Yes, I know now. Through all that night, while the torches glared, and wrathful faces looked curses at me, and lips shouted them, ever through all I saw, as it were, One sinless but reputed with the wicked; stripped of his garments as I of my pride; made a spectacle to angels and to men; mocked, reviled, scourged, crucified; and through the wild tumult I heard a voice say, as of old to the repentant thief on the cross: “This day thou shalt be with me.” And through all my heart was answering to his most Sacred Heart, “I, indeed, justly; for I receive the due reward of my deeds: but this man hath done no evil.” How could I wish to be spared a single pang or lose one hour of shame with him? What part could any Christian take but to suffer with him, having made him suffer? And when one has said “with him,” one has explained all. But, somehow, people do not always seem to understand.
Understand? Ah! no. It is a story, not of two versions, but of many. Some called James Brent a fool, and some a madman, and some said he should have saved his honor and his name at all hazards; and some, that he had no right to entail such suffering on his household. But there is one light by which such stories should be read, that is truer than these. When time is gone, and wealth is dust, and earthly honor vanishes like smoke, then, by the standard of the cross of Christ, wealth, and pomp, and pleasure, and business shall be duly tried. Shun humiliation here as we will, there shall be after this the judgment, when the Prince of Glory, who pronounces final sentence, will be he who, while on earth, chose for his portion a life of suffering and a death of shame.
ANTI-CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES.
Like commercial panics, periodical outbursts of irreligious fanaticism seem to have become regular incidents in the history of the United States—occurrences to be looked for with as much certainty as if they were the natural outgrowth of our civilization and the peculiarly-constituted condition of American society. Though springing from widely different causes, these intermittent spasms have a marked resemblance in their deleterious effects on our individual welfare and national reputation. Both are demoralizing and degrading in their tendencies, and each, in its degree, finally results in the temporary gain of a few to the lasting injury and debasement of the multitude. In other respects they differ materially. Great mercantile reverses and isolated acts of peculation, unfortunately, are not limited to one community or to the growth of any particular system of polity, but are as common and as frequent in despotic Asia and monarchical Europe as in republican America. Popular ebullitions of bigotry, on the contrary, are, or, more correctly, ought to be, confined to those countries where ignorance and intolerance usurp the place of enlightened philanthropy and wise government. They are foreign to the spirit of American institutions, hostile to the best interests of society, and a curse to those who tolerate or encourage them. The brightest glory of the fathers of the republic springs, not so much from the fact that they separated the colonies from the mother country and founded a new nation—for that is nothing strange or unheard-of in the world’s history—but that they made its three millions of inhabitants free as well as independent: free not only from unjust taxation and arbitrary laws, but for ever free to worship their Creator according to the dictates of their conscience, unawed by petty authority and unaffected by the shifting counsels of subsequent legislators.
From this point of view the Revolution appears as one of the grandest moral events in the records of human progress; and when we reflect on the numerous pains, penalties, and restrictions prescribed by the charters and by-laws of the colonies from whence our Union has sprung, it challenges our most profound admiration and gratitude. This complete religious equality, guaranteed by our fundamental law, has ever been the boast of every true American citizen, at home and abroad. From the halls of Congress to the far Western stump-meeting we hear it again and again enunciated; it is repeated by a thousand eloquent tongues on each recurring anniversary of our independence, and is daily and weekly trumpeted throughout the length and breadth of the land by the myriad-winged Mercuries of the press. This freedom of worship, freedom of conscience, and legal equality, as declared and confirmed by our forefathers, has become, in fact, not only the written but also the common law of the land—the birthright of every native-born American, the acquired, but no less sacred, privilege of every citizen by adoption. Whoever now attempts to disturb or question it, by word or act, disgraces his country in the eyes of all mankind, and defiles the memory of our greatest and truest heroes and statesmen.
So powerful, indeed, were the example and teachings of those wise men who laid broad and deep the foundations of our happy country that, during the first half-century of our national existence, scarcely a voice was raised in opposition or protest against the principle of religious liberty as emphatically expressed in the first amendment to the Constitution. A whole generation had to pass away ere fanaticism dared to raise its crest, until the solemn guarantees of our federal compact were assailed by incendiary mobs and scouted by so-called courts of justice. The first flagrant instance of this fell spirit of bigotry happened in Massachusetts, and naturally was directed against an institution of Catholic learning.
In 1820 four Ursuline nuns arrived in Boston and established there a house of their order. Six years later they removed to the neighboring village of Charlestown, where they purchased a piece of ground, and, calling it Mt. St. Benedict, erected a suitable building and reduced the hitherto barren hill-side to a state of beautiful cultivation. In 1834 the community had increased to ten, all ladies of thorough education and refinement. From the very beginning their success as teachers was acknowledged and applauded, and their average attendance of pupils was computed at from fifty to sixty. Of these, at least four-fifths were Protestants, the daughters of the best American families, not only of New England, but of the Middle and Southern States. Though it was well known that the nuns had ever been most scrupulously careful not to meddle with the religious opinions of their scholars, and that not one conversion to the church could be ascribed to their influence, the fact that a school conducted by Catholic religious should have acquired so brilliant a reputation, and that its patrons were principally Protestants of high social and political standing, was considered sufficient in the eyes of the Puritan fanatics to condemn it.
Its destruction was therefore resolved on, and an incident, unimportant in itself, occurred in the summer of 1834 which was eagerly seized upon by the clerical adventurers who then, as now, disgraced so many sectarian pulpits. It appears that an inmate of the convent, a Miss Harrison, had, from excessive application to music, become partially demented, and during one of her moments of hallucination left the house and sought refuge with some friends. Her brother, a Protestant, having heard of her flight, accompanied by Bishop Fenwick, brought her back to the nunnery, to her own great satisfaction and the delight of the sisterhood. This trifling domestic affair was eagerly taken up by the leaders of the anti-Catholic faction and magnified into monstrous proportions. The nuns, it was said, had not only driven an American lady to madness, but had immured her in a dungeon, and, upon her attempting to escape, had, with the connivance of the bishop and priests, actually tortured her to death. Falsehoods even more diabolical were invented and circulated throughout Boston. The following Sunday the Methodist and Congregational churches rang again with denunciations against Popery and nunneries, while one self-styled divine, a Dr. Beecher, the father of a numerous progeny of male and female evangelists, some of whom have since become famous in more senses than one, preached no less than three sermons in as many different churches on the abominations of Rome. All the bigotry of Boston and the adjacent towns was aroused to the highest pitch of frenzy, and threats against the convent were heard on every side.
To pacify the public mind the selectmen of Charlestown, on the following day, the memorable 11th of August, appointed a committee to examine into the truth of the charges. They waited on the nuns, and were received by Miss Harrison, who was alleged to have been foully murdered. Under her personal guidance they searched every part of the convent and its appurtenances, till, becoming thoroughly satisfied with the falsity of the reports, they retired to draw up a statement to that effect for publication in the newspapers. This was what the rabble dreaded, and, as soon as the intention of the committee became known, the leaders resolved to forestall public sentiment by acting at once.