Martin was sent to a school kept by a Mr. Merrywether in a log-cabin near the Rolling Fork, and soon distinguished himself by his proficiency in mathematics. He learned the whole multiplication table in a single day when he was eight years old. At the age of eleven, he entered S. Mary's College, near Lebanon, Kentucky, being one of the first students enrolled in that institution; and by the time he was fourteen, he was acting as teacher of mathematics, and was famous throughout the country as the boy-professor. From S. Mary's he went, at the age of sixteen, to the theological seminary at Bardstown, then under the personal direction of Bp. Flaget and his coadjutor, Bp. David. Francis Patrick Kenrick was one of the professors in this home of learning and piety, and soon became Mr. Spalding's intimate friend. F. Reynolds, afterwards Bishop of Charleston, was there, and the Rev. George Elder, founder of S. Joseph's College, was another of the little company. Mr. Spalding remained at Bardstown four years, dividing his time, according to the system pursued in several of our American seminaries, between the study of theology and the instruction of boys in the college which formed a part of the institution. He paid no more attention to his favorite science of mathematics, and never developed the extraordinary powers in that branch of learning of which he had given such evidences in boyhood; but his aptitude for theology was so marked, and his personal character so amiable, that Bp. Flaget determined to send him to Rome to complete his studies at the Propaganda. It was a long and rather difficult journey in those days. He set out in April, 1830, and did not reach Rome until August. On the way, he visited Washington and Baltimore, and made the acquaintance of some notable persons, of whom he makes interesting mention in his letters of travel. He seems to have been strongly impressed by the Rev. John Hughes, afterward Archbishop of New York, whom he met in Baltimore; and he writes with patriotic ardor of the venerable Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, whose "good-will and benediction" it was his fortune to receive on the eve of departure from his native land. Our young Kentuckian, as might have been supposed from his ancestry and education, was an enthusiastic lover of his country. "I am sure," he wrote some time afterwards from Rome, "that my attachment to the institutions of my country has been increased by my absence from it." Nothing could exceed the warmth of his enthusiasm for the sacred city and all its religious associations; but he never forgot his home, and, like most of his countrymen who have been educated under the shadow of the Vatican, he came back as ardent an American as he went away.
After completing his studies with brilliant success, and sustaining a public defence of two hundred and fifty-six propositions in theology, church history, and canon law against the most formidable adversaries Rome could send to the encounter (a highly interesting description of which intellectual tilt is given by Bp. England), he returned to Kentucky with the title of doctor, and was made pastor of the Cathedral at Bardstown and professor of philosophy in the seminary. His keen appreciation of the peculiar needs of the American Church is illustrated by the zeal with which he immediately entered into the scheme of his associates in the seminary for the establishment of a Catholic periodical. The S. Joseph's College Minerva, to which he became the principal contributor, was a monthly magazine, which lived for about a year, and was then succeeded, in 1835, by the weekly Catholic Advocate, of which Dr. Spalding was chief editor, with Fathers Elder, Deluynes, and Clark for his assistants.
"With Americans, Dr. Spalding used to say, newspaper reading is a passion which amounts to a national characteristic. In the Propaganda the American students were proverbial for their eagerness to get hold of journals, whether religious or secular. Now, he argued, this craving must be satisfied. If we do not furnish our people with wholesome food, they will devour that which is noxious. He believed the American people to be frank, honest, and open to conviction. Their dislike or hatred of the church he ascribed to misapprehension or ignorance of her history and teachings. Hence he believed that if the truth were placed before them plainly, simply, and fearlessly, it could not fail to make a favorable impression upon them. He therefore thought that to the Catholic press in the United States had been given a providential mission of the greatest importance.
"Americans have not time, or will not take the trouble, as a general thing, to read heavy books of controversy. Comparatively few Protestants ever enter our churches, and, even when there, everything seems strange, and the sermon intended for Catholics most frequently fails to tell upon those who have not faith. And yet we must reach the non-Catholic mind. 'The charity of Christ urges us.' Apathy means want of faith, want of hope, want of love. Besides, the church must act intellectually as well as morally. If it is her duty to wrestle ever with the corrupt tendencies of the human heart, to point to heaven when men seek to see only this earth, to utter the indignant protest of the outraged soul when they would fain believe themselves only animals, it is not less a part of her divine mission to combat the intellectual errors of the world. We observe in the history of the church that periods of intellectual activity are almost invariably characterized by moral earnestness and religious zeal. On the other hand, when ignorance invades even the sanctuary, and priests forget to love knowledge, the blood of Christ flows sluggishly through the veins of his spouse, and to the eyes of men she seems to lose something of her divine comeliness. Indeed, there is an essential connection between the thoughts of a people and their actions, especially in an age like ours; and, if we suffer a sectarian and infidel press to control the intellect of the country, our words will fall dead and meaningless upon the hearts of our countrymen."
The Catholic press of America was then in its infancy, yet Catholic controversies were assuming a great importance. The Hughes and Breckinridge discussion was raging in Philadelphia. Protestantism, alarmed apparently at the rapid progress of the American Church, was everywhere assuming an attitude of aggression, and the country was on the eve of one of those periodical outbursts of anti-Catholic bigotry which seem fated to disturb every now and then the course of national politics. Dr. Spalding was fully sensible of the wants of the day. He wrote frequently to the Propaganda of the condition of the American Catholic press and his efforts to extend its influence and direct its attacks. His pen was incessantly busy. Though he was personally one of the most amiable and peaceful of men, he allowed no assault upon the faith to pass unnoticed; and his life for some years was almost an incessant battle. The Advocate, the United States Catholic Magazine, the Catholic Cabinet, the Metropolitan, were all enriched by his contributions. He was one of the editors of the Metropolitan for several years, and, after the death of the Advocate, he founded the Louisville Guardian, for which he continued to write until it was suspended in consequence of the troubles of the civil war. Dr. Spalding well knew that, next to a newspaper, his countrymen loved a speech. He resolved that this passion also should be turned to the advantage of the church. Bp. Flaget had removed his cathedral from Bardstown to Louisville, and Dr. Spalding, being called thither as vicar-general in 1844, began a series of popular evening lectures with the co-operation of the Rev. John McGill, afterward Bishop of Richmond. So great was the interest aroused by these discourses, and so great the crowd of Protestants who flocked to hear them, that the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist preachers of the city united in a "Protestant League," to counteract the influence of the priests by a series of lectures on the abominations of Popery. The result, of course, was exactly the reverse of what they expected. The weekly throng at the cathedral became greater than ever. The lectures assumed a more distinctly controversial character. The Catholics were roused to greater ambition. For three years Dr. Spalding continued his lectures every Sunday evening during the winter months, composing thus the essays which he afterwards revised and published under the title of Evidences of Catholicity. In a very short time he was recognized as one of the foremost Catholic apologists of the day, holding very nearly the same position which Bp. England had occupied before him, and in which the late Abp. Hughes was so highly distinguished in Philadelphia and during the earlier part of his career in New York. Dr. Spalding, however, was less of a polemic than either of those great men. His comprehension of the popular wants amounted almost to an instinct, and he felt that the objections to the church which were then commonest rested rather upon historical and political than doctrinal prejudices, and that the great work of the Catholic apologist was to dispel the ignorance of Protestants respecting the faith of the middle ages, the alliance of church and state, the influence of the Papacy upon civilization, and the harmony between Catholicity and republicanism.
"An American, he knew his countrymen, and admired them; a Catholic, he loved his religion, and was convinced of its truth. That, in his person, between faith and patriotism there was no conflict, was manifest. He loved his country all the more because he was a Catholic, and he was all the sincerer Catholic because no mere human authority was brought to influence the free offering of his soul to God's service. He accepted with cheerful courage the position in which God had placed his church in this young republic, and he asked for her, not privilege or protection, but justice, common rights under the common law; and such was his confidence in God, and in the truth of his cause, that he had no doubt as to the final issue of the struggle of religion, free and untrammelled, with the prejudices of a people who, however erroneous and mistaken their views might be, were still fair-minded and generous. Admiring much in the past, he still did not think that all was lost because that past was gone. Let the old, he thought, the feeble, the impotent complain; those to whom God gives youth and strength must act; and the church is ever young and ever strong. God is infinite strength, and of this attribute, as of his others, his spouse participates. If the latest word of philosophy, both in metaphysics and natural science, is force; if the old theory of inertia has been dropped, since the power of analysis has shown that everywhere there is action, motion, force, let it be so. The church, too, is strength. She has a force and an energy of her own. Daughter of heaven, she has brought on earth some of that divine efficacy by which all things were made. Christ is the strength of God, and from his cross he poured into the heart of his spouse, together with his life-blood, his godlike power....
"Without entering into the complex and delicate question of the proper relations of the church and state, he accepted the actual position of the church in this country with thankfulness and without mental reservation. In this matter, he neither blamed the past nor sought to dictate to the future, but put his hand to the work which God had placed before him. He saw all that was to be done, and, without stopping to reflect how little he could do, he began at once to do what he could. Taking a moderate, and possibly a just, estimate of his own ability, he considered that his mission as a writer and public teacher demanded that he should be useful and practical rather than original or profound. Hence he neither wrote nor spoke for posterity, but for the generation in which he lived. His first aim was to remove the prejudices which false history and a perverted literature had created in the minds of his countrymen. The influence of the church on society, on civilization, and on civil liberty was wholly misunderstood; her services in the cause of learning, of art, and of commerce were ignored; her undying love for the poor and the oppressed were forgotten."
During the Know-Nothing excitement, which culminated after his elevation to the episcopate (he had been consecrated coadjutor to the Bishop of Louisville in 1848, and succeeded to the see in 1850), Bp. Spalding's course was remarkable alike for prudence, charity, and courage. He used all his influence during the riots in Louisville to restrain the pardonable anger of the Catholic population; and it is the testimony of one who knew him intimately that during those trying days, when Catholics were murdered or driven from the city, and houses were burned, and the mob was threatening to destroy the cathedral, "he manifested a more than usual peace of mind. He spent the greater part of his moments of leisure in the sanctuary in prayer, and seemed through communion with God to grow unconscious of the trouble which men were seeking to bring upon the church, and which he could not but feel most keenly." His only great share in the published controversies of the period was a discussion with the late Prof. Morse as to the authenticity of an anti-Catholic phrase attributed to Lafayette—a dispute which attracted a great deal of notice while it lasted, although, of course, the subject was not of permanent interest. This, we say, was his only direct share in the polemical literature of that day; but his collection of Miscellanea, which appeared in 1855, answered all the purposes of a formal discussion without assuming a controversial tone. The essays and reviews comprised in this book were written, says the biographer, in "a free, off-hand, straight-forward style, peculiarly suited to the American taste. They covered the whole ground of what was then the Catholic controversy in the United States, and, by facts resting upon unexceptionable testimony, by arguments which appeal at once to the good sense and fair-mindedness of the reader, and by the whole spirit and temper in which they are written, furnish a defence of the church, as against the attacks of her accusers, the strength of which could not be easily broken." Bp. Spalding had none of the ambition of a scholar or a man of letters. He cared nothing for literary reputation. He set no store by the graces of a polished style. He wrote for present effect, and not for future fame; and if his essays could be read and discussed while they were wet from the press, he had no particular desire that they should hold a place on the library shelves of posterity. Whatever he wrote had an occasional—we might almost say an evanescent—appearance, because his sole impulse in writing was some immediate want of the American church. His pen was powerful, because it was always employed on timely themes, and he had a wonderfully happy art of suiting his style to the tastes and capacities of his readers. With all his scholarship and culture, he spent no great pains upon learned research, simply because he knew that, under the circumstances in which he was placed, such pains would be wasted. His books, however, will long survive the generation for which they were written; and his History of the Protestant Reformation especially, though it is ostensibly nothing more than a caustic review of D'Aubigné and other Protestant writers, is universally esteemed as one of the most valuable works in American Catholic literature.
If Dr. Spalding's single-hearted devotion to the church was conspicuous in his literary labors, it was still more remarkable in the other incidents of his busy career. The story of his life is one long record of untiring effort to advance the glory of the church and extend her conquests. The question of education always engrossed a great deal of his care. Soon after his consecration, he went to Europe to obtain the services of some teaching brotherhood, and succeeded in securing a community of Xaverians; and in the pastoral address which, as promoter of the First Provincial Council of Cincinnati, he was deputed to write to the clergy and laity of the province (1855), he spoke with great earnestness of the need of parochial schools; and time after time he returned to the subject, denouncing the system of godless education, and urging the faithful to fresh exertions and more generous expenditure for the religious instruction of their children. One result of his opposition to the common-school system was a vigorous controversy with George D. Prentice, of the Louisville Journal, in the course of which the bishop reviewed not only the Catholic position on the school question, but the whole dispute as to the bearing of Catholic principles upon the social and political conditions of the country. The foundation of the American College at Louvain was almost entirely his work. The American College at Rome found in him a firm and active friend. In the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore he proposed the establishment of a Catholic university in this country; and we certainly can never forget the affectionate interest which he manifested in the Catholic Publication Society, aiding it by his advice, his encouragement, and his earnest recommendation to the bishops and pastors of the country, and writing the first tract which appeared from its press.
After what we have said of his devotion to the church, and the enthusiasm with which he bent every energy to her service, it can hardly be necessary to explain with what dispositions he took his place in the Vatican Council. Strangely enough, however, his relations with that venerable assemblage have been somewhat misunderstood, and his biographer has been at commendable pains to remove all mistake and obscurity.