“This people,” continues the Bishop, “by the powers of the merely natural man, have indeed conquered their earthly freedom, but they still have need to obtain the emancipation of the soul—freedom from sin—by that liberty wherewith Christ only can make us free.”
The plea of the Bishop rings out—his plea for help to realize his well-founded plan which again and again he had described to the Board of Missions, and which follows the eloquent and urgent presentation of the claims of Haiti just quoted.
“For upward of thirty years, since it was planted here in 1861, we have stoutly held on to the almost forlorn hope of making this Church a blessing to the people among whom our lot is cast. Among other things for which we labor, we are striving to complete the well-being of their acquired nationality by raising up a native clergy among the people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh—a most desirable object, the accomplishment of which no other religious denomination, aside from ours, has essayed to realize in a systematic manner. To this end, we need a theological training-school. We are also wrestling with the problem of extending popular education among the illiterate masses; to do which, more successfully, a better equipped normal school is needed. We also have in hand for solution, the problem of introducing scientific medical treatment of the sick and neglected poor; to do this effectually, we need a well-organized medical mission. We have the personnel (doubtless the two students referred to above) for such a mission, but we need the pecuniary means necessary to effect such an organization.”
Surely this plan should have found friends and helpers in America, and must find them even yet, in order that Haiti may realize a more worthy measure of the ideal of her first devoted Bishop. He closes his report thus: “On our part, we ask you brethren, one and all, to pray for us that our faith fail not, and that we may not grow weary in well doing, but be always animated with the blessed and soul-consoling hope, that in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” In 1895, after seven years of weary but persistent patience, the Bishop was able to hold services in the church at Port-au-Prince, the center of the mission work of the District, which was so far completed as to be fit for occupancy. The same year he was able to announce the joyful tidings that “five of the sons of our clergy have been graduated as physicians to co-operate with the clergy in the work of the Gospel among the afflicted poor; and thereby emphasis has been given to the humane aspect of the Gospel of Christ, while the ministry of the clergy gives due emphasis to its divine aspect. We have every reason to believe that our triple Gospel work, carried on by ministers, physicians and teachers, has given us a grasp on the very vitals of the nation, which will grow with its growth, and increase with its strength.”
But the Bishop is not deceived by the fresh hope which the year has brought. “Let it be borne in mind,” he writes, “that our work is carried on under the enervating influence of the Tropics, and amidst the sluggishness of an undeveloped people; and, therefore, such marvels of rapid progress are not to be looked for here as characterize the railroad speed with which things more forward in the United States under far more favorable circumstances.”
During the next ten years, the first steps were taken towards the realization of the most important features of the plans for the District. In 1901, following Bishop Holly’s visit to the States, the much needed Theological School was opened at Port-au-Prince, with the Rev. P. E. Jones as Dean, and the Revs. Alexander Battiste and Theodore F. Holly as professors. Dean Jones had, for many years, been the very efficient Principal of one of the Schools of the Republic at Aquin, and his experience and success had singled him out as the man to reorganize the Lancastrian School, needing reconstruction, in the capital city. His transfer by the Government made it possible for the Bishop to realize at least the beginnings of the Theological School, so long a cherished hope. At first this school was conducted in the evenings, after the example of the Government Law School. Six students were enrolled at once, and others awaited the means necessary for expenses. This school, or its successor, has been reopened by The Rev. A. R. Llwyd, and three new clergymen recently graduated.
The Medical Mission, so important to the development of the Bishop’s plans, began to take definite form about 1904, through the training of two nurses in an institution extemporized for that purpose by Dr. A. C. C. Holly, a son of the Bishop. In 1905 two lots were secured for the projected hospital and dispensary, for the erection of which funds were asked of friends in the States. Awaiting these, Dr. Holly opened a small hospital in one of the mission-buildings, with Miss Lidia Boisson, one of the nurses trained locally, in charge of the sick ward. Two other young women had been sent to the United States for training as nurses, at the expense of the Board of Missions. The ministrations of the hospital and the ministries of the physicians and nurses wrought untold blessings to a country to which sanitation was unknown and hygiene unheard of. The well-laid plans of the Bishop and his co-workers, the physicians, were never completed; for, with the coming of the Americans, in 1915, all sanitary and medical work was taken over by them, and the necessarily imperfect equipment and methods of the old medical mission were thereby superseded.
In the face of the infirmities of greatly advanced age, Bishop Holly continued to administer the difficult work of the District until March 1911, when he was called to his rest. Through fifty years of devoted, unfaltering service he gave himself to the land of his adoption, and the people whom he loved. In 1855, he had sought the permission of our American Episcopal Church to found the Church in Haiti. In 1861, the petition granted, he landed with a colony of American Negroes in Haiti. During the succeeding years he raised up a native ministry—a notable achievement in view of the fact that the Roman Church, with a far longer history of missionary work in Haiti, has, to this day, not a single native priest there. During the first years, services in the capital were said in both French and English; at the close of the Bishop’s Episcopate, there were but five English-speaking communicants recorded.
When the Rev. Mr. Holly arrived in 1861, Haiti, except for a few Church members in the new colony, was barren ground for the Church. In 1874 the Bishop and his staff of six priests and four deacons were ministering to nearly one thousand souls, of whom 238 were communicants, divided among 18 missions.
At the close of Bishop Holly’s administration, there were 12 priests; 2 deacons; 2 candidates; 2 postulants; 18 lay-readers; 54 teachers (of whom 9 were in day-schools); and 26 missions. More than 2,000 souls were under the ministrations of clergy and teachers, with 651 communicants.