In accordance with this agreement, General Convention, in 1874, elected, from among the clergy of Haiti, the Rev. James Theodore Holly, and, on Nov. 8th, in Grace Church, New York, he was consecrated as Bishop.
Eager to be back at work, Bishop Holly set sail ten days later, and thus describes the glad, joyous reception of his people upon his arrival at his home and old parish, Port-au-Prince: “I found all the members of my family and of Holy Trinity on the lookout for me. A deputation of the clergy and of the vestry were in waiting with a carriage. I was conducted to the church where the faithful had gathered for a thanksgiving service, entering under the triumphal arch surmounted by the phrase, ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo,’ which had hastily been constructed that morning, after the steamer had been seen at a distance entering the harbor. The service over in church, I retired to my residence, where I was besieged during the rest of the day by visits of the members of the congregation, from neighbors, friends, and the citizens in general, all coming to welcome me home, and to present me their warm congratulations. These visits were continued in like manner all the next day. Saturday morning I called on the President of the Republic, and the Minister of Public Worship, to pay my respects, and thus rendered to the civil authorities the honor due to them before appearing to officiate in public in my new vocation. Mr. Preston, the Minister Plenipotentiary to Haiti, had made an official report to the Government of my consecration as Bishop, at which he assisted in Grace Church, New York, and the President and Minister expressed to me their highest gratification at the new position thus gained by our Church in Haiti. Advent Sunday, I addressed the English congregation after Morning Prayer at six o’clock, and the French congregation at the 9 o’clock service, taking, on each occasion, for my text, those words of Zechariah iv. 6, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.’ The drift of my remarks, in setting forth all the circumstances leading to and attending my consecration to the Haitien Episcopate, was to impress on the minds of the people committed to my charge that human instruments and worldly powers were of no value in this matter, but that the movements of God’s Holy Spirit were the basis of all our successes in the past as they must be of our hope in the future.”
Thus began the Episcopate of the first negro Bishop of the American Church, a man of unusual ability; of highly developed powers of leadership; a courteous, Christian gentleman.
The statistics for 1875 are: The Bishop; priests, 6; deacons, 4; lay-readers, 14; candidates for Orders, 3; number of missions, 18; of churches, 3; of rectories, 2; whole number of souls, 751; of communicants, 238, and perhaps 3 schools.
The Bishop’s early letters supply information concerning the nature of the field. Transportation was difficult with only paths or trails to guide the traveler. All of the travel by land was done on horseback, and the Bishop was gradually accumulating the means of locomotion. On December 24, 1874, he writes, “I have already bought a mountain saddle (to be paid for when convenient to me) and have yet to get bridle and knapsack. However I borrow these things, with the use of a horse, to make my trip tomorrow”—a comfortable, leisurely approach to equipment, with the blessing of handy friends by the way.
Other travel was by boat, very leisurely too, a week to come and go if the places be near, and more if they be far. The Bishop is already longing for a “Bishop’s Horse,” and says so; a “Bishop’s Boat” is probably as yet only a dream, because “the interior stations are among the most interesting in which we are engaged, and work ought to be encouraged and strengthened by the visits, as often as possible, of the missionary-in-chief.”
The Bishop’s travels were wonderfully fruitful—large classes confirmed, and glad response given to the ministrations of their new, but already beloved, Father in God. The schools, too, were filled with boys and girls in training for the new day of the Church in their homeland. But church-buildings were lacking, and many of the congregations were worshipping in rented or private houses.
In Port-au-Prince, the capital, the Church was firmly established and included two parishes where services were constantly held in English as well as in French; but the poverty of the people was a drawback to independence. The Bishop writes, “We have from three to four hundred souls to look after in this way at the Haitien Capital; but the most of them are in unfortunate or very moderate circumstances, and therefore can do but little to sustain the Gospel among themselves. They must not be expected to keep up, without generous aid from abroad, the work of the Gospel in Haiti. The time may come when the great mass of men of the so-called better classes, who now live in complete religious indifference, shall be awakened to a sense of their great spiritual danger. Here, as elsewhere since the beginning, it is the common people who follow Him gladly.”
For their shepherding, the Bishop felt the need of more men from the American Church, consecrated to the Master’s Mission. There were men already at his disposal, but the means to employ them were lacking. Here again, as so consistently in our mission-fields, because of the poor, cramped purse, the Bishop—sent to organize and to evangelize—was estopped within hearing of yearning calls for preachers and teachers. “I need to found at once a Theological Training School for young men desirous of preparing themselves for the Ministry, and a first class female Boarding School,” the latter, to supply his schools with teachers. How like the cry of Ferguson in Liberia is this urgent appeal of Holly in Haiti, and how natural the cry of each!
By the close of the first year of the Bishop’s episcopate, he had completed the round of visitations of his rather disconnected group of missions. The year had been a very successful one, yet not without its distresses and difficulties. There had been 106 confirmed, 36 baptised, and schools well filled with children. Property had been repaired, and at least one church-lot donated for the new parish of St. Andre, in Trianon. This was given by General Hyacinth Michel, who was appointed lay-reader of the new parish.