"Rome or Reason." [Footnote 247]
[Footnote 247: The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. By Francis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1867. 8vo, pp. 468.
The Professor at the Breakfast-Table; with the Story of Iris. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston; Ticknor & Fields. 1866. 12mo, pp. 410.
Rationalism and Catholicism. Inquirer, Cincinnati, May 26, 1867.]
Mr. Parkman understands and describes very well the Indian character—a very simple character, and within the range of his comprehension. There is nothing deep or impenetrable in the Indian, and his ideas, habits, and customs are invariable. He is a child in simplicity, but he is cunning, fierce, treacherous, ferocious, more of a wild beast than a man—a true savage, nothing more, nothing less. Mr. Parkman has lived with him, studied his character and ways, and may, as to him, be trusted as a competent and faithful guide, save when there is a question of superstition, in which the Indian abounds, or of religion, which he accepts with more docility and ease than many learned and scientific white men.
Mr. Parkman may also be trusted for the purely material facts of the Jesuit missions among the Indians in the seventeenth century, and he narrates them in a style of much artistic grace and beauty; but of the motives which governed the missionaries, of their faith and charity, as well as of their whole interior spiritual life, he understands less than did the "untutored Indian." His judgments, reflections, or speculations on the spiritual questions involved are singularly crude, marked by a gross ignorance not at all creditable to a son of "The Hub." He claims to be enlightened, to be a man of progress, and he has indeed advanced as far as Sadduceeism, which believes in neither angel nor spirit; but the savage retains more of the elements of Christian faith than he appears to have attained to. He is struck, as every one must be, by the self-denial, the disinterestedness, the patient toil, the unwearying kindness, superiority to danger or death, and heroic self-sacrifices and martyrdom of the missionaries; but he sees in them only the workings of a false faith, superstitious missions, and a fanatic zeal. The Jesuit who left behind all the delights and riches of civilization, gave up all that men of the world hold most dear, braved all the dangers of the forest, of the savage, performed fatiguing journeys, underwent the inclemencies of the climate and the seasons, suffered hunger and thirst, in want of all things, submitted to captivity, tortures, mutilations, and death, was, in his judgment, a poor, deluded man; his faith, which bore him up or bore him onward, was an illusion, and his charity, which never failed or grew cold, was only an honest but mistaken zeal! Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?
It cannot be said that Mr. Parkman has overrated the marvellous labors and sacrifices of the Jesuits for the conversion of the North American Indians; but he is mistaken in supposing that they stand out as anything singular or extraordinary in the general history of Catholic missions. They did well; they were brave, indefatigable, self-denying, heroic, and cold must be the heart that can read their story without emotion; but their high qualities and virtues are due to their general character as Catholics, not to their special character as Jesuits. Non-Catholic writers are very apt to consider that Jesuits are a peculiar sect, in some way distinguishable from the Catholic Church, and that their merits belong to them not as Catholic priests and missionaries, but as Jesuits. What Mr. Parkman admires in them is really admirable; but its glory is due to Catholic faith and charity, which the Jesuit has in common with all Catholics, and he has toiled no harder, braved no more dangers, suffered no greater hardships, or a more cruel and horrid death, or met them with a spirit no more heroic than have other Catholic missionaries among heretics and infidels, from the apostles down to the last martyr in China, Anam, or Oceanica. It has been only by such suffering and such deeds as Mr. Parkman narrates, that the world has been converted to the Christian faith and retained in the Catholic Church. At all times, since the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, has the Catholic Church nursed in her bosom, and sent into the world to preach Christ and him crucified, men not at all inferior in faith and love, in patient endurance, and heroic self sacrifice to the Jesuit missionaries among the North American Indians. She has never wanted laborers, confessors, martyrs; and a religion that never fails to create and inspire them is not, and cannot be, a false religion, a delusion, a fanaticism. It is only in the Catholic Church you find or have ever found them. Let her have the credit of them.
The Professor at the Breakfast Table has been for some time before the public, and every body has read it. Its author has, we believe, a high reputation in the medical profession, and certainly has attained to distinction as a poet and as a writer of prose fiction. He has wit and pathos, a lively imagination, and a keen sense of the ludicrous. The snake portion of his Elsie Vonner is horrible, but several of the characters in that remarkable book are admirably drawn—are real New England characters, drawn as none but a New Englander could draw them, and perhaps, none but a New Englander can fully appreciate. He is like many of the descendants of the old Puritans, who, having lost all faith in the Calvinism of their ancestors, still identify it with Christianity, and float in their feelings between the memory of it and a vague rationalism and sentimentalism which is simply no belief at all. He would like to be a Christian, to feel that he has faith, something on which he can rest his whole weight without fear of its giving way under him, but he knows not where to look for it. He finds many attractions in the Catholic Church, but, thinking that she holds what so offends him in the faith of his ancestors, he dares not trust her.
There is a large class of educated, thinking, and even serious-minded Americans who turn away from the church and refuse to consider her claims, not because she differs from the Protestantism in which they have been reared, but because she does not, in her spirit and teaching, differ enough from it. Those outside of the church, and who credit not the evangelical cant against her, identify her teaching with Jansenism, regard Jansenists as the better class of Catholics, and Jansenism is a form of Calvinism, and Calvinism is a system of pure supernaturalism, while the active American mind cannot consent that nature should count in the religious life for nothing. It would, perhaps, relieve them a little if they knew that not only the Jesuits condemned Jansenism, but the church herself condemns it, and Jansenists are as much out of the pale of the church as are Calvinists or Lutherans themselves. So-called orthodox Protestants were formerly in the habit of charging Catholics with rationalism and Pelagianism, and even now accuse them of denying the doctrines of grace or salvation through the merits and grace of Jesus Christ. This fact alone should suffice to teach such men as the Professor at the Breakfast-Table that the difference between Catholicity and Puritanism is much greater than they suppose.
The Professor, in defending himself against the change of want of respect for Puritanism, says, pp. 154-155: "I don't mind the exclamation of any old stager who drinks Madeira worth from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns, according to his own premises, a dozen souls a year in segars, with which he muddles his brains. But as for the good and true and intelligent men we see all around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful—men who know that the active mind of the age is tending more and more to the two poles, Rome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority or personality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a man may by accident stand half-way between these two points, he must look one way or the other—I don't believe they would take offence at anything I have reported." From the connection in which this is said, and the purpose for which it is said, it is clear that the Professor holds that the active mind of this century is tending either Romeward or Reasonward, that the doctrines held by his Puritan ancestors and so-called orthodox Protestants can be sustained only by the authority of a sovereign church, and that we must accept such authority, or give up all dogmatic belief, and allow the free, unrestricted use of reason.