collar from the neck of the statue of Cybele. His genius takes even a more daring flight when he introduces Christian princes into the abodes of the immortals, and represents Theodosius, the greatest hater of the gods, as holding familiar converse with Jupiter. Rutilius Numatianus, on the other hand, pours out his soul in passionate words of patriotism upon Rome herself, the last and the greatest divinity of the ancient world. To him Rome is the ever beautiful queen of the universe, whose dominion she holds for all ages. To him she is the mother of men and of gods. “When we pray in thy temples,” he exclaims in his burning ardor, “we are not far from heaven. Of all nations she has made one country, of a whole world one city. Her trophies are countless as the stars of heaven, her temples too dazzling for the eyes to look upon. Spread yet further thy laws; they shall govern ages yet unborn which shall become Roman despite themselves, and thou alone, of all earthly things, shalt not fear the power of the fates.”[181]
We might easily imagine on reading these two writers that Christianity had not yet dawned upon the world, yet we are in the fifth century. We naturally ask if the Christian emperors used their power to crush out paganism. History tells us of many imperial edicts which ordered the pagan temples to be closed and the sacrifices to be discontinued. We find those edicts often renewed, and hence, we argue, often disobeyed. Nothing, however, surprises us so much as to find that in the middle of the fifth century the sacred chickens were still kept at the capital, and the consuls, on their appointment to office, went to seek from them the auspices which they were supposed to be able to give. At this date also the public calendar indicated the feasts of the false gods by the side of those in honor of Christ and his saints. In a word, paganism is yet a living power, with its temples and idols, and sacrifices and sacred groves.
In Rome itself, where the smoke of incense ascends to the only true God, the smoke of sacrifice also rises to the false gods of Olympus. And beyond Rome, over Italy and Gaul and throughout the whole of Western Christendom, there are still symbols of pagan worship; still undoubted indications of its enduring influence over thousands who believe that the empire and the pagan gods are equally eternal, and will still be in existence when men here become tired of the folly of the cross and the name of the crucified Nazarene has faded from their minds. How true, then, does it appear that paganism continues to hold its ground to a far greater extent than is commonly imagined! It was a fearful task for Christianity, divine though it was, to level to the ground the temples and idols of pagan worship. Paganism seemed to hold on to the empire with unrelaxing tenacity; it was bound up with its institutions; it seemed built with the very stones into the walls of the great capital.
The incontrovertible fact, then, that paganism still existed and retained a stout hold upon the empire even so late as the fifth century will prepare the reader to believe that its demoralizing principles were still working their natural results. We will not maintain that human sacrifices were as common at this date as they had been some centuries before; but we do not feel sure that they were altogether abandoned. We know that in the time of Constantine, when Christianity was looking down from the throne of the Cæsars over the empire, pagan priests poured out each year a patera of human blood to Jupiter Latial. The example which the Romans themselves had set was followed by the conquered nations, and those dreadful horrors long continued to be practised among them in spite of imperial decrees and prohibitions. “All the laws of civilization,” says F. Ozanam in his striking way, “could not smother the instincts of that savage beast which paganism had unmuzzled in the heart of fallen humanity.” But even if human sacrifices had altogether ceased, yet the essential principles of paganism were still at work. The direct tendency of pagan worship was to enslave man to his senses. The fearful degradation to which mankind were thus brought, it is almost impossible for Christian minds to credit. St. Augustine, in the seventh book of his City of God, tells us of horrors which we cannot read without a sense of shame and disgust for our race. Those processions through the towns and fields of Latium on the feast of Bacchus are too shocking to describe. We know, also, that unnamable crimes were honored with a religious cultus, and had temples dedicated to their worship at Cyprus, Samos, at Corinth, and on Mount Eryx. When we read of this utter degradation to which paganism reduces human nature, we wonder how such a religion could endure. But it was precisely because it ministered so readily and so generously to the worst passions of human nature that it maintained its influence so long. When in course of time, and, by the repeated pressure of imperial edicts, the priests of Cybele and the priestesses of Venus were dispersed, paganism still had its temples and its thousands of worshippers in the circus, the theatre, and the amphitheatre. In these centres of resort, where the most reckless and the most unholy passions had full play, the gods were in their strongholds. St. Cyprian had understood the true nature of paganism well when he said that it was “the mother of the games.” Nothing could have seized upon human nature with a more powerful grasp than paganism did by making pleasure into a religious worship. The two strong tendencies of mankind, viz., the religious sentiment and the intense love of pleasure, were thus directed to one and the same object. The combats of the gladiators, which exercised such a fascination on the Romans for so many years, were supposed to appease the spirits of the departed; the dances of the stage were thought to avert the anger of heaven. The symbolism which covered all lent an air of mystery and solemnity to these exciting entertainments. We are told that the courses of the circus represented the evolutions of the stars, the dances of the theatre symbolized the voluptuous whirl of pleasure in which all living beings were hurried along, and the combats of the amphitheatre were a type of the struggles in which the human race is ever engaged. The circus, theatre, and amphitheatre were, then, so many temples of worship, and, as we may well believe, the most popular and the best frequented temples that paganism ever consecrated to its false and corrupting rites. The other religious temples of the Roman were notoriously small and poor, but on these he lavished his gold, his marble, and all that he held most precious, so that he has left behind him nothing grander or richer than the monuments of his pleasures, and, we may add, nothing more defiled, more foul or more bloody.
The circus was dedicated to the sun; so proclaimed the obelisk which rose in stately height in the centre of the arena. Everything about the circus breathed idolatry. If we accept the view of the Greeks, its very name was taken from Circe, the daughter of the sun. If we take up the scathing work of Tertullian, De Spectaculis, we shall be told that “every ornament of the circus was in itself a temple. The eggs those assign to Castor and Pollux, who blush not in believing that these were born an egg from a swan which was Jupiter. The pillars vomit forth their dolphins in honor of Neptune; they support their Sessiæ, so-called from the sowing of the seed; their Messiæ, from the harvest; their Tutelinæ, from the protection of the fruits. In front of these appear three altars to three gods, mighty and powerful; these they consider to be of Samothrace. The enormous obelisk, as Hermatetes affirmeth, is publicly exposed in honor of the Sun; its inscription is a superstition from Egypt. The council of the gods were dull without their great mother; she therefore presideth there over the Euripus. Consus, as we have said, lieth buried beneath the earth of the Marcian Jail; even this jail he maketh an idol. Think, O Christian! how many unclean names possess the circus. Foreign to thee is that religion which so many spirits of the devil have taken unto themselves!”[182] It would seem that the circus was a sort of Pantheon, where almost every god received his tribute of worship. If the pagan deities had lost some of their temples in the onward advance of Christianity, they still retained a shrine where they were worshipped all at once. And no opportunity was lost when an act of religious worship could be brought in. Before the courses were opened, the gods were carried on rich litters round the circus by a grand cortége of priests. Tertullian speaks of the dazzling pompa which preceded the games, “the long line of images, the host of statues, the chariots, the sacred images, the cars, the chairs, and the robes” with which the gods were clothed. “How many colleges,” he says, “how many priesthoods, how many offices are set in motion, the men of that city know in which the council of the demons sitteth.”[183] Sacrifices without number were celebrated in the course of the performances. They preceded, they came between, they followed them. And it is difficult to conceive the height of frenzy to which the people were excited by these games. “On the longed-for day of the equestrian games,” Ammianus Marcellinus tells us, “ere the clear rays of the sun yet shine, all hurry headlong, outpoured, as though they would outspeed the very chariots which are to contend.” Before the races began, all eyes, wild with the fire of excited passions, were fixed on the magistrate, who held in his hand the handkerchief whose falling was to signal the commencement of the sports. As that handkerchief fell, there came rushing into view those charioteers who were the delight of the Roman people. The crowd raised a wild cry of joy, and then, breathless with suspense, followed with their glaring eyes the rushing horses and the rattling cars as they dashed along the course. As the horses bounded over the ground, now losing, now gaining, on one another, and the dust-clouds rose from beneath the rattling chariot-wheels, louder and wilder rang the shouts of the spectators, and passion rose to its height in Roman hearts. Furious factions were formed, which soon developed into violence and internecine battle. This was the grand climax, sought for and expected. The gods were appeased; Romulus now recognized his people. From this state of wild excitement we naturally expect cruelty and bloodshed. We are quite prepared to believe what Suetonius tells us. He records that Vitellius massacred some of the people because they cursed the faction which he favored. Caracalla is said to have done the same for some jest on a favorite charioteer. But to add more vivid coloring to the picture, we will borrow the striking language of Tertullian. “Behold the people,” he says, “coming to the show already full of madness, already tumultuous, already blind, already agitated about their wagers. The prætor is too slow for them. Their eyes are ever rolling with their lots within his urn. Then they are in anxious suspense for the signal. The common madness hath a common voice. I perceive their madness from their trifling. ‘He hath thrown it,’ they say, and announce to each other what was seen at once by all. I possess the evidence of their blindness. They see not what is thrown; they think it a handkerchief, but it is the gullet of the devil cast down from on high.”[184]
Thus, then, in the stormy days of the fifth century did the great Roman people forget their troubles and their dangers in the excitement of the circus. What was so vividly described by Tertullian went on through the centuries that came after him. The Roman people had, in truth, lost the empire of the world; it had purchased its capital out of the hands of savage hordes by heavy sums of gold; but it forgot all in the delirium of the circensian games. There, as has been said, it found its temple, its forum, its country, and the term of its hopes. Through the storms of war against barbarians, in spite of the thunders of Christian eloquence, under the dazzling light of the Christian Gospel, still the circus stood, and its multitudinous gods received their tribute of worship, and the maddened crowds thronged to the games, as of old. In the year 448, the calendar marks 58 days for the public games. We may well be amazed as we read it. Fifty-eight days still dedicated to this wild self-abandonment, whilst on the Northern borders of the empire the threatening armies of Genseric and Attila were amassed, with the sword of fire and vengeance in their hands, awaiting the signal of God!
The theatre was another temple where paganism still retained a terrible hold. It was dedicated to Venus, the unholy goddess who swayed the hearts of almost all mankind. If we would see the great Roman people at its lowest, we must look upon it as it lies in prostrate adoration in this temple of Venus. Here it is grovelling in the veriest mire of abasement. Here, more than anywhere else, it forgets its dignity, and plunges into the deepest depths of sensuality and degradation. But we cannot paint the scene in bold colors. The picture would shock by its startling horror and deformity. The eye of Christian modesty would turn away in disgust and pain. We must let the outlines even be faint, lest they should offend the delicate sensitiveness of pure minds.
In the midst of the theatre stood the altar of the unholy goddess, crowned with garlands. Before this altar were represented the shameful histories of the pagan gods. There the wretched mimes, by look, and gesture, and suggestive attitude, displayed before the lascivious eyes of the multitude the loves of Jupiter and the fury of Pasiphaë. But as time went on, and the passions of the people became more and more inflamed, the mute language of look and gesture did not satisfy. Far worse horrors were demanded. Shadows and unrealities were not enough for the hungry fire of unrestrained passion. Realities, revolting, shameless, and unnamable, must be enacted before the eyes of a vast multitude, composed of old and young of both sexes. He who played the part of Hercules must be burned in the presence of a maddened throng; the horrid history of Atys must have a reality answering to it, and be carried into effect before the full gaze of the people. We can conceive nothing more pitiable than the sight of the great Roman people, so sadly fallen into baseness, so completely abandoned to shameful sensualities, and lying prostrate before the foul goddess of unholy passions in the theatre. The empire might perish and the heavens fall upon their heads, but the people must have their pleasures. This was their madness and their worship. Three thousand dancers ministered, like so many priestesses, in the theatre-worship of Rome. For these panderers to their vile pleasures, the Romans were willing to sacrifice all that was dear to them. These favorites they crowned with flowers, and flattered by their manifestations of applause. They retained them in the city, as Ammianus Marcellinus tells us, at a time of severe famine, where a decree was passed which expelled men of letters and those who exercised the liberal professions. Old Ammianus, though a pagan, is filled with wrath at this shameful abandonment of his countrymen, and pours out his indignation in vehement, fiery words. But what hope was there? Corruption had affected every class. The dancers were the favorites of all, and even the senators of Rome were not ashamed to sit in the first seats of the theatre gazing upon the nudity of these priestesses of Venus. Thus had the Romans fallen below even the most fallen of other nations, which had once been great, but had perished for their crimes. Egypt had deified its agricultural products and domestic animals, Phœnicia its commerce, Assyria its sciences, Persia the elements, Greece its arts.[185] But Rome had gone down far deeper than all into folly and idolatry; it had raised altars to its own base passions. And this theatre-worship was existing in its full life in the latter days of the empire. Christianity had not abolished it. The demons held their own in their temples of sinful pleasure, and the people came and adored in countless multitudes, and their passions were kept alive and burned wildly with unholy fire—and all under the dark, bodeful shadow of the storm-cloud which hung so black and threatening in the Northern skies.
But we have yet to speak of another great centre of paganism and moral corruption—the amphitheatre. “This,” says F. Ozanam, “was the greatest school which was ever opened for the demoralization of men.” It exercised a power of fascination beyond all conception, and was irresistible. The people rushed there in countless thousands, frantic with excitement. The thirst for blood maddened them like a wild indwelling demon. The games of the circus were tame in comparison with the sight of wild beasts engaged in death-struggle or the savage conflict of well-matched gladiators. There the emperors presided under the shadow of their pagan gods; there were gathered together the senators and the great ones of Rome; there rose tier upon tier round the vast arena the waving mass of countless human heads. There all Rome assembled for brutal pleasure and pagan worship, for the amphitheatre was a temple. Tertullian tells us this in his characteristic way. “The amphitheatre,” he says, “is consecrated to deities more numerous and more barbarous than the capitol. It is the temple of all demons. As many unclean spirits sit together as the place containeth men.”[186] Under the shadow, then, of so many pagan gods, breathed upon by so many devils, we can picture to ourselves the wild excitement of these thousands of spectators, as they assemble on occasion of a Roman holiday. They have caught a rumor, perhaps, of what is prepared that day, by a subservient emperor, for the amusement of his people. It may be that hundreds of ferocious beasts are to tear one another to pieces before them, as often happened in the time of Septimius Severus; or it may be that two hundred lions are to die in a horrid, bloody affray, as took place in the reign of one of his successors. Or, perhaps, Roman senators are to descend into the arena, to sacrifice their lives for the amusement of their fellow-citizens, as was the custom from the time of the first Cæsars. Perhaps it is near mid-day, and the crowd has been thronging in for hours. The sun is pouring down his blazing rays over the scene, though their heat is tempered by the canvas awnings which stretch a kind protecting shade wherever it is possible. But the bright light penetrates every nook and corner, and makes every figure stand forth to view. It flashes off the shining armor of Roman knights, dances and glistens in many a dark young eye, falls with a flood of glory upon Cæsar’s throne, and plays around the imperial robes which gold and precious stones so gorgeously bedeck. The brightness of the day adds to the excitement of the people. They talk with vivacity upon the nature of the expected conflicts; they lay their wagers, and become more excited as time flies on. They are impatient for the “shows” to begin; they clamor; they can wait no longer. We will here let a more brilliant pen than ours help to complete the picture. “And now, with peal of trumpets and clash of cymbals, a burst of wild martial music rises above the hum and murmur of the seething crowd. Under a spacious archway, supported by marble pillars, wide folding-doors are flung open, and two by two, with stately step and slow, march in the gladiators, armed with the different weapons of their deadly trade. Four hundred men are they, in all the pride of perfect strength and symmetry, and high training and practised skill. With head erect and haughty bearing, they defile once round the arena, as though to give the spectators an opportunity of closely scanning their appearance, and halt with military precision to range themselves in line under Cæsar’s throne. For a moment there is a pause and hush of expectation over the multitude, while the devoted champions stand motionless as statues in the full glow of noon; then, bursting suddenly into action, they brandish their gleaming weapons over their heads, and higher, fuller, fiercer rises the terrible chant that seems to combine the shout of triumph with the wail of suffering, and to bid a long and hopeless farewell to upper earth, even in the very recklessness and defiance of its despair:
“‘Ave Cæsar! Morituri te salutant!’
“Then they wheel out once more, and range themselves on either side of the arena: all but a chosen band who occupy the central place of honor, and of whom every second man at least is doomed to die.”[187]
We can imagine how the thousands who had come to feast their eyes on the cruel spectacle would now be frantic for the real work to begin. We can picture to ourselves how all would proceed. We see the huge rhinoceros with his overlapping plates of armor led forth into the arena. He rolls his glowing eyes around in the fury of his hunger, but sees only the smooth white sand. He stamps with his large flat foot, and digs madly into the earth with his “horned muzzle.” We see, too, his enemy come sneaking in—the Lybian tiger, with his sleek, striped coat and glaring eyes. They approach each other. The spring is made; they are in a death-struggle. And now that blood is seen, a maddened shout of savage joy from the gratified spectators rends the air. More blood is wanted. The trumpets ring out again. The gladiators step forth and range themselves in opposing ranks. They are “all armed alike with a deep, concave buckler, and a short, stabbing, two-edged blade.” Then is heard the sharp clash of meeting steel. Men’s breath is hushed; their hearts beat quick; their eyes glare with a wild fire and are riveted on the struggling athletes. Then the ranks of the combatants waver and are broken; blood is seen upon the white sand: it flows from large gashes in the gladiators’ sinking forms. The huge giants fall one after another, hard and brave to the last.
And this is the hideous sight which day after day delights and never satisfies the Roman public. It is sad to think of so much noble strength and magnificent bravery sacrificed so ignobly. It sickens the heart to dwell on the brutal, reckless destruction of manly life perpetrated to amuse a blood-thirsty populace in “those Roman shambles.” Yet “so inured were the people to such exhibitions, so completely imbued with a taste for the horrible, and so careless of human life, that scarcely an eye was turned away, scarcely a cheek grew paler, when a disabling gash was received or a mortal blow driven home, and mothers with babies in their arms would bid the child turn its head to watch the death-pang on the pale, stern face of some prostrate gladiator.”[188]
We have now said enough to show the reader the corrupting influence of those three mighty powers of paganism—the circus, the theatre, and the amphitheatre. Many pagan temples had no doubt fallen under the crushing arm of Christian teaching, but these three, in which so many gods and goddesses had taken refuge, stood their ground. They were found in every province of the empire, and everywhere were well frequented. The demoralizing effect produced by them it is not easy to estimate—it was simply never-ceasing and universal. And when the persecutors had passed away, and there was no longer the constant presence of cruel death to keep alive the fervor of Christians, we find that they too came under the demoralizing influence of these mighty powers of evil. This is the cause of that bitter cry of grief which bursts forth from every page of the writings of the great saints of the fourth and fifth centuries. Pagan corruption was rushing upon them like a strong flood on every side. They found themselves overpowered and engulfed. Listen to the plaintive words of SS. Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine, laden with the sobs and groans of grief-stricken hearts. Open the pages of Salvian, and you will soon be convinced that mortal degradation has invaded every city and town, and that all classes of society are grovelling in the lowest depths of corruption. The holy bishop pours out his soul in the most moving language. His words sometimes flash with holy wrath and indignation; sometimes they are the wailing cry of despair; sometimes, again, they are the tears of deepest sorrow, flowing out of his inmost soul. “How different,” he exclaims, “is now the Christian people from itself, that is, from what it formerly was!... What is now every assembly of Christians but a sink of vices?... We make it our study not only not to accomplish the precepts, but even to do the contrary. God commands us to love one another; we tear one another to pieces in mutual hatred. God commands us to help the poor; and we all rob others of what belongs to them. God commands every Christian to be chaste even in look; and who is he who does not grovel in the mire? I appeal to the conscience of those to whom I speak. Who is the person who has not to reproach himself with some of these crimes, or, rather, who is the man who is not guilty of all? It is easier to find Christians guilty of all these crimes than to meet with any exempt from some of them; it is easier to find great criminals than ordinary sinners. Many of the Romans who have been baptized have arrived at such a laxity of morals that it is a kind of sanctity amongst the faithful to be less vicious. Audacious criminals rush into the temples of the true God without any respect for the Divine Majesty. They go there to meditate in silence upon some fresh iniquity. Scarcely are the divine mysteries concluded than some return to their thefts, others to drunkenness; these to their bad habits, those to their deeds of violence. What is the life of courtiers? Injustice and iniquity. What is the life of public officers? Lies and calumny. What is the life of soldiers? Violence and rapine. What is the life of merchants? Fraud and deceit. Alas! our vices disinherit us of the beautiful name of Christians; for the depravity of our morals renders us unworthy of the privileges of our birth. Base behavior destroys the glory of an honorable title. As there is no condition which is not disgraced, no place which is not filled with the crimes of Christians, let us no longer glory in this beautiful name. It will only serve to render us more culpable, and to aggravate our offences.”[189]
We think the picture sufficiently complete. Over this huge mass of moral rottenness; over the heads of pagan gods yet standing erect in the midst of this foul corruption; over the great sinning empire, pagan still in its vices and its tastes, the threatening storm-cloud hangs, waiting the moment when God shall bid it belch forth its hidden terrors of fire and flame. That moment is close at hand. Then shall the martyrs be avenged, and this universal crime be punished.
THE LAST DAYS BEFORE THE SIEGE.
PART II.
EXCELSIOR!
“Great news! Extra! Three sous!” The newsvender, a ragged little urchin who nearly collapsed under the weight and volume of his extras, was shouting out these three startling facts at the top of his voice as I went out early in the morning. Two rheumatic old rag-women, immediately suspending their investigation of the dust-heaps, dropped their crooks, and cried out to him to know the news. Was it a victory or a defeat, or was it anything about the siege? But the urchin, as hard-hearted as any editor, waved the momentous sheet majestically with one hand, and answered, “Three sous!” To the renewed entreaties of the rag-women he condescended so far as to say that it was well worth the money, that they never spent three sous more advantageously, for the news was wonderful news, but for less than three sous they should not have it. I did not altogether believe either in the extra or in the wonderful news, but the newspaper fever was on me like the rest of the world, so I produced the inexorable three sous and took the paper. The moment the two women saw this they came up to me, and, evidently taking for granted that I was going to give them the benefit of my extravagance, stood to hear the news. I read it aloud for them, as well as to a milk-boy who was passing at the moment and stood also to get his share of the three sous, and a remarkably sympathetic audience the three made. The news was none of the best. The Prussians were at Chalons, and they might be at the gates of Paris before another week.
“That was MacMahon’s plan from the first,” observed the milk-boy, “and, if the Prussians fall into the trap, the game is ours.”
The rag-women, not being so well up in military tactics and technicalities, meekly begged to be enlightened as to the nature and aim of the trap in question, and the young politician was so kind as to explain to them that the marshal had all along been luring on the Prussians to Paris, which was to be their pitfall; Mont Valérien and the fortifications would annihilate them like flies; not a man of them would go back alive; the only fear was that that rascally Bismarck would be too many guns for the marshal, and make him fight before Chalons, in which case, he observed, “it was all up with the marshal, and consequently with France.”
Having delivered himself of this masterly exposition of the case, the milk-boy swung his cans, touched his cap to me, and, having achieved the most preternaturally knowing wink I ever beheld, strode off without waiting to see the effect of his words on the two old women. They looked after him aghast. Had they been talking to a confidential agent of the War Office, or to an emissary of the rascally Bismarck himself? A spy, in fact?
“One ought to have one’s mouth sewed up these times,” observed the more ancient of the beldames, casting a half-suspicious glance at me as I folded my newspaper and put it into my pocket. “One never knows whom one may be speaking to.”
This remark was too deep and too fearfully suggestive to admit of any commentary from her companion; the only thing to be done in such a crisis was to take refuge in professional pursuits that offered no ground for suspicion, so seizing her crook the rag-woman plunged prudently once more into her rubbish.
A little further on, turning the corner of a street, I came on two gentlemen whom I knew, standing in animated conversation. I stopped to ask what news? None, except that the horizon was growing darker from hour to hour. The despatches from the frontier were as bad as could well be. As to pooh-poohing the siege now it was sheer stupidity, one of them declared, and, for his part, he only wished it were already begun: it was the last chance left us of rejecting the disasters of the campaign and crushing the remains of the enemy. His companion indignantly scouted both the certainty of the siege and the desirability of it. The city was not to be trusted; no great city ever was; there were hundreds of traitors only too ready to open the gates to the enemy at his own price. Look at the proprietors! Did any one suppose there were fifty proprietors in Paris who would not cry Capitulons! before one week was out?
“Well, let the proprietors be taken down to their own cellars, and kept there under lock and key, and let them sit on their money-bags till the siege is over!” suggested the advocate of the siege.
“Then you must lock up half the National Guard and the Mobiles,” resumed the other, “for they are full of those money-loving traitors.”
This was not very reassuring. I kept repeating to myself that public opinion at a moment like this was always an alarmist, and that the wisest plan would be to read no papers and to consult nobody, but just wait till events resolved themselves, as they infallibly do, sooner or later, to those who have patience to wait for them, and then act as they decided; but it was no use. I went home in dire perplexity, and began to wish myself in Timbuctoo or the Fiji Islands, or anywhere out of the centre of civilization and the fashions and chronic alarm and discontent. Things went on in this way for another week, the tide advancing rapidly, but so gradually that it was difficult for those on shore to note its progress and be guided by it. No one would own to being frightened, but it was impossible to see the scared faces of the people, as they stood in groups before every new placard setting forth either a fresh order from the Hôtel de Ville or some dubious and disheartening despatch from the seat of war, without feeling that the panic was upon them, and that the complicated problems of the great national struggle had resolved themselves into the immediate question: Shall we stay, or must we fly? When you met a friend in the street, the first, the sole, the supreme salutation was: “Do you believe in the siege? Are you going to stay?” The obduracy of the Parisians in refusing to believe in the siege up to the very last moment was certainly one of the strangest phases of the siege itself. They were possessed by a blind faith in the sacredness and inviolability of their capital, and they could not bring themselves to believe that all Europe did not look upon it with the same eyes; they thought that Prussia might indeed push audacity so far as to come and sit down before the gates, but beyond that Bismarck would not go; he would not dare; all Europe would stand up and cry shame on him, not out of sympathy for France, but out of sheer selfishness, for Paris was not the capital of France, but of Europe. So the walls were white with proclamations and advertisements and invitations to non-combatants to withdraw, and practical advice to the patriotic citizens whose glorious duty it was soon to be to defend the city; and the great exodus of the so-called poltroons and strangers had begun to pour out, and the much more inconvenient sort of non-combatants, the homeless population of the neighboring villages, poured in—a sorry sight it was to see the poor little ménages, the husband trundling the few sticks of furniture on a hand-cart, with the household cat perched on the top of the pile, while the wife carried a baby and bundle, and a little one trotted on by her side, carrying the canary bird in its painted cage—and still the real, born Parisian said in the bottom of his heart: “It will never come to a siege, they will never dare; England will interfere, Europe will not allow it.”
On the morning of the third of September I went out to make some purchases on the Boulevards. Coming back, I saw the Madeleine draped in black, and a number of mourning-coaches drawn up in ghastly array on the Place. The solemn cortége was descending the last steps. I stood to let it pass, and then cast a glance round to see if there was any one I knew in the crowd. To my surprise I saw Berthe in the midst of a group of several persons who had broken away from the stream, and were standing apart in the space inside the rails; she was talking very emphatically, and the others were listening to her apparently with great interest, and seemed excited by whatever she was telling them. When the crowd had nearly cleared away, I beckoned to her. She ran out to me at once.
“You are the very person I wanted to see,” she said, clutching me by the arm in her vehement way. “I was going straight to your house. I have just been to the Etat Major, and met General Trochu there. He came down on account of despatches that had just come in, and have put them all in a state of terrible consternation. There is not a doubt of it now; the city will be blockaded in ten days from this. The Prussians are within as many days’ march from us. I thought of you immediately, and I asked the general what you ought to do; he said by all means to go, and within forty-eight hours; after that the rails may be cut from one moment to another; he was very emphatic about it, and said it would be the maddest imprudence of you to remain; there is a terrible time before us, and no one should stay in Paris who could leave. Of course, you will leave at once.”
I was too much taken aback to say what I would do. The news was so bewildering. I had never looked upon the siege as the impossible joke it had been so long considered, neither did I share the infatuation of the Parisians about the inviolability of Paris in the eyes of Europe, and for the last fortnight we had come to expect the siege as almost a certainty, that was now only a question of time, and yet we were as much startled by this cool official announcement of it as if the thing had never been seriously mentioned before.
“I don’t know what I will do,” I said; “if we had nerves equal to it, it would be the most fearfully interesting experience to go through.”
“No doubt,” assented Berthe; “but it is an experience that will tax the strongest nerves; of that you may be sure; and unless one has duties to keep one here, I think it would be mad imprudence, as the general said, to run the risk.”
“You mean to leave, of course?” I said.
“No; I mean to stay. I am pretty sure of my nerves; besides, as a Frenchwoman, I have a duty to perform; I must bear my share of the common danger; it would be cowardly to fly; but with you it is different. I don’t think you would be justified in remaining for the interest of the thing. Only if you mean to go, you must set about it at once. Have you got your passport?”
“No; I had not gone that far in believing in the siege.”
“It was very foolish,” said Berthe; “all the foreigners we know have got theirs.”
“I will go for it now,” I said. “Come on with me, and let us talk it all over. Are you on foot?”
“No; but I shall be glad of the walk home; I will send away the carriage.”
She did so, and we went on together.
“It is like death,” I said; “no matter how long one is expecting it, it comes like a blow at the last; I can hardly realize even now that the siege is so near. Why, it was only the other day we were listening to those people joking about it all!”
“It was a sorry joke,” said Berthe; “but that is always the way with us; we go on joking to the end. I believe a Frenchman would joke in his coffin if he could speak.”
“And you really mean to stay, Berthe?”
“I do. I shall be of some use, I hope; at any rate, I will try my best. But we can talk of that presently. First about you; are you decided?”
“I cannot say; I feel bewildered,” I replied. “I long to stay, and yet I fear it; it is not the horrors of the siege that would deter me, at least I don’t think it is that; it is the dread of being taken up as a spy.”
She burst out into one of her loud, merry laughs.
“What a ridiculous idea! Why on earth should you be taken for a spy?”
“There is no why or wherefore in the case,” I said, “that is just the alarming part of it; the people are simply mad on the point; they have barked themselves rabid about it, and they are ready to bite every one that comes in their way. Twice on my way into town this morning I heard a hue and cry raised somewhere near, and when I asked what was the matter, a mad dog, or a house on fire, the answer was, ‘Oh, no; it’s an espion they’ve started, and he’s giving them chase!’ One man said to me, half in joke, half in earnest: ‘Madame would do well to hide her fair hair under a wig; it’s dangerous to wear fair hair these times.’ I own it made me feel a little uncomfortable.”
“Well, that is not very comforting for me,” said Berthe, laughing, “my hair is blond enough to excite suspicion.”
“Oh! your nationality is written on your face,” I said; “there is no fear of you ever being mistaken for anything but a Frenchwoman.”
On arriving at the Embassy, we found a throng of British subjects waiting for their passports, and considerably surprised at being kept waiting, and expressing their surprise in no measured terms. Surely they paid dear enough for the maintenance of their embassies abroad to be entitled to prompt and proper attendance when once in a way they called on their representatives for a service of this kind! The attachés were so overworked that it was impossible to avoid the delay? Then why were there not special attachés put on for the extra press of work? And so on. Some nervous old couples were anxious to have the benefit of his excellency’s personal opinion as to the prudence of leaving their plate behind them, and, if he really thought there was a risk in so doing, would he be so kind as to suggest the safest mode of conveying it to London? Also, whether it was quite prudent to leave their money in the Bank of France and other French securities, or whether it would be advisable to withdraw it at once at a loss? Also, whether it would be a wise precaution to hang the Union Jack out of the window, those who had furnished apartments in Paris, or whether the present state of feeling between England and France was such as to make such a step rather dangerous than otherwise? It was not for outsiders to know how things stood between the two countries so as to be able to guide their course in the present crisis, but his excellency being a diplomatist was well informed on the subject, and they would rely implicitly on his judgment and advice, etc.
Berthe and I were so highly entertained by the naïve egotism and infantine stupidity displayed by the various specimens of British nature around us, that we did not find it in our hearts to grumble at being kept waiting nearly two hours.
On reaching the Rond Point of the Champs Elysées, our curiosity was attracted by a silent, scared-looking crowd collected on the sidewalk in front of the Hôtel Meyerbeer. The blinds of the house were closed as if there were a death within, and a few sergents-de-ville were standing at intervals with arms crossed, staring up at the windows. The owner of the hotel had been arrested with great noise the night before, on the strength of some foolish words which had escaped him about the possible entry of the Germans into Paris; but we neither of us knew anything of this, and I asked the nearest sergeant if anything had happened. The man turned round, and, without uncrossing his arms, bent two piercing eyes upon me—piercing is not a figure of speech, they literally stabbed us through like a pair of blades—and, after taking a deliberate view of my person from head to foot, he growled out: “Yes, something has happened. A spy has been found!” There was something so diabolical in the tone of his voice and his expression that it terrified me, and I suppose my terror got into my face and gave it a guilty hue, for another sergent-de-ville who had turned round on hearing his colleague speak, strode up to me, and said nothing, but drove another pair of eyes into me with fierce suspicion. The crowd, attracted by the incident, turned round and stared at me, and I felt as if I had that morning posted a despatch to Bismarck or Bismarck’s master betraying every state secret in France. Despair, however, that makes cowards brave, came to my rescue, and, putting a bold face on it, I said, with extraordinary pluck and coolness:
“Has he been arrested?”
“He has.”
“Ah, it is well!” I observed. And in abject fear of being pounced upon there and then, and done equally well by, I walked away.
When we had got to a safe distance, I looked at Berthe. She was as white as ashes. Indeed, if I looked half as guilty, it is nothing short of a miracle that we were not both seized on the spot and carried off to the Préfecture de Police.
“Let this be a lesson to us never to speak to any one in the street while things are in this state,” said Berthe. “Indeed, the safest way would be not to speak at all, especially in a foreign language, for whatever they don’t understand they set down as German, and to be a German is of course to be a spy.”
After this we walked on in silence. Evidently Berthe no longer looked on my fears as chimerical or matter for laughter, and, puerile as the incident was, I believe it put an end to my hesitation, and decided me to leave Paris with as little delay as possible. She had not realized as much as I had, but the spy-fever had spread so alarmingly within the last few days that what had first been merely a recurring panic was now a fixed idea that had grown to insanity. You might read suspicion and fear written on the faces of the people as you went along. They walked in twos and threes without speaking, glancing timidly on every side, and trying to carry it off with an air of indifference or preoccupation. Every one was in mortal fear of being pointed at and hooted off to the nearest poste. No nationality was safe. A few Englishmen who had fallen victims to the popular mania, and been subjected to a night’s hospitality at the expense of the government, had published their experiences, and described the sort of entertainment prepared for casual visitors, and it was anything but enticing: a salle crammed full of every kind and degree of sinner, from the imaginary spy whipped up on the pavement without proof or witness, to the lowest vagrants of the worst character, all put in for the same offence, and huddled up together without a chair to sit on or air to breathe. Those who were lucky enough to be set free after a short term of durance vile were warmly congratulated by their friends, and retired into private life without further éclat. Some English subjects were simple enough to venture a protest against the unceremonious proceeding on the part of the police, and were politely reminded that the gates of the city were still open and trains ready to convey them to many places of more agreeable manners where the sacred person of a British subject ran no risk of being mistaken for a common mortal, but that, while they choose to remain within the gates, they must take the consequences. And this was, after all, the best answer they could make, and it behooved all sensible British subjects to abide by it. I parted from Berthe at the corner of her own street, and went home to pack up and start the next day by the twelve o’clock train.
I stopped on my way to the station to take leave of her. It was near eleven o’clock. Contrary to my expectations, I found her up and dressed, instead of lolling in dishabille on her couch. But this was not the only surprise awaiting me. The whole appearance of the house was changed. The portières and curtains were taken down; the two salons were emptied of their furniture, and four iron beds placed in the large one and two in the small one. A young woman was busy cutting out bandages with a great basket of linen beside her in Berthe’s room—that soft, Sybarite room, so unused to such company and such occupation. Her face was concealed by a broad-frilled Vendean cap, but on hearing us enter she turned round, and I recognized the bride-widow of the Bréton volunteer.
“We are going to work very hard together,” said Berthe, putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Jeannette is to teach me to make poultices, and to dress wounds, and to do all kinds of useful things that one wants to know how to do for the wounded. She is quite an adept in the service, it seems, so I hope our little ambulance will be well managed and comfortable for the dear soldiers.”
Jeannette’s eyes filled with tears, and she took Berthe’s hand and kissed it. Just at this moment François came in to say there were some Sœurs de Charité who wanted to speak to madame. Berthe and Jeannette went out to meet them, and as they left the room Antoinette came in through the dressing-room. She threw up her arms when she perceived me, and looked toward the salon with blank despair in her face.
“The world is upside down,” she said, “everything is going topsy-turvy; what between the war, and the siege, and the rest of it, one doesn’t know what to expect next; but of all the queer things going, the queerest is what is happening in this house. To think of le salon de la comtesse being turned into a hospital! That I should live to see such things! Madame does well to go away; people are all going crazy in this country, and they say it’s catching.”
“So it is, Antoinette,” I said, “and the best thing I can wish you is that you may catch it yourself.”
Berthe wanted to come with me to the station, but I would not let her. I preferred to carry away my last impression of her as I saw her now. She was dressed in a plain dark silk, with a white apron before her, and a soft cambric handkerchief tied loosely round her head; the quaint, half-nunlike dress seemed to me to become her more than the most artistic of M. Grandhomme’s combinations, and as I watched her going from room to room with a duster in her hand, changing the chairs and tables, and working as deftly as an accomplished housemaid, her face flushed with the exercise and bright with a new-found joy, I thought I had never seen her look so beautiful. So we parted in that blue chamber that was henceforth to have a new memory of its own to both of us. Before I had started from my own house, the news of Sedan had come in, and spread like wild-fire. All that I had previously witnessed of popular excitement was cold and calm compared with what I beheld on my way to the station. The city was like a galvanized nightmare, electrifying and electrified into hubbub and madness. Rage and despair were riding the whirlwind with suspicion tied like a bandage on their eyes. The cry of Treason! out-topped all other cries; every man suspected his brother and accused him; the air was filled with curses and threats, and there was no voice strong enough to rise above the popular tumult and subdue it. If there had been, what might not have come of it? If at that moment there had been a voice loud enough to speak to the hurricane, and compel those millions of tongues to be silent and listen to the truth, and then gather them into one great voice that would lift itself up in a unit of harmony and power that would have been heard, not only to the ends of Paris, but to the ends of France, What might not have been done? what might not have been saved? But it was not to be. Nothing came of the discord but discord. The strong hand that might even then have welded all these suicidal elements of hate, and fury, and suspicion into a vigorous bond of action was not forthcoming; the strife was to go on to the bitter end, till the soil of fair France was drenched with blood, and all her energies spent, and her youth and chivalry laid low in bootless butchery.
The blocks that stopped our progress in every street made it a difficult matter to get to the railway, and when we eventually did get there we were a quarter of an hour behind our time. But, as it happened, this was of no consequence; we had to wait another hour before the train started. Meantime the confusion was indescribable. Several wagons full of wounded had arrived by the last train, and a regiment of the line was waiting to start by the next. The Place was filled with soldiers, some were lying at full length fast asleep under the hot noon sun, others were smoking and chatting near their arms that were stacked here and there; some of the poor fellows had been out before, and were only just recovering from their wounds; they looked worn and weak as if hardly able to bear themselves; women were clinging to them, weeping and lamenting; inside the station, travellers were rushing frantically from bureau to bureau; then in despair at ever getting through the crowd that besieged every wicket, they would seize some unlucky porter with a band on his hat, and implore him in heart-rending tones to help them to a ticket, and, when he protested that such a service was not in his power they would belabor him vindictively with hard words, and make another rush at the bureau.
At last we were off. It was an exciting journey, such as I hope never to make again. The lines were encumbered with trains full of wounded coming and troops going, and our pace was regulated with a view to avoid running into those ahead or being run into by those behind. Now we darted on at a terrific speed, the engine wriggling from rail to rail like a snake gone mad; then we would pull up spasmodically and crawl almost at a foot-pace, then off we flew again like a telegram. Trains flashed past us on either side every now and then with a tremendous roar, and soldiers sang out snatches of war-songs, and we cheered them and waved hands and handkerchiefs to them in return. We had started an hour and a quarter behind our time, and we arrived three hours after we were due. For two hours before we reached Boulogne, the danger lights were flashing ahead, red and lurid in the darkness, and it was with something like the feeling of being rescued from a house on fire that we set foot at last on the platform. Once in safety, I was able to look back more calmly on the history of the last fortnight. It seemed to me that I had been standing on a rock, watching the tide roll in, creeping gradually higher and nearer to my standpoint till I felt the cold touch of the water on my feet, and leaped ashore.
And Berthe? She stood out like a bright star transfiguring the dense darkness of the picture. The change I had witnessed in her appeared to me like the promise of other changes, wider, deeper, universal. I had ceased to wonder at the choice she had made; the more I thought of it, the more I felt that she was worthy of it as it was of her, and the only wish I could form for her now was, that she might be strong to persevere unto the end. The course she had adopted was the noblest and the only true one for a Frenchwoman while France was suffering, and struggling, and bleeding to death. While the war-cry and the battle psalm were clanging around, it was not meant for the women of France to sit idly in luxurious ease, and watch the death-struggle of the nation in indifference or mere passive sympathy. We may none of us stand aloof from our brethren in such a crisis, or take refuge in cowardly neutrality. Neutrality in the brotherhood of Freedom is desertion, treachery. We have each our appointed post in the battle, and we cannot desert it without being traitors. We must all fight somehow. Not of necessity with iron or steel, but we must fight. Moses had neither bow nor arrow nor javelin when he got up on the mountain and watched with uplifted arms the conflict in the valley below, but yet he was not neutral. So to the end of time it must be with all of us. We must fight somehow; we may never abide in selfish peace or a sense of isolated security while the brethren around are at war; whithersoever the battle goes, to victory or defeat, to glory or humiliation, we must take our share in it, and let our hearts go on fighting faithfully to the end. We must love the combatants through good and evil alike; through the smoke and din we must discern every ennobling incident of the struggle, such as there abounds on every battle-field in every land, seeing all things in their true proportions, shutting our hearts inexorably to despair, making them wide to endless sympathy with the good, to inexhaustible pity for the wicked. The smoke must not blind us; the crash and the roar must not deafen us; through the agony of souls, despair, and hate, and sin, we must have our vision clear and strong to recognize the loveliness of virtue, the divine beauty of sacrifice, the infinite possibilities of repentance, the joy of the conquerors, the sweetness of the kiss of peace. Loving all love. Hating all hate. We must see angels outnumbering fiends in incalculable degree, light triumphing over darkness, and the breath of purity healing the blue corruption of the world.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE CLERKE OF OXENFORDE.
At his beddes hed
Twenty bokes clothed in blake or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, fidel or sautrie,
For al be that he was a philosopher
Yet hadde he but litel gold in coffer,
And all that he might of his frendes hente
On bokes and on learning he it spente,
And besily gan for the soules praie
Of them that gave him wherewith to scholaie.
—Chaucer.
[A BAD BEGINNING FOR A SAINT;]
OR, THE EARLY LIFE OF FATHER CHAUMONOT, A CELEBRATED MISSIONARY IN CANADA.
Lives of saints are somewhat discouraging reading at times to poor mortals, who feel that they have a good deal of human nature in them, and that somehow human nature is more disposed to play the part of mistress than of handmaiden to grace.
These holy souls seem from the cradle so innocent, so faithful, that they appear a higher creation than ourselves, and accordingly it is no less consoling than encouraging at times to find early shortcomings overcome by a tardy fidelity to grace, and sanctity attained.
In the early annals of Canada, there are few names more revered than that of Father Peter Mary Joseph Chaumonot, whose impassioned eloquence gathered round him at Onondaga the braves and sachems of the Iroquois, wondering to hear their unlabial language flow so smoothly from the lips of a white man—who founded at Montreal the Society of the Holy Family, which has been such a potent instrument in maintaining in Canadian homes the true family spirit of Catholicity and devotion—and who founded near Quebec a new Loretto in this Western world for the Huron Indians, whom he so long directed and guided, after he saw himself deprived of the martyr’s crown which so many of his fellow-laborers won near the shores of Lake Huron.
Yet good Father Chaumonot, we are sorry to say, began life as a young scamp; and to encourage those who sometimes despair of mauvais sujets whom Providence has placed under their charge, we will give the story of his early years in Chaumonot’s own inimitable language. Late in life, by command of his superiors, he wrote an autobiographical account, and from it we extract:
“For my father I had a poor vine-dresser and for mother a poor schoolmaster’s daughter. At the age of six, they placed me with my grandfather, five or six leagues from our village, that I might learn to read and write. They then took me home, but only for a short time, one of my uncles, a priest residing at Châtillon-sur-Seine, having had the kindness to take me to his house, so that I might study in the college in that place.
“When I had made some progress in Latin, my uncle wished me to learn plain chant, under one of my class who was a musician. This fellow persuaded me to leave Châtillon and follow him to Beaune, where we were to study under the Fathers of the Oratory. As I did not wish to undertake this journey without funds, I stole about a hundred sous from my uncle while he was in the church. With this we took flight.
“We travelled by by-ways to Dijon, whence we made our way to Beaune. There we put up with a townsman, but as my finances were short, I wrote to ask my mother to have the goodness to supply me with money and clothes, so that I might pursue my studies at Beaune, where I hoped to make more rapid progress than at Châtillon. The letter fell into my father’s hands, and he answered me that he would send me nothing; that I must return; and that he would make peace with my uncle for me.
“This reply filled me with dismay. To return to my uncle was to expose myself to be pointed at as a thief, and yet to stay any longer at Beaune was out of the question. So I resolved to run around the world as a vagabond, rather than bear the shame my rascality deserved. I started from Beaune with the intention of going to Rome, though I had not a sou or a change. I travelled alone for half a day; then I fell in with two young men of Lorraine, who saluted me and asked me whither I was going. “To Rome,” quoth I, “to gain the pardons.” They applauded my design, and entertained me with the object of their own journey to Lyons.
“Meanwhile I was thinking what was to become of me, and what I was to live on, if I continued my journey. Begging was in my ideas too degrading, I could not bring myself to work for my living, and there was little chance of my doing it, for I was unaccustomed to labor and knew no trade. Fortunately, my two Lorrainers, who were no better stocked with money than I was, began to beg from door to door in the first town we came to. Who was dumfounded to see them ply this trade? Myself, who, after some deliberation, concluded to imitate them rather than starve, so powerfully had their example made easy what had previously appeared impossible. Such was my apprenticeship as a beggar, but as I was only a beginner at the trade, I gained but a wretched livelihood. However, I flattered myself that on reaching a city so large as Lyons, some good fortune would turn up. But, alas! I was astonished to find myself arrested by the sentinels, who let my companions pass on account of their passports, and detained me because I had none.
“I did not know what was to become of me, or even where I was to get shelter. I saw many large buildings, but I durst not ask the least corner there to pass the night in. At last, spying a wretched shed opposite a glass furnace, I crept under it. Would to heaven I had then had sense enough to take my sufferings as an expiation of my sins, and united my poverty to that of my Saviour lying in a stable!
“Next morning, seeing at the river-side a boat where people were embarking to cross the Rhone, I begged the boatman to give me a passage out of charity. This he did, because in fact the city paid him to carry beyond the river all the beggars who were refused entrance into the city.
“When I got to the other side, I met a young man who promised to make the tour to Italy with me.
“We had just started off together when we met a priest returning from Rome. He did his best to persuade us to forego our projected pilgrimage and return home. Among other reasons, he told us that our want of passports would prevent our getting entrance into any city on our way. I asked him whether he had one, and he had no sooner shown it to me than I begged him to allow me to make a copy of it, which I did on the spot, inserting my own name and my companion’s instead of his.
“Oh! why did I not then offer to God the hardships of nakedness, fatigue, heat, cold, and the thousand other miseries I suffered on that journey! I should have had the happiness of drawing down upon me the blessings of heaven. Our common Father would not have refused them to me, beholding in me some traits of the poverty and sufferings of his Son, but alas! my pride and other sins, which rendered me more like the devil than I was to our Lord by my poverty, were great obstacles to grace in me. Yet, O my God! thou hadst thy views in permitting me to commit fault on fault, folly on folly! Thou didst deign to set me free from all inordinate love to my parents, which, had I remained always with them, would have prevented my consecrating myself entirely to thee. Thou didst design that when I grew up the remembrance of my trials should make me sympathize with more love and gratitude in the sufferings of thy Son.
“But I should be tedious were I to recount all the faults I committed, and all the miseries that befel me on my way. I shall give only the principal adventures.
“The first that occurs to my mind is that, when in Savoy, I entered the court of our college at Chambéry, where I asked in Latin for alms. One of the fathers was so touched at my wretched state that he gave me supper, and even promised to take me back to Lyons, whither he was about to go, and send me from that point to Châtillon. At first I thanked him as well as I could, and promised to follow him, but as soon as he left me I took flight, my money always terrifying me from the thought of returning to my parents. Was I not out of my senses, and did I not well deserve all the evils that befel me, when I refused such kind offers for my own quiet, and the comfort of my poor family? How deplorable was the blindness of my proud spirit, to choose to face countless dangers and hardships, rather than undergo a wholesome reprimand!
“In a village in Savoy we met a good parish priest, who took us to his house, and, after giving us supper, allowed us to sleep on the bed of his servant, whom he had sent to Chambéry. This gentleman slept in a room over his valet’s, which was entered by a ladder, at the top of which was a trap-door, which our host neglected to close properly, so that about midnight a cat pursuing her prey threw it down. The noise was sufficient to awake the priest, who imagined that we were trying to enter his room for no good purpose. So he jumped out of bed and, attired as he was, rushed out on a balcony, crying Murder! murder! murder! at the top of his voice. No less alarmed, I ran up the ladder and reassured him by explaining the innocent cause of all the trouble. Fortunately for us, the neighbors were not awakened by their pastor’s voice.
“Here is another adventure where we ran greater risk. In a town in the Valteline we found a French garrison reduced to a very small number of soldiers, so that the officers urged us strongly to enlist. I would have consented to get my bread every day in this manner, in the hunger I suffered, but my wiser comrade would hear nothing of it. All they got from us was our consent to await the arrival of the commissary, who was daily expected. They led us to hope that we should receive the same pay as real soldiers. Meanwhile, they wished to see what figure we would cut on parade. It was easy enough to travesty into a soldier my comrade, who was a big fellow; but as I appeared a mere boy, from my youth and small body, there was some difficulty in finding a sword to suit me. That which they judged best suited to my size had an eel or snake skin scabbard, and for want of belt or baldric they tied it around with an ass’ halter. I appeared so ridiculous in this that they resolved to put me to bed as sick when the commissary came. While awaiting that event, we lived on the king’s bread, and my comrade was in a constant shiver lest we should be regarded as interlopers or be detained there in spite of ourselves. He made the danger out so great that I yielded to his urging. Bent on pursuing our pilgrimage to Rome, we started one fine morning, but had not travelled more than a mile and a half when we were arrested by some soldiers, who had orders to seize all deserters they found and take them back to their officers. ‘Alas!’ I cried with tears, ‘have I the look of a military man? I am a poor student, who has taken a vow to go to Rome.’ So pathetic was my accent that it touched them, and they let us go. If God had not given them compassion for us, what would have become of us? He saved us from another danger after we had entered Italy.
“Towards nightfall we reached a hostelry by the roadside, where we proposed to sleep, but we counted without our host. We had scarcely eaten our wretched supper, which he made us pay for as dearly as he wished, when, in spite of all our demands that he would at least give us shelter in one of his stables, he barbarously drove us out. It would not have been so bad could we have slept by the light of the stars, but there were none, and the weather, which was overcast, soon poured down on us a drenching rain. Our clothes were all soaked, and, to cap the climax, the road was full of holes and ditches that we did not see, so that we made almost as many tumbles as steps.
“We were well-nigh used up when a gleam of light enabled us to make out a stable. As we crawled towards it, we found a great stack of straw quite near it. We climbed up on it and made a hole in the top to creep in. As we were chilled through, especially our feet, we put them under each other’s arm-pits, lying so that my head was opposite my companion’s. We were just beginning to get warm when some large dogs, scenting us, came running up barking furiously. At this noise the people ran out of the farm-house and tried to drive us off with stones. This new kind of hail did not suffer us to remain in our quarters, and fear of the dogs prevented our leaving them. I then thought it high time to speak, and my skill in getting up tears served my turn here as it had already done in getting us off when arrested as deserters. So I began to shout out in Latin: Nos sumus pauperes peregrini. As the last word is Italian also, it informed these good people who we were. They took pity on us, called off their dogs, and left us to pass the rest of the night in peace.
“After many hardships and sufferings we reached Ancona. Alas! who can express the wretched condition to which my vagabond life had reduced me! From head to foot, everything about me inspired horror. I was barefooted, having been obliged to throw away my shoes, which were broken and galled me. My shirt was rotting, my tattered clothes swarmed with vermin, my uncombed head was filled with so horrible a disease that it swarmed with worms and matter of most loathsome stench.... It was only at Ancona that I was aware of the extent of this disease, when on scratching it I found a worm on my hand. At the sight of this my consternation was unspeakable. ‘Must I, then,’ I said to myself, ‘in punishment of my villanies, be eaten alive by worms and vermin? I no longer wonder that when I take off my hat before people, they show wonder and horror at the sight. What is to become of me? Am I not a sickening sight to all the world? O sad chastisement of my pride!’
“After all, I resumed courage as I approached the Holy House of Loretto. Perhaps the Blessed Virgin, who performs so many miracles in this sacred spot in favor of the wretched, will take pity on my misery! Ah! why had I not then the knowledge I subsequently acquired of the wonders wrought by her in that sanctuary in favor of soul and body? I should have had a far different confidence in her power and goodness!
“Although I invoked her coldly enough, she showed me that, independently of our merit and disposition, she is pleased to exercise towards us the duties of a real mother; and as one of these duties is to see to the cleanliness of their children, thou didst regard me in that light, O Blessed Virgin! unworthy as I was and am to be adopted by thee as thy son. Thou didst inspire a young man whom I was never able to discover with the will and power to heal my head. Thou knowest better than I how it was accomplished. Yet I will not omit in token of gratitude to set down what I know.
“On leaving the Holy House of Mary, an unknown person, who seemed to be a young man and who was perhaps an angel, said to me with an air and tone of pity: ‘My dear boy, what a wretched head you have! Come, follow me, I will try to apply some remedy.’ I followed him: he took me outside the church, behind a large pillar, where no one passed. Having reached this retired spot, he made me sit down, and bade me remove my hat. I obeyed. He cut off all my hair with scissors, rubbed my poor head with a white cloth, and, without my feeling any pain, entirely removed all trace of the disease and its hideous accompaniments. He then put my hat on again. I thanked him for his charity; he left me, and I am yet to see a better physician or experience a more wretched disease.
“If the least lady had done me this service by her lowest valet, should I not render her all possible thanks? And if, after such a charity, she had offered always to serve me in the same way, how should I not feel bound to honor, obey, and love her all my life! Pardon, Queen of angels and of men! pardon me, that after receiving from thee so many marks convincing me that thou hast adopted me as thy son, I have been so ungrateful as for whole years to act more as a slave of Satan than the child of a Virgin Mother. Oh! how good and charitable art thou, since, in spite of the obstacles my sins have raised to thy graces, thou hast never ceased to draw me towards good; till thou hast caused me to be admitted into the holy Society of Jesus, thy Son.
“My comrade and I resumed the road to Rome, after spending three days at Loretto; but God stopped me at Terni, in Umbria, to change my beggar life for a place as valet. I was begging from door to door as usual, when a venerable old man, a doctor of laws, invited me to stay with him to attend him in the house and accompany him to town. I was so weary of my beggar’s trade that I readily accepted the citizen’s offer to become his lackey; I even did the lowest tasks, for there was nothing that did not seem sweet and honorable compared to the hardships and humiliations which had made me loathe my mendicant life.
“I had been some time at Terni, but as I had not picked up enough Italian to confess in that language, I made my confession in Latin to a father of the Society of Jesus. After my confession, he questioned me as to my studies. I told him that I was in rhetoric when I allowed myself to be led astray. He manifested the regret he felt to see me reduced to so low a condition after starting so well in my education. He urged me to resume my studies; and to facilitate this he proposed, if I chose, to have me received into the college, where I would advance in science and virtue. I took his proposal ill, imagining he wished to make a Jesuit of me; but in the sequel I had every reason to believe that this wise religious merely wished to give me at first the place of a young secular who taught the lowest class in the college. Would to God I had then commenced to do so! How many sins I should have avoided! I did indeed go two days after to see the father and remind him of it, but as I did not know his name, I was stupid enough to ask for ‘the father who heard my confession.’ The scholars in the college yard to whom I put this question roared at my folly, and that was enough to send me back quicker than I came. However, I asked the doctor whom I served what kind of people the Jesuits were. He answered me carelessly that they received only persons of rank and talent, that their order was less austere than others, and that you could leave it even after taking the vows. These last traits with which he described them did not displease me. I would willingly have entered among them for a time. I was not yet fit for the kingdom of God, as I looked behind me before putting my hand to the plough.
“As I began to understand Italian, I read devotional books in that language, and among the rest one, The Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, inspired me with the desire of becoming a hermit. Thereupon, without consulting any one, I left my master’s house with the view of going to bury myself in some wilderness in France after I had visited Rome.
“As I left the city I met my doctor’s daughter, and explained my intention to her, so that they should not be alarmed at my sudden disappearance. After I had travelled a few leagues, I thought I would try whether I could live on herbs like the anchorites. I took some growing wheat, put it in my mouth, chewed it, but could not swallow it, so I fell back on my trade of beggar, which did not prevent my suffering considerably from hunger, even in Rome, for I did not know the religious houses where alms were given at stated days and hours. The novitiate of the Jesuits at St. Andrew’s is one of these charitable places, and the only one I knew. Although my would-be vocation to the eremitical life was somewhat shaken, I started from Rome intending to return to France. Retracing the same road I came by, I reached Terni, but not daring to return to my master, I retired to a soap-maker of my acquaintance, where I spent the night. The next morning he told the doctor, who was good enough to invite me back to his service. I at once accepted his offer, renouncing for ever beggary, for which I had now a greater horror than ever.
“My good master had an intimate friend called Il Signore Capitone, who some time after my return to Terni told my doctor that he would like to have me at his house as tutor to his two sons, who were studying at the college of the Society of Jesus. My master consented, and, after speaking to me, sent me to his friend. I was received with open arms, and presented the next day to our fathers, who put me in rhetoric. I was not long studying under them without feeling stimulated to imitate the virtues which I admired in these worthy servants of God. One thing prevented openness with my confessor, and it was that I could not bring myself to acknowledge my low birth, for up to this time I had boasted that my father was a procureur du roi (district attorney), and I was ashamed to unsay it or keep on saying it. Several months rolled on in this combat of nature and grace, the latter pressing me to declare my vocation, the former preventing it. However, God, wishing me to be received into the Society, prepared the occasion.
“A young ecclesiastic paid by the fathers taught one of the lower classes, but, getting tired of it, asked to be relieved. They cast their eyes on me, and promised me the same salary. The gentleman with whom I dwelt consenting, I became regent or teacher. God gave me grace to economize my earnings, and when I had a pretty good sum I divided it between the churches and the poor. I even tried to imitate at least in something the great St. Nicholas, by throwing some money one night into a house where there was a girl in want.
“Our Lord rewarded me well for these liberalities by the great grace he did me by calling me strongly to the religious state. One day among others, while they were celebrating in the church the feast of Blessed Francis Borgia, not then canonized, I was so touched by the sermon of the Jesuit father that, to follow as far as I could the example of the blessed Francis, I made a vow to leave the world and enter religion either among the Jesuits, if they were willing to receive me, or, in case they deemed me unworthy of that favor, among the Capuchins or Recollects.”
We will not follow his account of some interior struggles that followed. When the provincial of the order arrived at Terni, the accounts given were so favorable that Chaumonot was received and sent with good letters to the novitiate of St. Andrew’s at Rome. “I was twenty-one years old,” says he, “when I entered the novitiate May 18, 1632.” But he did not finish it there. A nobleman had founded a novitiate at Florence, and young Chaumonot with others was sent there six months after his entrance. The master of novices here, less austere than his former one, encouraged him to reveal the great deception that troubled his conscience.
“One of the first things I asked this second master of novices was that, to punish my pride, he should question me in public as to the condition of my parents, my coming into Italy, and how I had been employed. I hoped thus to expiate to some extent my faults, and especially the falsehood I had uttered to conceal my low birth. He consented. One day, when all the novitiate was assembled, he questioned me on all these points. God gave me grace to practise the humiliation which he had inspired, and I publicly declared who I was, how and why I had left France, and what had been my adventures in Italy. The holy man added to my avowal as I had proposed making it, another act of mortification that I had not counted on. He told me to sing one of my village songs, and for this purpose made me mount on a trunk as my stage. I tried to obey, but the music was not long. My memory could bring up only a dancing tune. I started it. After the first couplet, the father stopped me, crying: ‘Shame! what a ridiculous song! If you don’t know a better one, never sing again.’”
His joy in the abode of religion was unbounded. To find himself admitted among young men so far superior to him in all that the world esteems, gave him constant occasions for zeal and fervor. Yet his trials were not ended. The health which had stood the hardships of his gipsy life now became so impaired that there was some hesitation whether he should be allowed to take his vows.
But heaven favored his desires. He returned to Rome, and was thence sent to the college at Fermo, to his intense delight; for it was but a short distance from that Holy House which was to his last breath the one beloved spot of earth to his warm heart, throbbing with love for the Holy Family.
He easily won permission to make a pilgrimage to that shrine; and the young French runaway of former days, a spectacle to excite pity and horror, would not now be recognized in the talented young Italian Jesuit, Calmanotti. His mother tongue even was lost, but a French father at Loretto gave him some books in his native language, and urged him to recover it. After a time it came back, and he could read with ease.
As a teacher, he won the favor of his pupils and his superiors, for he seemed to possess the donum famæ, that singular gift which constitutes popularity, and wins its way with men of all nations and places.
While pursuing his theology at Rome, he became acquainted with Father Poncet de la Rivière, a Parisian Jesuit just completing his divinity course in the Holy City, destined at a later day to be hurried through Northern New York by savage captors and to reach the Mohawk amid torture and suffering.
One day this father placed in the hands of his young and brilliant countryman one of those Jesuit Relations our bibliomaniacs now prize so highly. Chaumonot read with wonder and excited interest the narrative of the heroic Brébeuf and his call for religious to labor with him in converting the Indians of New France. To him it was a personal call, and he responded. There were obstacles, but he applied for everything, permission to abridge his course of study, permission to be ordained, permission to start as early as possible for France to catch the ships on their annual voyage.
Yet with all his eagerness and haste, he clung to one spot of Italy. He could not leave it without kneeling once more as a pilgrim in the Santa Casa, and bearing it in his heart of hearts to the New World, till he could erect there a Loretto on the model of that he so revered. His devotion to the Holy Family led him to adopt the name of Joseph and Mary, and to choose for saying his first Mass the Loretto Chapel, erected after the model of the Santa Casa by Cardinal Pallotti.
An unfortunate hiatus in his autobiography prevents our following him through France, and witnessing his meeting with his family and his long farewell. The uncle, we can well believe, readily pardoned the escapade of one who was now showing such devotion and self-sacrifice; while the mother must have pressed to her heart the son now more than ever dear to her.
The Canada fleet sailed from Dieppe, and thither Chaumonot and Poncet bent their way. The fleet and its voyage are historical. As the old chronicle remarks, it bore “a College of Jesuits, a House of Hospital Nuns, and an Ursuline Convent,” the last accompanied by Madame de la Peltrie, the foundress and Mother Mary of the Incarnation, as first superior. Of the Hospital Nuns—whose contemplated establishment was endowed by Richelieu’s niece, the Duchess d’Aiguillon, and the great cardinal himself—Mary Guenet of St. Ignatius had in chapter been appointed to assume direction. The passage of the ocean was not without its risks. Richelieu’s attempt to create a French navy, and his motto, so adroitly alluding to the arms of France:
“Florent quoque lilia pronto”
(E’en on the waters lilies bloom),
had excited jealousy, and cruisers, privateers of all kinds, were ready to sweep away the cargoes destined for the colonies the far-sighted minister sought to create.
But fearless of this danger the fleet swept out of Dieppe on the 4th of May, 1639, and the convent life, with almost daily Masses, made the flagship vie in its regularity with the time-honored monasteries of the Old World.
But if the danger of hostile cruisers did not alarm them, the feast of the Holy Trinity came with a new peril. Dense fogs hung over the bosom of the ocean while the Masses were offered. Just as they had risen from their adoration, a sailor on the deck shrieked: “Mercy! mercy! we are all lost!” Through the lifting vapors he caught, within two fathoms of the ship’s side, the flash and the glitter of ice. While all sank in prayer, offering vows and Masses, and the Ursuline Sister St. Joseph began to chant the Litany of Loretto, the vanishing mist showed them the fearful extent of their danger. The iceberg towered high above their topmast, its summit still wreathed in a cloud of mist, while far and wide it extended over the sea. “You would have called it a city,” says Mother Mary of the Incarnation, “and there are cities which are far less extensive than this berg,” with turrets and spires, streets and dwellings, as it were of crystal.
The sails were straining, the wind being full in their favor, and the iceberg advancing. All passed in a moment. Captain Bontems’ voice rang out, but providentially the man at the wheel, appalled by terror, gave a wrong movement, the wind suddenly changed, and the vessel was saved, as the ice fairly grazed it, and bore away from the magnificent object that so recently sent a thrill through every heart—even the best pilots averring that it was a miracle, as no human skill could have saved them.
Still storms and fogs delayed the ships, and it was not till the 15th of July that they entered the port of Tadoussac on the lower St. Lawrence. Transferred to a fishing-smack, the whole party were here detained several days, but at last on the 1st of August reached the lower town of Quebec.
The gallant Knight of Malta, Huault de Montmagny, Governor-General of Canada, received them at the wharf, and the city made it a general holiday. As the nuns stepped on the American soil which was to be the scene of their labors for God and the Indians, they knelt to kiss the earth. All then proceeded to the church, where a Te Deum was chanted.
Father Chaumonot was not to linger long at Quebec. A letter of August 7th announces that he with three other fathers was about to start for the Huron country. His stormy sea voyage of three months was followed by a month’s journey over the rivers and lakes and through the vast forests of the New World. On the 10th of September, the six Hurons ran their bark canoe ashore at the end of Lake Tsirorgi, where Father Jerome Lalemant was at the moment in a rude cabin he had recently thrown up.
Chaumonot was on the field of his labor. Strange indeed was all around him. “Our dwellings are of bark, like those of the Indians, with no partitions except for the chapel. For want of table and furniture, we eat on the ground and drink out of bark. Our kitchen and refectory furniture consists of a great wooden dish full of sagamity, which I can compare to nothing but the paste used for wall paper. Our bed is bark with a thin blanket; sheets we have none, even in sickness; but the greatest inconvenience is the smoke, which, for want of a chimney, fills the whole cabin.”
“Our manner of announcing the Word of God to the Indians is not to go up into a pulpit and preach in a public place; we must visit each house separately, and by the fire explain the mysteries of our holy faith to those who choose to listen to it.”
The superior soon recognized in the young father—to whom the Hurons gave the name of Oronhiaguehee (the Bearer of Heaven)—a great facility for languages, as well as zeal, courage, and perseverance.
Father Chaumonot began his Huron labors at a critical moment. The mission among the Wyandot tribes, renewed by the great apostle Brébeuf soon after the restoration of Canada to France, had been fruitful in crosses and gave little to encourage the ministers of religion.
Most of these Indians, obdurate in their errors and superstitions, not only turned a deaf ear to the teachings of the missionaries, but, regarding them as powerful sorcerers, attributed to them every misfortune that befel the tribe or any individual. In those wild communities, every one rights his own wrongs, real or imaginary. Hence the fearless Jesuits actually carried their lives in their hands, never free from danger, or without the probability of being tomahawked.
The flotilla that brought up Father Chaumonot and Poncet carried also the deadly small-pox. As it devastated town after town, the missionaries were compelled to bear the responsibility of this new scourge. Their very efforts to reach the sick, to baptize and instruct, were resisted with superstitious terror; they were driven from cabins; and often, on reaching a town, would find every lodge closed against them.
Their crosses were cut down, the crucifix torn from their necks, the tomahawk often menaced their lives while on their errands of mercy or at prayer in their cabins.
It was a position to appall the stoutest heart. Yet Chaumonot entered on his work with alacrity and courage, fit associate for those who had already braved all the risks and perils. None faltered or hesitated.
They took, however, at this time an important step. To enable them to act more independently and give them at all times a place for retreats, as well as a centre of mission work, they established St. Mary’s, the first mission settlement in the West. It was on the river Wye, easy of access from all the towns where they had been laboring. From it the fathers, generally two together, proceeded to the towns assigned as their field of labor.
The large fortified town of Ossossane was entrusted to Father Ragueneau, and Chaumonot was named his assistant. Here the opposition and obduracy were such that they had actually driven out the missionaries. The young Jesuit went forth bravely into this hardened field—Ossossane and twelve neighboring towns.
In St. Teresa, as the missionaries styled one of these villages, a young man solicited instruction and seemed to hear it with pleasure. While Father Ragueneau was speaking, another Indian rushed furiously in and ordered the two missionaries to be gone. As Father Ragueneau rose, the young man whom he had been instructing sprang upon him, tore his crucifix violently from his neck, and, brandishing his tomahawk, bade him prepare to die. “I fear not death,” said Ragueneau; “you should thank me for what I have just taught you. If you wish to kill me I shall not fly, for death will place me in heaven.” His tomahawk was raised, and he dealt the blow. “Father Chaumonot and I thought that we that moment beheld our long-cherished desire gratified,” but the blow was averted—how they knew not. As he raised his hatchet again his arm was caught.
One day the two fathers were passing near a cabin full of sick Hurons, whom they were not permitted to see. A bright little boy ran out and welcomed them with kind words. His danger of taking the epidemic touched them. Father Ragueneau felt impelled not to lose the opportunity which Providence seemed to offer them to baptize him, and he asked our young missionary to baptize him secretly. Father Chaumonot took up a handful of snow, and, melting it in his hand, poured it upon his head. The little fellow smiled, and then, as though he had accomplished his errand, ran back to his death-stricken home. A few days later they heard that he had sunk under the fatal malady.
The next year he was sent to the Arendaenronnon with Father Daniel. As the great object was to learn the language, his experienced companion made him daily visit a certain number of cabins and pick up all the words he could, writing them down. “So great a repugnance had I to making these visits,” he tells us, “that every time I entered a cabin I seemed to be going to the torture, so much did I shrink from the railleries to which I was subjected.”
After this rude apprenticeship he set out with the great Father Brébeuf to attempt to establish a mission among the Attiwandaronk, a tribe lying on both sides of the Niagara, or, as they called it and one of their towns near the Senecas, Onguiaahra. This tribe, fiercer and more brutal than the Hurons, had hitherto observed a neutrality between them and the Iroquois—a fact which led the French to call them the Neutral Nation. A journey of four days and nights through the woods from Teananstayae on the Huron frontier brought them to Kandoucho, the first of the Neuter towns.
In the beginning they were well received, and all awaited the return of the great chief Tsohahissen from war, there being no one in his absence to treat with them; but gradually pagan Hurons came, and represented the missionaries as great magicians who sought their ruin. Then every door was closed against them, and they often nearly perished at night, deprived of all shelter. After visiting eighteen towns, they sadly turned back towards Kandoucho, but the snow came on so rapidly that they could not proceed beyond Teotongniaton. There they found a charitable woman who not only welcomed them to her cabin, but during their twenty-five days’ stay was their patient and intelligent instructor in her language, enabling them to adapt the dictionary and grammar of the Huron language to that of this nation.
Yet even this good woman could not protect her guests from all injury. A crazy fellow in her cabin spat upon Father Chaumonot, tore his cassock, and kept up such a din that they could not sleep, and tore from their persons any object that took his fancy.
After a stay of four months and a half they finally abandoned this field, and the Neuter Nation rejected its last call, for it was soon after destroyed by the Iroquois.
Still greater suffering awaited him. With the early summer he joined Father Daniel once more. They entered the cabin of a dying woman in the town of St. Michael to baptize her; one of her relatives, incensed at this, awaited them without, and as Father Chaumonot issued forth tore off his hat with one hand, and with the other dealt him a terrible blow with a stone. “I was stunned by the blow,” says he, “and the assassin seized his tomahawk to finish me, but Father Daniel wrested it from his hands. I was taken to our host’s cabin, where another Indian was my charitable physician. Seeing the large tumor I had on my head, he took another sharp stone to make some incision, through which he endeavored to press out all the extravasated blood, and then bathed the top of my head with cold water, in which some pounded roots were steeped. He took some of this infusion into his mouth and squirted it into the incisions. This treatment was so successful that I was soon well. God was satisfied with my desire of martyrdom, or rather deemed me unworthy to die a victim to the hatred of the first of our sacraments.”
Amid such men, with all the horrors of war—for the Iroquois from New York were gradually conquering the land—Chaumonot labored on, suffering in health but undaunted and unappalled, even when, in 1648, Father Daniel perished in his village, and in the following March Father Brébeuf and his young associate Gabriel Lalemant underwent the fearful torture which gave them the highest crown among our martyrs.
A general panic seized the Hurons after this last blow. “At the time of this greatest defeat of the Huron nation,” says Father Chaumonot, “I had charge of a town almost entirely Christian. The Iroquois, having attacked the villages about ten miles off, gave our braves a chance to sally out and attack them; but the enemy were in greater force than they supposed, and our men were defeated. Two days after their defeat news came that all our warriors were killed or taken. It was midnight when the intelligence came, and at once every cabin resounded with wailing, sobs, and piteous cries. You could hear nothing but wives bewailing their husbands, mothers mourning for their sons, and relatives lamenting the death or captivity of those nearest to them. Thereupon an old man, justly fearing lest the Iroquois might dash on the town, now deprived of its defenders, began to run through the town crying: ‘Fly! fly! let us escape; the hostile army is coming to take us.’
“At this cry I ran out and hastened from cabin to cabin to baptize the catechumens, confess the neophytes, and, arm all with prayer. As I made my round I saw that they were all abandoning the place, to take refuge with a nation about thirty-three miles distant. I followed these poor fugitives with the view of giving them spiritual aid, and as I did not even think of taking any provisions, I made the whole journey without eating or drinking or ever feeling any fatigue. While marching on, I thought only and busied myself only with administering consolation to my flock, instructing some, confessing others, baptizing those who had not yet received that sacrament. As it was still winter, I was forced to administer baptism with snow-water melted in my hands. What showed me clearly that my strength in flight was given me from on high, is that a Frenchman in the party, a man incomparably stronger in constitution than I, almost perished on the way, spent with weariness and overexertion.”
He was with the surviving missionaries when they committed to the grave at St. Mary’s the bodies of Brébeuf and Lalemant; and when tidings came of Garnier’s heroic death, and of Chabanel’s disappearance, he accompanied the Hurons who fled to St. Joseph’s Island in Lake Huron. There is nothing in the annals of the missions more touching than Father Chaumonot’s letters describing the fearful sufferings of the fugitives there.
When they at last resolved to seek a refuge at Quebec with their allies the French, Father Chaumonot bore them company, bidding adieu to the land which for eleven years had been the constant scene of his labors.
No missionary had more thoroughly entered into the Indian character or identified himself with them in thought. To him, therefore, they gave the name which the illustrious Brébeuf had borne, that of Hechon; and he was naturally the one to whose direction they were committed on Isle Orleans.
His labors on the Huron language were now probably completed. He had thoroughly mastered it, and drew up a grammar and dictionary, which continued for years to be the guide, not only for Huron, but for all the kindred Iroquois languages. “It pleased God,” he says, “to give my work so much benediction, that there is no turn or subtlety in Huron, nor manner of expression, that I am not acquainted with, or have not, so to say, discovered.” This knowledge he attributed as much to prayer as to his natural talent and assiduity.
His grammar was published some years since in the second volume of the Collections of the Quebec Literary and Historical Society, and is one of the most important of those linguistic treasures which American ethnology owes to the early Catholic missionaries.
Father Chaumonot had scarcely organized his Huron church on Isle Orleans when he was summoned to a new field. The Iroquois, their hands reeking with the blood of Goupil, Jogues, Daniel, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Garnier, asked for missionaries. They began to respect the faith which gave such heroes, able to read the grandeur of Christianity in the virtues of its apostles.
Father le Moyne had led the way to Onondaga. Dablon and Chaumonot followed. In a general assembly of the cantons, Father Chaumonot proclaimed the faith with such eloquence, and in a style so adapted to reach the Indian mind, that the Indians lost their cold indifference, and applauded loudly, while Father Dablon himself listened in wonder to the language of his fellow-missioner. The mission was established. Huron captives formed a nucleus, around which gathered Iroquois converts, warriors and matrons, sachems and orators.
There was no sparing of vice. Amid all the suspicion that lurked in the Indian mind against the motives of the missionaries, and compelled constant discourses and apologies, the fearless missionaries rebuked them for their evil life.
Once, when accusations were made that the blackgowns came to diminish their numbers and blight their race, Father Chaumonot boldly retorted the charge on the men, and showed them that, by their infidelity and harshness to their wives, their divorces, abandoning them, and overtasking their strength, they caused the death of their children, and were forced to adopt captives to fill their cabins. Christian marriage alone, he showed them, could save the race from extermination.
This advocacy of woman’s real rights closed the mouths of his assailants, and so won the women of Onondaga to the cause of Christianity that they wished to render public thanks to the fearless missionary. They gave him a great banquet, to which they came adorned in all their finest ornaments, to dance to the cadence of two native minstrels, while they sang his praises and thanked him for his advocacy.
Strange that alarmed statisticians in this country point now to the same causes as producing the rapid decline in the birth-rate of the Americans as a people, while the church, echoing Chaumonot’s sermon of two centuries ago, points to the sacrament of matrimony as the only sure hope for the country.
The Onondaga mission of 1655 is full of beautiful details. Its end was strange and romantic. A plot formed for the destruction of all the French was baffled by a secret flight, so adroitly managed that the Indians believed that the French had become invisible.
Montreal was the next field of our missionary. Here, in 1663, with the aid of Madame d’Ailleboust, Margaret Bourgeoys, foundress of the Congregation Sisters, Mother de Brésoles, of the Hôtel Dieu, and other pious persons, he founded a society which has for its model the Holy House of Nazareth, to which he was so devoted, and which has for two hundred years been the instrument of incalculable good in Canada—one of the mighty aids in maintaining the family faith and family piety—the Society of the Holy Family. Amid our great wants is such a society, to sanctify Christian families, by modelling them on that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
The remnant of his Huron flock had gathered beneath the fort of Quebec, but before he returned permanently to them he was sent as chaplain to Fort Richelieu, at the mouth of the Sorel. Adapting himself to any life, he labored among those committed to him with his habitual zeal. He soon gained the hearts, not only of the private soldiers, but of the officers; and established among them regular practices of piety. One officer, touched by his words and example, hung up his sword at the altar, and, receiving in due time holy orders, was for many years a devoted missionary in Nova Scotia; while a soldier, formed by Father Chaumonot, devoted himself to the service of the missionaries, and became an excellent teacher.
At last he is with his Hurons, never to leave them. He reared for them the Chapel of Notre Dame de Foye, so called after a celebrated shrine of Mary near Dinan. A copy of the miraculous statue there venerated excited the devotion of his flock, and was the instrument of God’s blessings and favors. To commemorate these, the Hurons, through Father Chaumonot, sent to the Old World shrine a wampum belt with the inscription, “Beata quæ credidisti,” and this token of Indian homage was laid before the altar of Our Lady with the offerings of kings and princes. Others followed the example, and to this day celebrated shrines in Belgium, France, and Italy preserve the wampum belts sent from the depths of our forests by the converts of our early missionaries.
Six years later, the wants of the Indians compelled them to select a new site, where unbroken land and fuel were abundant. When it was chosen, Father Chaumonot carried out a long-cherished design, and with the alms of the Children of Mary in Europe and America erected a brick chapel of the exact dimensions and arrangement of the Santa Casa of Loretto. It soon became a renowned pilgrimage for the supernatural favors obtained there. And here in this favored sanctuary the servant of Mary spent nearly a quarter of a century, giving his time to God and his neighbor. He rose at two, spent four or five hours in prayer or contemplation, recited his office, said Mass, preaching almost daily, then attended to the affairs of the mission, instructing some of his colleagues in Huron, catechising children; after a slight repast at noon, he again spent some time in prayer, and visited some cabins to give special instructions. At nightfall, his chapel was filled for evening prayer, and with his private devotions he closed his day.
In 1689, he celebrated at the Cathedral of Quebec the fiftieth anniversary of his first Mass, being the first one who had ever there attained such years of ministry. The Governor and Intendant, with many other persons of distinction, sought the privilege of receiving at the hands of the venerable priest on this day.
At the close of the year 1692, he began to sink under a complication of disorders, and was conveyed to Quebec. He rallied for a time, but after suffering intense pains, which he bore with unshaken patience and admirable piety, he died the death of a saint. As such, his austerities, his mortifications, his uninterrupted union with God, his zeal and love for his neighbor, had long caused him to be regarded. All gathered around his venerated remains seeking some relic, and many afflicted in soul or body sought his intercession—as documents show, not without effect. His funeral was the most imposing yet seen in Canada. Such was the repute of his sanctity that even Frontenac, the Governor-General, bitter and fanatical in his hostility to the Jesuits, attended, as well as the Bishop of Quebec, who had long revered the aged missionary.
None who beheld his unpromising start in life could have dreamed of such a career or of such a close.
PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN INDIA. [190]
The contents of this book, put forward with all the apparent sanction possible of the sect that employs Mr. Butler, may be looked upon as the quintessence of all that has been or can be said on the subject of missions in Hindostan, by a writer who feels that he has a claim to challenge our attention and command our belief. That it is orthodox in character, according to the notions of his class, cannot be doubted in view of the official position of the author, and the innumerable extracts from the Old and New Testaments, particularly the former, with which its pages are interspersed; quotations the frequency of which, if not reflecting much credit on the reverend doctor by their charity or appositeness, give to the work an air of ponderous learning and holiness that must be highly relished by his brother Methodists. But in justice to the author, it must be said that he does not altogether confine himself to the sacred writers. When the grandeur of the pagan temples or the horrors of Mohammedanism become too great even for his descriptive powers, he freely draws on that profane child of the muses, Tom Moore, whose merits, however, he is careful, in his clerical capacity, to depreciate by assuring us that the author of Lalla Rookh “was for a good part of his life a Romanist”; an objection which he seems to forget might be urged with equal truthfulness against the majority of the gifted minds of the past eighteen centuries, and even against the inspired penmen of the New Testament and the fathers of the church.
However, aside from the attractions of the work in an artistic point of view, we do no injustice in selecting it as a very favorable specimen of this sort of literature, and, recognizing its author as a tried and approved servant of the Methodist Episcopal Church, we shall proceed to gather from its veritable pages a history of his labors, sufferings, and triumphs in the cause of Protestant Christianity.
India, as our readers are aware, is one of the most densely peopled and, in one sense, highly civilized of Asiatic countries. Its population numbers considerably more than two hundred millions, or about one-sixth of the whole human race, speaking many languages and professing various forms of faith. The Hindoos, the original inhabitants, forming the mass of the people, are polytheists, worshipping according to the Vedas and other books considered sacred, their priests being known to the Western world as Brahmins—an hereditary religio-social aristocracy, the most ancient, and at one time considered the most learned, body of men in existence. The Mohammedans, who are said to amount to some twenty-five millions, are the descendants of the conquerors of the eleventh century, and follow more or less strictly the teachings of the Koran. The Brahminical classes or castes, which are numerous, though not enjoying their full immunities since the advent of Europeans on their shores, are still ardently devoted to learning, and indeed, in common with all their countrymen, may be said to develop remarkable mental acuteness and quick perception, though still unfortunately strongly attached to the grossest forms of idolatry. To wean them from these degrading practices, and to introduce in their stead the pure teaching of the Gospel, has been the professed object of the Protestant sects of Europe in sending out crowds of missionaries and innumerable Bibles since the commencement of the century—a work in which some of their brothers in this country have not been behindhand. But American Methodism, until 1856, had no representative in the “land of the Veda,” and the Indians up to that time were ignorant of its peculiar and manifold blessings till Dr. Butler was despatched from Boston to enlighten them. He sailed in April, and arrived at Bareilly in the autumn of that year, where, as he tells us, “his appearance caused a great deal of talk and excitement.” He was accompanied from Allahabad by a native named Joel, wife and child, and, having his own wife and two of his children with him, he commenced his labors. This Joel, who is frequently mentioned in the book, was, it seems, already converted, and when transferred to Dr. Butler by his spiritual guardians they “playfully intimated that Joel had been trained a Presbyterian, knew the Westminster Catechism, and was sound on the five points of Calvinism, and that they would naturally expect him to continue in the faith even though he was going with a Methodist missionary; but,” continues the sly doctor, “I felt assured that these things would regulate themselves hereafter”—and he was right, for, as he tells us in another place, his faithful helper “was destined to become the first native minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in India.” He became in a manner the corner-stone of the vast edifice that was about to be erected on the ruins of heathenism.
We have often heard the anecdote of lending a congregation, but this is the first instance, within our knowledge, of borrowing, not to use a harsher term, a convert; still, we can sympathize with honest Joel in the confusion of mind he must have experienced in discriminating between the Christianity of John Calvin and that of John Wesley, and his mystification at receiving as the Word of God two different and distinct versions of the same law, not to speak of his trying to expound them to his audience in his capacity of first native pastor. Still, he was a beginning, the nucleus of that great conglomeration of religion and intelligence about to be called into existence by the potent spells of the grand magician. Nor was he long left alone. There was a Christian girl, it seems, named Maria, who had formerly been converted by the Madras Baptists, but whom Dr. Butler speedily reconverted to Methodism. “This precious girl,” says the author, “who, of her race and sex in Bareilly, alone loved us for the Gospel’s sake, seemed raised up to encourage and aid us in our new mission;” and with this encouragement, and two such followers, he forthwith set about the conversion of Rohilcund, having first secured “a furnished house, and began to study the language.”
If there is something absurd in the commencement of a Methodist church with only a Presbyterian and a Baptist, the idea conveyed in the last sentence is excessively ridiculous. Can we imagine a heaven-appointed minister, filled with holy energy, so eager to christianize the heathen and elevate his mind that he leaves his distant home and two of his (four) children in tears, penetrates into the heart of the enemy’s country, and, having made his “comfortable arrangements,” established his wife and family, and procured two ready-made helpers, quietly sits down for the first time to learn the language of the highly astute and observant people to whom he is sent to preach, and consequently ignorant of the prejudices and doctrines against which he would have to combat? We are not surprised therefore to hear that for several months after the establishment of the mission Mr. Butler’s congregation, as he delights to call it, did not increase perceptibly. Says Dr. Russell, a Protestant and the correspondent of England’s leading journal: “So long as a Christian minister can argue with a Moulvie or a pundit with patience and ingenuity, he will be listened to with interest and respect; he will be permitted to expound the Scriptures, and to warn his hearers against the errors of their faith, provided that he refrains from insulting, contemptuous, and irritating language; but if he be a mere ignorant, illiterate zealot, without any qualification (temporally speaking) except a knowledge of Hindostanee and good intentions, he may be exposed to the laughter, scorn, and even abuse of the crowded bazaar in consequence of his manifest inability to meet the subtle objections of his keen and practised opponent. From what I have heard I regret to state my conviction is, that no considerable success, so far as human means are concerned, can be expected from the efforts of those who are like the ancient apostles in all things but their inspiration and heavenly help.”[191]
In May, 1857, the Sepoy rebellion, caused to a great extent by the conduct of just such “illiterate zealots” and the criminal neglect of the East India Company, broke out, and the terror extending to Bareilly, the foreign women and children were ordered to be sent to the mountains for safety, Dr. Butler being advised to accompany them. After “prayerfully considering” this message, he resolved not to go, not to abandon his post in the hour of danger; but, with the inconsistency of poor weak human nature, from which even missionaries, it would appear, are not exempt, he tells us that “before going to bed we arranged our clothes for a hasty flight should any alarm be given.” As the doctor is an advocate of the superiority of married over single missionaries, we give literally his own account of the domestic scene that followed the warning, which, to say the least, is very complimentary to his amiable spouse:
“As soon as the adjutant had gone, I communicated the message to Mrs. Butler. She received it with calmness, and we retired to our room to pray together for divine direction. After I had concluded my prayer, she began, and I may be excused in saying that such a prayer I think I never heard; a martyr might worthily have uttered it, it was so full of trust in God and calm submission to his will. But when she came to plead for the preservation of ‘these innocent little ones,’ she broke down completely. We both felt we could die, if such were the will of God; but it seemed too hard for poor human nature to leave these little ones in such dreadful hands or perhaps to see them butchered before our eyes! We knew that all this had been done on Sunday last at Meerut, and we had no reason to expect more mercy from those in whose power we were should they rise and mutiny. But we tried hard to place them and ourselves, and the mission of our beloved church, in the hands of God, and he did calm our minds and enable us to confide in him. On arising from our knees, I asked her what she thought we ought to do? Her reply was that she could not see our way clear to leave our post; she thought our going would concede too much to Satan and to these wretched men; that it would rather increase the panic; that it might be difficult to collect again our little congregation if we suspended our services; and, in fact, that we ought to remain and trust in God. I immediately concurred, and wrote word to the commanding officer.”
But all flesh is weak. Notwithstanding the result of this combined appeal for “divine direction,” the doctor knew better, and, instead of imitating his wife’s brave determination in that trying hour, he hearkened to the counsel of a Moonshee, and Methodism, while it retained its missionary, lost its first and, it may be surmised, its only chance of having a martyr. “Being a Mohammedan,” he says, “with more worldly wisdom than consistency, and having a pecuniary loss in the suspension of my lessons in the language, his warning had much weight with me. I had then to settle the question raised by the commanding officer whether our resistance to going, under those circumstances, was not more a tempting of, rather than a trusting in, Providence? I hated to leave my post, even for a limited time. Yet to remain looked, as he argued, should an insurrection occur and I become a victim, like throwing away my life without being able to do any good by it; and the Missionary Board would probably have blamed me for not taking advice and acting on the prudence which foreseeth the evil and takes refuge ‘till the indignation is overpast.’” Was there ever as prudent an apostle or one so entirely anxious to avoid (after death) the reproach of his superiors by the exhibition of too much courage? Not that he cared for his personal safety, by no means, but the thought of the censure he would have incurred for not having taken more care of his precious life could not be endured. “Still,” continues this intrepid contemner of ‘wifeless priests,’ “had I been alone, or could I have induced Mrs. B. to take the children and go without me (a proposition she met by declaring that she would never consent to it, but would cling to her husband and cheerfully share his fate, whatever it might be), I would have remained. But then, to all the preceding reasons, the reflection was added that Mrs. B.’s situation required that if moved at all it must be then, as a little later flight would be impossible, and she and the children and myself must remain and take whatever doom the mutineers chose to give us.” What one of the “wifeless priests” would have done amid similar circumstances, those at all conversant with the history of Catholic missions in every portion of the world—and there is no part of it but has been hallowed by their footsteps—can be at a loss to determine; but then, those short-sighted celibates have never allowed family or other human ties to come between them and their manifest duty to their Master. The result of the lady’s sickness, so indelicately introduced, we think, as a cloak for her husband’s cowardice and hypocrisy, was, we subsequently learn, the increase of the Methodist “congregation” of India by one member known by the sobriquet of the “mutiny baby,” and it is pleasant to consider that, despite the disasters of the times, the conversion of the country was thus progressing, even though slowly.
Moved by all these considerations, the author left Bareilly with his family, and proceeded to the assigned refuge in the mountains, some seventy miles distant, with surprising alacrity, considering that for many days after everything remained quiet in the neighborhood. But what a hegira was that, so full of perils, adventures, and even miracles, performed, of course, by him alone! In his narration of the journey he rises above himself, and becomes almost apocalyptic in style. At one time, when the bearers showed an unwillingness to carry Mrs. B. and the children further, this was his noble device:
“But in spite of urging, there stood my men. It was an awful moment. For a few minutes my agony was unutterable; I thought I had done all I could, but now everything was on the brink of failure. I saw how ‘vain’ was the ‘help of man,’ and I turned aside into the dark jungle, took off my hat, and lifted my heart to God. If ever I prayed, I prayed then. I besought God in mercy to influence the hearts of these men, and decide for me in that solemn hour. I reminded him of the mercies that had hitherto followed us, and implored his interference in this emergency. My prayer did not last two minutes, but how much I prayed in that time!”
No wonder that his heart was glad at the result, particularly at the fact that the men not only took up their valuable burden cheerfully, but forgot to ask for their hire when their task was accomplished, which to any one acquainted with that class of men in the East certainly savors of the supernatural. “The divine interposition in the case will appear more manifest,” he modestly continues, “when I add that even the ‘bucksheesh’ for which the bearers were contending they started off without staying to ask for or receive.” The ladies who met the party at the first halting-place were astonished, and one of them, Miss Y., asked: “Why, what could have happened to Mrs. Butler’s bearers that they started so cheerfully, and arrived here so soon without giving her the least trouble?” “Ah! she knew not,” ejaculates the self-contained missionary, “but I knew, there is a God who heareth and answereth prayer!” But let not this remark be misunderstood. That initial lady, if at all in the flesh, was a Christian, and must have believed in the efficacy of prayer. The true meaning is that she did not know what a holy man Dr. Butler really was, and of what special graces he had became the favored recipient. Poor Miss Y., how we commiserate her ignorance!
While the civil war lasted, the refugees remained in the mountains at Nynee Tal, a pleasant summer resort, where, for a rent of $225, our missionary and family had no difficulty in securing the inevitable “furnished house,” and, save an occasional scarcity of milk for the baby, suffered no great inconvenience from want of the necessaries and even luxuries of life. Food was readily and cheaply supplied by the natives, and the Nawab of Rampore, though an infidel, generously furnished them with food and money. Still, in this comfortable shelter, and while his brother missionaries were exposed to all sorts of dangers, our hero was rivalling Nana Sahib in the fierceness of his denunciation and maledictions; for, while the rebellious Peishwa was petitioning his tutelary gods to destroy the English, and send them en masse to the infernal regions, the American Christian was invoking the Deity, in all the forms peculiar to Methodist camp-meeting exhorters, to weed out, root and branch, the very people to whom he had been commissioned, and upon whose hospitality and forbearance so many of his co-religionists depended for safety. The utter want of decency and common humanity exhibited by many of the Protestant ministers during and subsequent to the war cannot better be illustrated than by transcribing the following gratuitous account given in this book of a visit to the deposed Emperor of Delhi while in prison:
“A day or two previously, my friend, Rev. J. S. Woodside, missionary of the American Presbyterian Church, was here. He went to see the emperor, and took the opportunity of conversing with him about Christianity. The old man assented to the general excellence of the Gospel, but stoutly declared that it was abrogated by the Koran—as Moses and the law were abolished by Christ and the Gospel—so, he argued, Mohammed and the Koran had superseded Christ and every previous revelation. Brother Woodside calmly but firmly told him that, so far from this being the case, Mohammed was an impostor and the Koran a lie, and that, unless he repented and believed in Christ alone, without doubt he must perish in his sins. He then proceeded to enforce upon his bigoted hearer the only Gospel sermon which he had ever heard; and Brother Woodside was the very man to utter it!”
Surely this Woodside, who could thus wantonly insult a feeble old man, the fallen monarch of two hundred millions of subjects, heathen though he was, must have been one of the ignorant zealots alluded to by Mr. Russell; and the writer who could mention him with unctuous satisfaction runs the risk of being considered little better.
For nearly a year the missionary toils of Dr. Butler were suspended; but when all danger was passed, he returned to his former scene of action, or rather inaction, this time reinforced by two “brothers” from America, who, having been lately ordained, knew as little of the language, religion, and disposition of the natives as he did on his arrival. The reunion took place at Agra, and the trio, with their respective families, of course, proceeded to Nynee Tal, “as we could there best devote ourselves,” says the author, “to the acquisition of the language, and be ready to descend to Bareilly and our other stations, where God had prepared our way, after the reoccupation of Rohilcund by the English Government”—rather a strange precursor, we should suppose, for the servants of the Prince of Peace; but tastes, particularly Methodist tastes, cannot always be accounted for. The “Church in India” also received at this time another valuable member (number four) in the person of a small boy, the orphan of a deceased sepoy officer, who had been found on the battle-field by Lieutenant Gowan, and “made over”—to use his own expression to the superintendent—by that officer. “No man in the East or in America,” observes the matter-of-fact missionary, “has given half as much money to develop our work in India as Colonel Gowan has contributed.... His liberality to our mission work, up to the present, cannot be much less than $15,000.”
Encouragement also came from other official sources. His next step was taken in the direction of Lucknow, “where he was assured that houses could at once be obtained by the assistance of Sir Robert Montgomery,” Governor of Oude, and thither he bent his steps, “escorted by relays of sowars (cavalry), the general considering the precaution necessary.” Of the subsequent history of the missions established in that city, Meradabad, near Nynee Tal, and the old one at Bareilly, the book before us relates little. War, famine, and pestilence, the three great scourges of mankind, seem to have been more effectual proselytizing agencies than the Bible and preaching. The first child in the orphanage established at the latter place was, as we have seen, a waif from the rebellion, and when, in 1860, a dreadful famine occurred in Northern India, “so decided and quick was the calamity, that before the English Government ascertained its extent, and could originate public works to arrest its severity, large numbers of the people had died of want,” and their children were left an easy prey to whoever cared to snatch them up. This specious excuse for the government brings to our mind the history of another famine which happened some years previously nearer home, and which the same rulers failed to alleviate even to the extent of affording free transport for the food provided for the sufferers by the generous people of this country. Though in the latter-mentioned case the victims were Catholics, not Hindoos, the advantage sought to be taken of the calamity by a similar class of men was the same. “The idea came to us,” says Dr. Butler, “that this emergency might be turned to good account by our missionaries seizing on the opportunity thus presented,” and it was therefore agreed among them to solicit the bodily possession of three hundred boys and girls. “I wrote,” he continues, “to the Government; they were only too glad to consent and have the children off their hands.” Of course they were, and doubtless if he had asked for as many thousands, he would have got them as readily. Nor was money wanting for the support of these new protégés. “Responses came pouring in from schools and individuals in America.... Individuals in India also, and government itself,” says the doctor, “came to our help.” Even the Nawab of Rampore, “a Mohammedan sovereign in the vicinity”—who, by the way, owed his position to the English authorities—was put under contribution to the amount of five hundred dollars. Still it was found difficult to introduce Methodism even among these destitute children; for elsewhere he acknowledges that out of nearly one hundred and fifty girls, only about forty have been “soundly converted.” But no effect whatever could be produced on the children not actually starving, even by the free use of money. Here is his own emphatic acknowledgment of the fact, on page 520:
“Every effort was made by our missionary ladies to obtain even day-scholars from among the people, but such was then their bitter prejudice against educating girls that they generally treated the proposal with scorn. The ladies of our Bareilly mission made a vigorous effort in that city to obtain even a few scholars. They went from house to house, hired a suitable place in which to hold a school, bought mats and necessary equipments, offered even to pay the girls some compensation for the time expended, if they would only attend; but at the end of three months they had only succeeded in inducing two children to come, and one of these was unreliable. At length, tired out, they had to abandon the effort as hopeless, until some change would come over the minds of the people in favor of female education.”
The system adopted towards the adult population was more questionable, though equally unsuccessful. Rohilcund and Oude, the scenes of the labors of the American Methodists, were also, it appears, great recruiting depots for the company’s officers, who, as the term of their sepoys expired, formerly allowed them to return home and enjoy liberal pensions, so that a large portion of the male population of those provinces were actually dependent on the company for the necessaries of life. The failure of the rebellion not only caused the breaking up of the sepoy army, but the innocent were made to suffer with the guilty, for the allowance that was paid to the superannuated soldiers for past services ceased and general destitution prevailed. Of this circumstance, the result of base ingratitude, the worthy missionaries were not slow in taking advantage, hoping that, since prayer and exhortation had failed, the more tangible arguments of meat and dollars might at least partially succeed. Previous to the war the “converted” native held, and as we shall presently see for good reasons, a very unenviable position in the community. According to the author, “he was cut off and proscribed by his friends, looked down upon too often by European officials,” and “refused all employment under government.” But this was all changed by Montgomery, the local ruler of Oude, and Governor-General Lawrence, who were favorable to the encouragement of native Christians. “Other officials,” we are told, “did the same. Merchants and traders also sought them, for they saw they could be trusted. Their value rose at once.” “And,” adds Dr. Butler, “the rapid growth of the Christian church in India since that time, and especially of the native ministry, will be fully exhibited in the statistical tables which follow the next chapter.”
We regret that he has not favored us with the details of this astonishing increase in the number of the faithful which so closely followed the distribution of government patronage and pecuniary rewards; but to our chagrin the indefatigable and sanguine missionary, whom we have followed from Boston to the Himalayas, prayed with, in spirit, in the “dark jungles,” and moaned with in unison over the combined sins of the heathen and the Romanist, parts from us abruptly, leaving us the prey of a cruel suspicion that, notwithstanding the generous donations of American friends, the efficient aid of British officials, and, above all, his own sanctified character and wonderful intrepidity, his mission, like so many others undertaken in the same spirit, was, after all, a melancholy failure. In winding up his long history, he tells us:
“The organization of the missions into an annual conference, at the close of 1864, terminated my superintendency, while the toil and care to which body and mind were subject during these scenes, and in such a climate, were so exhausting that release from further service there became indispensable. This release was kindly granted by the bishop and the missionary board.”
Now, what were our reverend friend and his co-laborers doing during the six years that followed the establishment of the three missions which still manage to exist in India? Surely a lively and scriptural account of those toils and cares of which he speaks would, particularly when told in his glowing style, be highly interesting to the public. Chapters of his voluminous book are devoted to descriptions of temples and tombs of the past ages, and some hundreds of pages to a detailed account of the massacres, battles and disasters incident to the civil war, but not a line do we find in which may be traced the efficacy of the gospel as preached by such pious expounders, nor is mention made of a single grown-up convert won to Methodism during the whole time, save through the agency of filthy lucre, the root of all evil. For our further information, it is true, he refers us to certain tables with which he supplements his work, but that is small consolation, for, though we believe in the old saying that figures cannot lie, we are satisfied from an examination of the tables referred to that this veracious character does not strictly apply to those who collated them.
From Table I. we gather that the Methodist Episcopal Church in India, in 1872, had no less than eighteen male and nineteen female missionaries of foreign birth in Rohilcund and Oude, and eighty-six native assistants, with church-members, amounting in the aggregate to five hundred and forty-one, so that every fourteen and a half members had one foreign missionary, or, counting the local preachers and exhorters, every four converts may now enjoy the sole solicitude of one spiritual guide at least! But in Table II., on the next page, the foreign missionaries are increased to forty-six, or one to every dozen actual Christians, and, taking the entire force of foreign missionaries, native pastors, local preachers, exhorters, and teachers, the whole number of “laborers,” more or less dependent on the missionary fund for a livelihood, are reported at the handsome figure of three hundred and sixty-six, two laborers for every three members! But if we deduct the number of teachers returned at two hundred and thirty-four in Table II. from the whole number of members, we find that for every thirty members who are not laborers, and consequently derive no official benefit from the church connection, there are twenty-three who do. Should matters go on as prosperously as they seem to have done for a few years more, we hope to hear that every native convert who is not a pastor, exhorter, or teacher himself will be able to have the sole and separate use of a missionary or an assistant for his own benefit. We expect, also, to find that the exhausting duties of the foreign missionaries in taking charge each of at least one dozen of converts, including the native preachers, exhorters, and teachers aforesaid, will be duly considered by the board, and that reinforcements will be sent to them forthwith. What the eighty-six native pastors and catechists, as returned in Table II., find to do except to preach to each other, we are at a loss to surmise. Perhaps, however, they look after certain individuals classified as probationers and non-communicant adherents, and by the help of which, and the children of the schools, the compiler endeavors to make out a show of figures. The former class he counts at five hundred and twenty, and the latter at seven hundred and thirty-five, which, with nearly twelve hundred children and the helpers, make the sum-total of the officers and rank and file of the church three thousand and sixty-five, “all won for Christ since the rebellion closed.” Now, taking these figures as correct in every particular, we arrive at the following curious calculation, to which we respectfully call the attention of the admirers of Protestant, and particularly Methodist, missions. According to their own showing, there is in India one missionary for every seventy-seven men, women, and children in the remotest degree connected with the Methodist Church; leaving out the children, there is a foreign missionary for every forty native adults, and taking the bona-fide church-members there is one duly commissioned American missionary for every twelve converts! Taking the whole number of Christians at three thousand, we find the annual conversions to have averaged two hundred and thirty, which amount being divided by forty-six makes the exact number of five persons converted every year by each of our countrymen in India. If we leave out the children who as we have already seen, are simply given away by the authorities,[192] we reduce the whole number of yearly gains to one hundred and forty-five, or an average of three annual converts for each foreign missionary; but when we only count the actual church-members, we discover that forty-two native persons are actually converted every year by forty-six American missionaries, and this calculation agrees very nearly with the statement of Dr. Butler, who says in a note to the very table to which he calls our attention, “Conversions during last year, 56.” How many years, missionaries, native pastors, and catechists would be required at this rate to christianize the two hundred millions of heathens in Hindostan is a problem too difficult for our solution.
So much for the wonderful progress of Methodism in India. Let us now glance for a moment at the personelle of the brands thus snatched from the burning.
The ingenious attempt to make the public believe that any form of Protestantism has at length gained a foothold in Asia is more common than honest, and has been repeatedly exposed and censured by sectarian writers of all classes and degrees, many of whom have lived as missionaries in India, and know the truth by painful experience. A few extracts from their works and speeches will suffice to show at once the deficiencies of the would-be apostles, the character of their neophytes, and the absolute falsity of such statistics as we find in Butler’s tables:
“Missionaries have gone out from this country (England) who have dishonored their great cause, and rather confirmed than shaken the superstitions of the people they visited.”—Cunningham’s Christianity in India, p. 147.
“From the want of superintendence, it is painful to observe that the characters of too many of the clergy are by no means creditable to the doctrines they profess, which, together with the unedifying contests that prevail among them even in the pulpit, tend to lower the religion and its followers in the eyes of the natives of every description.”—Lord Valentia’s Travels, vol. i. p. 199.
“A large portion of the sterility of our missions may be attributed to that discord which Christianity (Protestantism) exhibits in the very sight of the unbeliever.”—Rev. Dr. Grant’s Brompton Lectures.
“The numerous missionaries, although they waste years and words, and even money, have converted very few; yet when they have induced one or two apparently to adopt their particular tenets, it is their fashion to make a clamor in the newspapers and by pamphlets, although too frequently they are not sure of their new converts for any length of time.”—Mackenna’s Ancient and Modern India, p. 516.
“Missionaries announcing the conversion of a solitary Hindoo among thousands of unbelievers are themselves frequently members of some straggling sect, and too often the instruments of fanatical bigotry.”—Travels in India and Kashmir, p. 195.
It is needless to multiply further such sketches of the unfitness of the shepherds, for the reader will easily find them, and generally much more strongly drawn, in any impartial work on British India. Let us, however, take a glance at the moral and social status of the spiritual flocks, whose members, before the arrival of Montgomery and Lawrence, found it so difficult to obtain situations. Captain Hervey, in his Ten Years in India, tells us that, whenever a native convert wishes employment as a servant, “he is not taken, because all Christians, with but few exceptions, are looked upon as great vagabonds, drunkards, thieves, and reprobates.” A writer in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xii., assures us that “whoever has seen much of Christian Hindoos must perceive that the man who bears that name is very commonly nothing more than a drunken reprobate who conceives himself at liberty to eat or drink anything he pleases.” The Baptist “converts,” we are assured by Rev. John Bowen, in his Missionary Incitement, etc., are accused of wallowing in every crime that “degrades human nature,” and deserve the accusation. The Rev. Mr. Schneider, writing from Agra, in Dr. Butler’s neighborhood, assures us that the “motives of the Hindoos for embracing Christianity were chiefly the desire of employment and to have their bodily wants provided for.” “It is a fact,” he adds, “that many new converts have, after their baptism, not adorned their Christian profession, and so have ever proved great offences and stumbling-blocks to the cause of Christ.” Of the Baptist converts in the same place, we learn from their seventieth report (1862), that “what with members who have left the station, and others (including paid catechists) who have been cut off for immoral conduct, our loss has been heavy; while in the city of Delhi in the same year sixty-six persons were baptized and seventy-five excluded from the churches.” The author of India and the Gospel, a Protestant missionary of Central India, candidly says: “I have met with native Christians who have been baptized, some on the eastern, some on the western coast, and others at some southern stations—lamentable to say, they were not to be known from the heathen but in name.” Mr. Marsh declared some years ago in the English House of Commons, speaking of Indian converts generally: “They are drawn from the Chandalahs, or Pariahs, or outcasts—a portion of the population who are shut out from the Hindoo religion, and who, being condemned to the lowest poverty and most sordid occupations, are glad to procure by what the missionaries call conversion whatever pittance they are enabled to dole out for their subsistence.” But it appears that the bad character of the Protestant converts has even a more disastrous effect than that produced on the reputation of their sponsors. Mr. David Hopkins, of the Bengal Medical Establishment, in his work on India, asserts, in reply to some overzealous advocate of Protestantism, “the outcasts have indeed joined the missionaries, and have appeared as of their faith; but the conduct of these outcasts has generally proved that they professed what they did not feel, and has considerably influenced the higher orders in their prejudices against Christianity.”
If we proceed still further, we will find from these reiterated complaints of the influence of Protestantism in the East, how much it perverts whatever sense of natural justice may remain in the heathen, and, by appealing to his basest passions, renders him an object of contempt and mistrust even to his less enlightened fellows—for there are few of the Indian population so mentally obtuse as not to recognize the rankest hypocrisy and mendacity, though they be covered with the garb of religion. How far such men as Dr. Butler is justified in claiming three hundred and fifty thousand native Christians (Protestants) as the result of sectarian teaching and zeal in India is not easily determined. In 1850, General Briggs noticed that the missionaries reckoned but one in every six nominal converts as church members; the Rev. Mr. Ward, a missionary, states that of the number of converts of every sort reported to the home societies not one in ten is actually converted.[193] A writer in the United Service Gazette, who had served as an officer in India in 1856, declared that, though the missionaries reported their disciples by thousands, an omnibus would hold all the sincere native Protestants then in the peninsula, while a later authority, Rev. E. Storrow, in his book on Indian Missions, etc., is not willing to claim more than one-fifth of all the so-called converts as Christians even in his indefinite sense of that term. Following the Storrow method of computation, therefore, and applying it to the doctor’s tables, we arrive at the following results: There are at the present day three hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children in India claimed to belong to the various denominations, seventy thousand of whom Mr. Minturn, in his From New York to Delhi, emphatically says “are mostly of the most degraded classes,” and no less than two hundred and eighty thousand who disgrace the name of Christianity by debauchery, theft, hypocrisy, and immorality of every sort in its most degrading shapes. Of the former we freely accord to Methodism six hundred, and of the latter four times the number.
But Dr. Butler has many arrows in his quiver to be discharged against that target of sectarian animosity, Romanism, and other claims to public sympathy and patronage broadly set forth in his manifold tables. It is the question of education, and on this his figures assume a prodigious magnitude. The Methodist day-schools in India, he tells us, number one hundred and sixteen, the teachers two hundred and thirty-four, and the pupils four thousand four hundred and sixty-two. If these children were all Protestants, it might indeed be a source of some congratulation to his friends, but unfortunately only a little over a thousand of them attend Sunday-school, and the balance, considerably over three thousand, are being “educated” to stigmatize the Methodists themselves as infidels, and to deny the first principles upon which all religion is founded. That this, though a startling view to some persons, is nevertheless a correct one, we have the most indisputable Protestant evidence, and what applies to the Methodists in particular, is general to all the sects in Hindostan; who, collectively, are said in Table II. to be educating one hundred and thirty-seven thousand children, of whom more than one hundred thousand are not brought up in any form of faith known to Christianity. “The colleges of India,” says Major H. Bevan, “receive fanatical idolaters, they disgorge only hypocrites.”[194] The author of Tropical Sketches avers, in allusion to the same institutions, “the results have been great intellectual acuteness and total want of moral principle; utter infidelity in religion, etc.” According to the Parliamentary reports, out of over seventeen thousand pupils educated at the public expense, only three hundred even professed the religion of the state. At Benares, where there are fourteen missionary schools, not one conversion is reported; and the Rev. Mr. Percival, in his Land of the Veda, goes the length of saying that “in almost every part of India the spread of the English language and literature is rapidly altering the phases of the Hindoo mind, giving it a sceptical, infidel cast,” while the Rev. Mr. Clarkson goes further, and adds: “Some have argued that the Indians, by receiving an education which undermines their superstitions, are being prepared for the reception of Christianity. We believe that they are being prepared for occupying a position directly antagonistic to it. Several documents from missionaries at Bombay, Poonah, Surat, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras, and Benares corroborate all that I have stated.... None can doubt that infidelity in its most absolute sense is on the increase. There is no connection between the natives ceasing to be Hindoos and becoming Christians.”[195] Dr. Grant also gives his testimony of the effects of missionary schools: “It is the universal confession,” he says, speaking for his brother missionaries, “that but very few of the children so educated embrace the Christian faith”; and even the orphans, we are told by Count Warren, “when they grow up, all return to the religion of their ancestors.” Lastly, the Indian correspondent of the leading organ of public opinion in England thus sums up the whole question:
“Missionary schools do not make more converts to Christianity than Government schools. A most zealous missionary in India assured me, with tears in his eyes, that, after twenty-five years’ experience, he looked upon the conversion of the Hindoos under present circumstances to be hopeless, without the interposition of a miracle.”[196]
We pause here, for the subject becomes too deeply painful for contemplation, even at a distance. To think that, in this age of boasted civilization and religious progress, one of the fairest portions of the habitable globe, filled with millions and millions of our fellow-men, in many respects at least our equals in natural gifts, should still not only be ignorant of the worship of the true God, but that, through the instrumentality of the ministers of the discordant, jarring Protestant sects, and from their desire to forward their own selfish ends, the natives, instead of being taught the beauties of Christianity, are actually led to deny even the existence of a superior power, and by the miserable examples set before them, are forced to despise and hate the very name of Christ’s followers. We arraign Protestantism of this great crime, and we ask the serious attention of every candid man, no matter what may be his religious opinions, to the authorities above cited in support of our indictment. The British Government, through its armed mercenaries and no less corrupt civil officials, have doubtless inflicted dire and manifold cruelties on the Indians, but the evils perpetrated by the sectarian missionaries of this country and Europe on those unfortunate people are beyond all comparison greater, for they are more far-searching and permanent. Human laws and agencies may strip a conquered nation of its wealth and liberties, but it requires the aid of the missionary and colporteur to rob it of even the semblance of religion and morality, and by the means of what is so falsely called “education,” to plunge it into the depths of unbelief and complete spiritual degradation. This is what Protestant England is endeavoring, and, as we have seen, with some success, to do in Hindostan, and in what the generous but easily-duped people of America are endeavoring to rival it. To christianize, in any sense, the Hindoos has been found an impossibility by the well-paid and well-fed sectarian missionaries, so they are now trying to earn their salaries by utterly demoralizing the people they have failed to convert.
They are aided in this by the active countenance of the dominant power, by no less than twenty-seven distinct societies, and have at their disposal unlimited funds; a great portion of which is made up of the annual contributions of the people of the United States. Of the five and a quarter millions subscribed by the various Protestant societies of the world in 1871, considerably over a million and a half of dollars came out of the pockets of Americans, as we learn from Table IV., and doubtless money will continue to flow into the coffers of these organizations as long as they can continue to delude the charitable by false hopes and bombastic reports of missionary successes. We are not of those who are disposed to consider the conversion of souls from a commercial point of view; on the contrary, we are rather in favor even of the lavish expenditure of money, if by that means we can win men to Christ and to the inheritance of his kingdom; but when it becomes an instrument to rob the parent of his child, to convert the heathen not through his mind but his stomach, to bring Christianity into disrepute by sustaining the dissolute and degraded, to pervert the mental gifts of Providence by teaching the heathen that all religion is imposture,[197] and by supporting and sustaining thousands of lay and clerical officials who are as destitute of real sympathy for the pagan as they are ignorant of the first principles of Christian charity and responsibility—all of which it has done and is doing in India—we consider that it may justly be asserted that what was meant for a blessing becomes a curse to the donor as well as the recipient.
Dr. Butler in one of his tables shows that the Catholic Church missions, embracing nearly nine millions of Christians, expend less than a million dollars annually, while those of the Protestant sects, ostensibly counting about a third of that number, cost five and a half times that amount, and would have us believe from this that Protestantism exhibits more vitality and zeal in the cause of religion than does the church. But the contrary is the fact. Unlike the sectarian, whose inducement arises out of and is in proportion to the amount of his salary, the Catholic missionary goes forth into the pagan world, without money, friends, or family encumbrances; he forsakes all comforts and material pleasures to preach Christ crucified; his energy is not of the earth, earthy, his inspiration is from a power higher than that of man, and as his life is one long-continued sermon on temperance, forgiveness, and self-abnegation, his success is always in proportion, not to the money employed, but to the sanctity of the preacher. He does not distribute badly translated and often unreadable copies of the Word of God, “in thirty-seven languages” as claimed for the Protestants by Dr. Butler, to persons who can neither read nor appreciate them; but, living sparingly, dressing humbly, and conforming in all respects his daily practice to his clerical professions, he wins to the standard of Christ the rich as well as the poor, the ignorant pariah as well as the learned and disputatious pundit. Even Protestants, missionaries at that, have seen through their prejudices, the uniform success of the Catholic teachers, and while their system does not allow them to imitate their example, they have nevertheless borne unwilling testimony, and therefore more valuable, to the superiority in point of morality and ability of the servants of the church. In India to-day, even Dr. Butler is forced to admit there are close on a million actual practical Catholics, with hundreds of churches, and a ministry of foreign and native priests amounting to seven hundred and seventy-nine, who are supported at an expense to the Society de Propaganda Fide of twenty-eight thousand dollars, while their schools, numbering according to the Catholic Register of 1869 one thousand, contain over thirty thousand native pupils. Dr. Butler has called our attention to his tables, we have given them serious attention, and have even taken his own figures as thoroughly exact, and we have come to the conclusion that he must either have had a very limited appreciation of the perspicacity of his readers, or recklessness of character in thus exposing the hollowness of Protestant professions of progress, superinduced by the complete failure of himself and his co-laborers to vitalize in the far East the decaying body of Protestantism, which is so fast degenerating into materialism and scepticism in the West.
There are one or two points more, overlooked in passing, of which we wish to take note. Dr. Butler has included that part of Farther India in his tables, which will help him to swell the number of his converts, and excluded that part of it in which the Catholic religion flourishes. Include the whole, and you add 500,000 to the number of native Catholics in India. Again, he repeats the unmeaning, silly twaddle which we hear without ceasing from writers of the same sort, that Protestant missionaries make real Christians, Catholic missionaries only nominal ones. Methodist religion consists in emotion and excitement, the most unreal of all things. So far as it is worth anything, there is far more sensible devotion, although of a more quiet and sober kind, among Catholics than among any class of Protestants. But this is not the essence of religion. To be a Christian is to believe the revelation and keep the commandments of God. Whoever says that Catholic missionaries do not carefully instruct their converts in the doctrines of the faith and in sound morals, and endeavor to make them both pious and virtuous, is either a slanderer or the dupe of some slanderer. Let every one who wishes to know the truth read the work of Dr. Marshall, and ponder the evidence he has collected. Dr. Butler’s effort to weaken its influence, like every other attempt of the same sort, has proved abortive.