One can understand, after seeing pictures of this kind, what Erasmus was thinking of, five hundred years ago, when he wrote his colloquy of "The Shipwreck," the most exquisite satire on mediaeval doctrine ever made. After a most comical account of the petitions and promises made by the shipwrecked to various saints, Adolphus says: "To which of the saints did you pray?" Antony answers, "To not one of them all, I assure you. I don't like your way of bargaining with the saints: 'Do this and I 'll do that. Here is so much for so much. Save me and I will give you a taper or go on a pilgrimage.' Just think of it! I should certainly have prayed to St. Peter, if to any saint; for he stands at the door of heaven, and so would be likeliest to hear. But before he could go to the Almighty and tell him my condition, I might be fifty fathoms under water." Adolphus: "What did you do then?" Antony: "I went straight to God himself, and said my prayer to him; the saints neither hear so readily nor give so willingly."
In the city itself were filth, blasphemy, and obscenity unspeakable. No stranger could take his seat at a cafe without having proposals openly made to him which would have disgraced Pompeii. Cheatery and lying prevailed on all sides. Outside the city was brigandage,—so much so that various parties going to Paestum took pains to combine their forces and to bear arms.
This, then, was the outcome of fifteen hundred years of Christian civilization in a land which had been entirely in the hands of the church authorities ever since the downfall of the Roman Empire; a country in which education, intellectual, moral, and religious, had been from the first in the hands of a body, claiming infallibility in its teaching of faith and morals, which had molded rulers and people at its own will during all these centuries. This was the result! It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, a reductio ad absurdum of the claims of any church to superintend the education of a people; and if it be insisted that there is anything exceptional in Italy, one may point for examples of the same results to Spain, the Spanish republics, Poland, and sundry other countries.
Before going to Italy, I had taken pains to read as much as possible of the history of the country, and, among other works, had waded through the ten octavo volumes of Sismondi's "History of the Italian Republics," as well as Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"; and this history had served to show me what any body of ecclesiastics, not responsible to sound lay opinion, may become. In looking over the past history and present condition of Italy, there constantly rang in my ears that great warning by Christ himself, "By their fruits ye shall know them."
CHAPTER LXI
IN LATER YEARS—1856-1905
On my return to America I remained for a short time as a resident graduate at New Haven, and there gained a friend who influenced me most happily. This was Professor George Park Fisher, at that time in charge of the university pulpit, an admirable scholar and historian. His religious nature, rooted in New England orthodoxy, had come to a broad and noble bloom and fruitage. Witty and humorous, while deeply thoughtful, his discussions were of great value to me, and our long walks together remain among the most pleasing recollections of my life. He had a genius for conversation; in fact, he was one of the two or three best conversationists I have ever known, and his influence on my thinking, both as regards religious and secular questions, was thoroughly good. While we did not by any means fully agree, I came to see more clearly than ever what a really enlightened Christianity can do for a man.
I had returned to America in the hope of influencing opinion from a professor's chair, and my dear old friend Professor—afterward President—Porter urged me to remain in New Haven, assuring me that the professorship of history for which I had been preparing myself abroad would be open to me there. A few years later a professorship at Yale was offered me, and in a way for which I shall always be grateful; but it was not the professorship of history: from that I was debarred by my religious views, and therefore it was that, having been elected to a professorship in that department at the State University of Michigan, I immediately and gladly entered upon its duties.
Installed in this new position at Ann Arbor, I not only threw myself very heartily into my work, but became interested in church and other good work as it went on about me. From the force of old associations, and because my family had also been brought up in the Episcopal Church, I attended its services regularly; and, while it represented much that I could not accept, there were noble men in it who became my very dear friends, with whom I was glad to work.
It has always seemed to me rather an amusing episode in my life during this period that, in spite of grave doubts regarding my orthodoxy, my friends elected me vestryman of St. Andrew's Church at Ann Arbor, and gave me full power to select and call a rector for the parish at my next vacation excursion in the East. This in due time I proceeded to do. Attending the convention of the Episcopal Church in the diocese of Western New York, I consulted with various clerical friends, visited one or two places in order to hear sundry clergymen who were recommended to me, and at last called to our rectorate a man who proved to be not only a blessing to that parish, but to the State at large. In the annals of American charitable work his name is writ large, though probably there never lived a man more averse to publicity. He has since been made a bishop, and in that capacity has shown the same self-sacrifice and devotion to works of mercy which marked his career as pastor.