Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul / With a Memoir of His Life

by Francis A. Baker

[Footnote 6: One of these good clergymen, the Rev. Peter Whelan, during the late civil war, remained a long time among our prisoners at Andersonville, and spent four hundred dollars in gold at one time in purchasing bread for their necessities.]

This mission was, however, no play-spell for the missionaries. Besides the ordinary labor of preaching and hearing the confessions of a multitude of people, it was necessary to search out the people themselves, and bring them to church to hear the sermons. At that time, the Southern towns received the débris of foreign emigration, and were filled during the winter months by a loose floating population of Northern laborers, who were without employment at home. Hence, there was a larger proportion than elsewhere of the most degenerate and demoralised class of Catholics, living in complete neglect of their religious and moral duties, and beyond the reach of the ordinary ministrations of the Church. Savannah has several suburbs and purlieus, rejoicing in the names of Yammacraw, Robertsville, and Old Fort, crowded with squalid hovels, drinking-shops, sailors' boarding-houses, and dens of thieves and smugglers, representing in a small way the scenes which Dickens delights in describing. A mission in the cathedral might be given ten times over, and the news of it never reach the denizens of these places. Accordingly, the missionaries divided the several districts between them, and undertook to beat up the quarters of sin, vice, and misery, in the hope of rescuing some of these forlorn and abandoned souls. It would hardly be safe for any one but a Catholic priest to undertake such a work, especially in the evening, and certainly no one else would have any hope of success. The work was done, however, very thoroughly, and, in consequence, the church was crowded by that class of persons who were in most need of a mission, and who had never been reached before. An immediate and extensive reformation was the result. The grog-shops were deserted, which before were filled from morning until late at night, the sound of cursing and quarrelling was hushed, the darker deeds of sin ceased, and the great mass of these poor, lost souls began to listen to the eternal truths, and to seek for the way that would bring them back to God. Many, engaged in dishonest practices, abandoned their unlawful traffic, and made restitution of their ill-gotten gains. Great numbers of those who had abandoned the sacraments, and even ceased going to church, for ten, twenty, or thirty years, came with great fervor and earnestness to confession. Some of the poor slaves also, as well Methodists as those who were Catholics, attended eagerly on the instructions of the mission. One old Methodist negress was asked by her mistress, or some one else who noticed her constant attendance, if she liked the mission; to which she replied: "Oh, Lor! yes, missus; I'se bound to be there, if I can get only one eye in, every time." Another grown-up slave girl, who had never been baptized, was most anxious to receive baptism, and induced her mistress to ask me to baptize her. I was very reluctant to do it, fearing lest she might not be sufficiently instructed and prepared in her moral dispositions to begin a really Christian life, without a longer probation; and therefore refused to baptize her during the mission. After the last sermon she went nearly frantic, and made loud exclamations that she wished to be taken out of the devil's hands, and the father would not do it, but was going away, leaving her in his power. Touched by her entreaties, and finding that her mistress had taught her the rudiments of the catechism, I instructed her for some days, and endeavored to impress upon her mind especially, that if she wished for the graces of baptism and the friendship of God, she must renounce all sin and live a good and holy life. So fearful was she that she might sin, and receive baptism unworthily, that for a day before her baptism she would not speak a word to any person, not even her mistress. She refused to speak even when she was asked about her sponsors and her baptismal dress, and her whole demeanor at her baptism was like that of one oppressed with the most intense sentiment of religious awe, and of the sacredness of the promises she was making to God. It is not to be supposed that every bad Catholic was reformed, or that, of those who were really brought to a resolution to mend their lives, all of them persevered. The hydra-headed monster of vice is not killed by a blow, nor can we hope ever to exterminate sin by any means, even those which have a divine efficacy. It is a continual warfare which we have to wage, by both spiritual and moral weapons, which the free will can always resist. God alone has coercive power over the spirit of man, and He will not exert it to compel him to obey His law. Temptations to sin ever beset the human will, especially in a corrupt, irreligious, and immoral state of society. The Catholic Church is not intended to be a society of saints who have already attained perfection, but a training and reformatory school for the human race. It has no means of charming or mesmerizing the human will into sanctity, and its gracious influences do not supersede the struggle for life which exists in the spiritual as in the natural world. It has all the means of sanctifying the human race, and of elevating men to the summit of possible human virtue, limited only by the extent to which the free human will co-operates with grace. It must actually produce these results on a great scale, in order to prove that it is the Church; because God would not have created it for this purpose, foreseeing its essential failure to fulfil its work and attain its predestined end. It is easy enough to show that the Church possesses this note of sanctity, correctly understood in this way. But it is perfectly true also that the free-will of man, by its failure and perversion, hinders the Church to a vast extent from exhibiting its regenerating and sanctifying power. Great numbers of individuals in the Catholic Church live and act in contradiction to their faith, neglect or abuse the means of grace, and dishonor religion by their conduct. The only means which the Church has of contending with this evil, and reclaiming these unworthy members from a sinful life, are moral means, acting on the mind and conscience. Missions are among the most powerful and efficacious of these means, and their efficacy is shown, not in eradicating sin, or liberating human nature from its intrinsic liability and propensity to sin, but in checking and counteracting its violence, and reclaiming a great number of individuals from its influence. If they actually do this, if they have a perceptible influence in reforming and renovating the demoralised portion of the Catholic community, heightening the restraining power of faith and conscience among the mass of the people, and producing many permanent fruits in the increase of piety and morality, they are successful, and their value is established. It is beyond a question that they do this to an extent which can only be understood by those who are engaged in them, or who have studied their working on a grand scale.

To return to the Savannah mission. I had a good opportunity to judge of its permanent fruits when, two years afterward, I returned there, and went through the same quarters of the town where we had gone to drum up the people to the mission, in making a collection for the new congregation of St. Paul. Many of the very poorest dwellings I found neat and orderly; the pious pictures blessed during the mission hanging upon the walls; the children clean and tidy; sometimes an old man sitting at the door, reading the mission-book; the wives and mothers evidently cheerful and contented, the best sign that their husbands were sober and kind; the expressions of grateful remembrance of the mission warm and frequent; the signs of moral improvement everywhere, and the church crowded on Sunday.

It is not to be supposed that the body of the Catholic congregation of Savannah were like this lowest class I have described. I have dwelt more minutely on their condition, and the good done among them, mainly because the small comparative size of the place, and the thorough visitation which was made, brought us into a more close contact with their miseries, and enabled us to see more clearly what can be done to relieve them, than is usually the case. I have wished to show what the hardest and most repulsive part of the work of the missionary is, and to give a true picture of the nature and efficacy of the means used to raise up and reform and save the most demoralised class of the Catholic population throughout the country, and especially in the large towns, where this class is most numerous. I wish, also, before resuming the particular narrative of F. Baker's life, to show what was the work for which he left the ease and elegance and attractive charm of his earlier position as an Episcopalian clergyman, fulfilling the light duty of reading prayers and preaching quiet, well-written, polished discourses for the élite of Baltimore society.

The mass of the people who were brought to the mission in Savannah by the personal visits of the fathers had never been seen in the church previously. They were the débris that the tide of emigration had deposited there, and many of them only chance-residents of the town.

The ordinary church-going congregation contained, as usual, its very large proportion of Easter communicants, with a smaller but still numerous class of devout and fervent Catholics who approached the sacraments frequently. The majority of them belonged to the humbler walks of life, although there were a considerable number whose position in worldly society was more elevated.

F. Baker arrived in Savannah, when the mission was about half over, and took his share in the labor of preaching and hearing confessions. At the close of it, after a few days' rest, three of the missionaries, of whom he was one, commenced a series of missions in one part of the diocese, and the two others began another which embraced the smaller parishes. The smaller band went to Macon, Columbus, and Atlanta, rejoining their companions subsequently at Charleston. As F. Baker went in another direction, I shall confine myself to the narrative of the missions in which he was engaged, and pass over the others, merely pausing for a moment to notice a letter written by a Protestant gentleman in Macon, to the United States Catholic Miscellany, of Charleston, as an evidence of the impression often made by missions upon the minds of candid and intelligent Protestants. The letter is as follow's:—

"In company with many of our most distinguished citizens, I have had the pleasure of hearing most of the sermons delivered, and witnessing the accompanying exercises connected with their mission, and but express the united and universal sentiment entertained, when I say that they were exceedingly interesting and instructive, and have served to dissipate many of the vulgar prejudices that hung like a mist upon the public mind, and, like a cold-damp, mildewed reason and honest judgment. Sufficient testimony of this result may be found in the fact that a number of Protestant gentlemen called upon Mr. Walworth yesterday, and urgently requested him to deliver one more sermon before his departure, which he consented to do this evening. I would send you a copy of the correspondence, but it would be too voluminous for the brevity of this letter; suffice it to say it was complimentary, no less in the act itself than in the manner in which the request was conveyed.

"I must take this occasion of expressing my gratification at the result adverted to, for though I am not a member, nor ever have been, of the Catholic Church, its piety and religious principles—the purity, integrity, ability, learning, and eloquence of its teachers and preachers—the bright links of patience, endurance, and fidelity, by which it is held to the early ages of Christianity—its unity of action, consistency of precept and practice, and conformity of theory and doctrine, as well as the great lights of intellect that have shed lustre upon it in the past and present—men whose genius has elevated them above the gloom of dying centuries to overflow history with glory—these have commended the Catholic Church favorably to my judgment; and regarding its onward progress and increasing popularity with no jaundiced sectarian eye or jealous faction-spirit, but with the extension of civilization and Christianity—I feel the pressure of no petty, vulgar prejudice in wishing it, with all other Christian organizations, 'God speed;' and if this sentiment be in hostility with Protestantism, as for myself and it I say, 'perish the connection'—'live' the enlightened liberality and intelligence of civilized and educated man.