Besides the ordinary labor of preaching and hearing the
confessions of a multitude of people, it was necessary to search
out the people themselves, and bring them to church to hear the
sermons. At that time, the Southern towns received the
_débris_ of foreign emigration, and were filled during the
winter months by a loose floating population of Northern
laborers, who were without employment at home.
{149}
Hence, there was a larger proportion than elsewhere of the most
degenerate and demoralised class of Catholics, living in complete
neglect of their religious and moral duties, and beyond the reach
of the ordinary ministrations of the Church. Savannah has several
suburbs and purlieus, rejoicing in the names of Yammacraw,
Robertsville, and Old Fort, crowded with squalid hovels,
drinking-shops, sailors' boarding-houses, and dens of thieves and
smugglers, representing in a small way the scenes which Dickens
delights in describing. A mission in the cathedral might be given
ten times over, and the news of it never reach the denizens of
these places. Accordingly, the missionaries divided the several
districts between them, and undertook to beat up the quarters of
sin, vice, and misery, in the hope of rescuing some of these
forlorn and abandoned souls. It would hardly be safe for any one
but a Catholic priest to undertake such a work, especially in the
evening, and certainly no one else would have any hope of
success. The work was done, however, very thoroughly, and, in
consequence, the church was crowded by that class of persons who
were in most need of a mission, and who had never been reached
before. An immediate and extensive reformation was the result.
The grog-shops were deserted, which before were filled from
morning until late at night, the sound of cursing and quarrelling
was hushed, the darker deeds of sin ceased, and the great mass of
these poor, lost souls began to listen to the eternal truths, and
to seek for the way that would bring them back to God. Many,
engaged in dishonest practices, abandoned their unlawful traffic,
and made restitution of their ill-gotten gains. Great numbers of
those who had abandoned the sacraments, and even ceased going to
church, for ten, twenty, or thirty years, came with great fervor
and earnestness to confession. Some of the poor slaves also, as
well Methodists as those who were Catholics, attended eagerly on
the instructions of the mission.
{150}
One old Methodist negress was asked by her mistress, or some one
else who noticed her constant attendance, if she liked the
mission; to which she replied: "Oh, Lor! yes, missus; I'se bound
to be there, if I can get only one eye in, every time." Another
grown-up slave girl, who had never been baptized, was most
anxious to receive baptism, and induced her mistress to ask me to
baptize her. I was very reluctant to do it, fearing lest she
might not be sufficiently instructed and prepared in her moral
dispositions to begin a really Christian life, without a longer
probation; and therefore refused to baptize her during the
mission. After the last sermon she went nearly frantic, and made
loud exclamations that she wished to be taken out of the devil's
hands, and the father would not do it, but was going away,
leaving her in his power. Touched by her entreaties, and finding
that her mistress had taught her the rudiments of the catechism,
I instructed her for some days, and endeavored to impress upon
her mind especially, that if she wished for the graces of baptism
and the friendship of God, she must renounce all sin and live a
good and holy life. So fearful was she that she might sin, and
receive baptism unworthily, that for a day before her baptism she
would not speak a word to any person, not even her mistress. She
refused to speak even when she was asked about her sponsors and
her baptismal dress, and her whole demeanor at her baptism was
like that of one oppressed with the most intense sentiment of
religious awe, and of the sacredness of the promises she was
making to God. It is not to be supposed that every bad Catholic
was reformed, or that, of those who were really brought to a
resolution to mend their lives, all of them persevered. The
hydra-headed monster of vice is not killed by a blow, nor can we
hope ever to exterminate sin by any means, even those which have
a divine efficacy. It is a continual warfare which we have to
wage, by both spiritual and moral weapons, which the free will
can always resist.
{151}
God alone has coercive power over the spirit of man, and He will
not exert it to compel him to obey His law. Temptations to sin
ever beset the human will, especially in a corrupt, irreligious,
and immoral state of society. The Catholic Church is not intended
to be a society of saints who have already attained perfection,
but a training and reformatory school for the human race. It has
no means of charming or mesmerizing the human will into sanctity,
and its gracious influences do not supersede the struggle for
life which exists in the spiritual as in the natural world. It
has all the means of sanctifying the human race, and of elevating
men to the summit of possible human virtue, limited only by the
extent to which the free human will co-operates with grace. It
must actually produce these results on a great scale, in order to
prove that it is the Church; because God would not have created
it for this purpose, foreseeing its essential failure to fulfil
its work and attain its predestined end. It is easy enough to
show that the Church possesses this note of sanctity, correctly
understood in this way. But it is perfectly true also that the
free-will of man, by its failure and perversion, hinders the
Church to a vast extent from exhibiting its regenerating and
sanctifying power. Great numbers of individuals in the Catholic
Church live and act in contradiction to their faith, neglect or
abuse the means of grace, and dishonor religion by their conduct.
The only means which the Church has of contending with this evil,
and reclaiming these unworthy members from a sinful life, are
moral means, acting on the mind and conscience. Missions are
among the most powerful and efficacious of these means, and their
efficacy is shown, not in eradicating sin, or liberating human
nature from its intrinsic liability and propensity to sin, but in
checking and counteracting its violence, and reclaiming a great
number of individuals from its influence.
{152}
If they actually do this, if they have a perceptible influence in
reforming and renovating the demoralised portion of the Catholic
community, heightening the restraining power of faith and
conscience among the mass of the people, and producing many
permanent fruits in the increase of piety and morality, they are
successful, and their value is established. It is beyond a
question that they do this to an extent which can only be
understood by those who are engaged in them, or who have studied
their working on a grand scale.
To return to the Savannah mission. I had a good opportunity to
judge of its permanent fruits when, two years afterward, I
returned there, and went through the same quarters of the town
where we had gone to drum up the people to the mission, in making
a collection for the new congregation of St. Paul. Many of the
very poorest dwellings I found neat and orderly; the pious
pictures blessed during the mission hanging upon the walls; the
children clean and tidy; sometimes an old man sitting at the
door, reading the mission-book; the wives and mothers evidently
cheerful and contented, the best sign that their husbands were
sober and kind; the expressions of grateful remembrance of the
mission warm and frequent; the signs of moral improvement
everywhere, and the church crowded on Sunday.
It is not to be supposed that the body of the Catholic
congregation of Savannah were like this lowest class I have
described. I have dwelt more minutely on their condition, and the
good done among them, mainly because the small comparative size
of the place, and the thorough visitation which was made, brought
us into a more close contact with their miseries, and enabled us
to see more clearly what can be done to relieve them, than is
usually the case. I have wished to show what the hardest and most
repulsive part of the work of the missionary is, and to give a
true picture of the nature and efficacy of the means used to
raise up and reform and save the most demoralised class of the
Catholic population throughout the country, and especially in the
large towns, where this class is most numerous.
{153}
I wish, also, before resuming the particular narrative of F.
Baker's life, to show what was the work for which he left the
ease and elegance and attractive charm of his earlier position as
an Episcopalian clergyman, fulfilling the light duty of reading
prayers and preaching quiet, well-written, polished discourses
for the _élite_ of Baltimore society.
The mass of the people who were brought to the mission in
Savannah by the personal visits of the fathers had never been
seen in the church previously. They were the _débris_ that
the tide of emigration had deposited there, and many of them only
chance-residents of the town.
The ordinary church-going congregation contained, as usual, its
very large proportion of Easter communicants, with a smaller but
still numerous class of devout and fervent Catholics who
approached the sacraments frequently. The majority of them
belonged to the humbler walks of life, although there were a
considerable number whose position in worldly society was more
elevated.
F. Baker arrived in Savannah, when the mission was about half
over, and took his share in the labor of preaching and hearing
confessions. At the close of it, after a few days' rest, three of
the missionaries, of whom he was one, commenced a series of
missions in one part of the diocese, and the two others began
another which embraced the smaller parishes. The smaller band
went to Macon, Columbus, and Atlanta, rejoining their companions
subsequently at Charleston. As F. Baker went in another
direction, I shall confine myself to the narrative of the
missions in which he was engaged, and pass over the others,
merely pausing for a moment to notice a letter written by a
Protestant gentleman in Macon, to the _United States Catholic
Miscellany_, of Charleston, as an evidence of the impression
often made by missions upon the minds of candid and intelligent
Protestants. The letter is as follow's:--
{154}
"In company with many of our most distinguished citizens, I
have had the pleasure of hearing most of the sermons delivered,
and witnessing the accompanying exercises connected with their
mission, and but express the united and universal sentiment
entertained, when I say that they were exceedingly interesting
and instructive, and have served to dissipate many of the
vulgar prejudices that hung like a mist upon the public mind,
and, like a cold-damp, mildewed reason and honest judgment.
Sufficient testimony of this result may be found in the fact
that a number of Protestant gentlemen called upon Mr. Walworth
yesterday, and urgently requested him to deliver one more
sermon before his departure, which he consented to do this
evening. I would send you a copy of the correspondence, but it
would be too voluminous for the brevity of this letter; suffice
it to say it was complimentary, no less in the act itself than
in the manner in which the request was conveyed.
"I must take this occasion of expressing my gratification at
the result adverted to, for though I am not a member, nor ever
have been, of the Catholic Church, its piety and religious
principles--the purity, integrity, ability, learning, and
eloquence of its teachers and preachers--the bright links of
patience, endurance, and fidelity, by which it is held to the
early ages of Christianity--its unity of action, consistency of
precept and practice, and conformity of theory and doctrine, as
well as the great lights of intellect that have shed lustre
upon it in the past and present--men whose genius has elevated
them above the gloom of dying centuries to overflow history
with glory--these have commended the Catholic Church favorably
to my judgment; and regarding its onward progress and
increasing popularity with no jaundiced sectarian eye or
jealous faction-spirit, but with the extension of civilization
and Christianity--I feel the pressure of no petty, vulgar
prejudice in wishing it, with all other Christian
organizations, 'God speed;' and if this sentiment be in
hostility with Protestantism, as for myself and it I say,
'perish the connection'--'live' the enlightened liberality and
intelligence of civilized and educated man.
"Yours, very truly, etc.
"Macon, _December_ 31, 1856."
{155}
From Savannah, F. Baker, with two companions, went to give a
mission in Augusta. On the pages of the Mission Records several
interesting incidents of this mission are related. On the first
Sunday morning of the mission, three gentlemen called on the
fathers, all of whom, it appeared, were converts. One of them was
called Dr. W. B., the second, his nephew, Dr. M., and the third
was the overseer of Dr. B.'s plantation. This Dr. B. had been
received into the Catholic Church some months previously, and had
entered a Catholic church for the first time that morning. He was
a man of fine and genteel appearance, with gray hair and a long,
black beard, an intelligent and educated physician. So great was
his excitement, and so wonderful did every thing which he saw
that may appear through the magnifying glass of his imagination,
that on his return home that night, at eleven o'clock, he awoke
his brother and made him get up and light a fire, that he might
relate the events of the day. As a sample of the proportion in
which he viewed the whole, it may suffice to say that he
described one of the fathers as seven and a-half feet high--at
least six inches taller than the Georgia giant. The brother
alluded to, also a physician and planter, made his appearance a
day or two later. He was quite an elderly gentleman, with an
intelligent countenance and a magnificent patriarchal beard. A
painter could not find a better head for an Apostle, or for one
of the ancient Bishops or Fathers of the Church than his. He was
a man with an intellect like Brownson's, and full of information.
He became a Catholic a few years ago from reading Brownson's
Review. Since that time he has been a great champion of the
Church, and, through his influence, his own family, his brother
and sister, his nephew and some others, have also been converted.
{156}
One of the latter was then residing in Dr. B.'s own family, and
was leading a most remarkably penitential life. This gentleman (a
Mr. S.), of high birth and education, was formerly a lawyer, and
a married man of large property. He was renowned for his courage,
and had fought with one of the most celebrated duellists of South
Carolina, named R. This gentleman lost his property and was
abandoned by his wife. About seven years before he had become a
Catholic, he lived for a considerable time with his brother, an
unprincipled and ferocious man, who scarcely allowed him a bare
pittance. He was dressed in rags, was barefooted, and lived on
bread which he baked himself.
After a few years, when Dr. B. had become a Catholic, and opened
a small chapel on his own plantation, Mr. S. appeared there one
day at Mass in his miserable plight. Dr. R. invited him to stay
with him, and gave him a small office to live in, and all other
things requisite for his comfort. Here he had been living ever
since, leading the life of a saint, and passing a great portion
of his time in reading Catholic books, especially Brownson's
Review, which he knew almost by heart. The Doctor said that the
only thing which could excite his anger, was to hear anyone speak
against Brownson, or contradict any thing he says. As an instance
of his penance, I will relate how, according to Dr. B.'s account,
he attempted to pass one Lent. He had been reading the Lives of
the Fathers of the Desert, and he endeavored to imitate their
example precisely and to the letter. His whole food consisted of
a small quantity of bread, and during the last three days he
wanted to fast entirely, but Dr. B. threatened that, if he did,
he would send a little negro for Father B., to excommunicate him.
He was wasted to a skeleton, and did not recover the effects of
his fasting for six months afterward.
{157}
On one occasion, Mr. S. found a poor, sick negro, with no one to
attend him, and not contented with waiting on him and taking care
of him, as he was constantly in the habit of doing for all the
sick within several miles' distance, he washed his feet, and, for
want of a towel, wiped them with his pocket-handkerchief. It was
necessary to watch him, lest he might give away his clothes to
the negroes and when he needed new clothes, they were put
secretly in his way, and the old ones removed.
Others in this neighborhood, who were not yet Catholics, were so
well disposed that they had their children baptized. Edgefield
and the country round about was formerly celebrated for the
lawless and violent character of the population, for the
frequency of murders, and for the bitter prejudice existing
against the Catholic Church; so much so, that a priest could not
obtain the Court-House to preach in. When the elder Dr. B. became
a Catholic, Dr. W. B. declared that he would burn up his wife and
children and his whole house before they should become Catholics,
and any priest who should chance to come near him. Another
gentleman, since a convert, said that, if one of his children
should become a Catholic, he would take him by the heels and dash
out his brains against a stone wall. Dr. M., when he went to
study medicine with his uncle, the elder Dr. B., made a vow that
he would never enter the chapel and never desert the faith of his
fathers; and his parents told him on leaving home that, if he
became a Catholic, he should never cross the Savannah River again
or see their faces. After some months, he became silent and
melancholy. For a while he concealed the cause, but at last, one
evening he told his aunt that he could hold out no longer, and
was a Catholic at heart. Shortly after receiving his medical
diploma, he determined to renounce the practice of medicine, and
has recently been ordained to the priesthood.
{158}
At Edgefield a lot of seven acres was purchased in the middle of
the town, for a church, to be built of brown stone, in the Gothic
style. Five gentlemen had already subscribed sixteen hundred
dollars for the church, and Father B. was collecting for the same
purpose. There was a general inclination throughout the whole
town to embrace the Catholic faith, and already there is a small
band of the best Catholics in the country there--souls that have
been led by the great God Himself, by the wonderful ways of His
most holy grace. Dr. B. has since died, and what has been the
fate of the little congregation, and of the beautiful church
which was commenced, during the troubles and miseries of the
civil war, I know not. They have not, however, hindered the
Catholics of Augusta from completing and paying for a large and
costly church, the successor of a very good and commodious
edifice of brick where the mission was given.
After leaving Augusta, we went to Savannah once more, and on the
29th of January went on board the little steamer Gen. Clinch,
which was afterward turned into a gunboat during the civil war,
to begin our voyage by the inland route to St. Augustine,
Florida. This inland route has some peculiar and picturesque
features. The steamer passes down the Savannah River, with its
banks lined with the green and gold orange trees, until, near the
mouth, it turns into its proper route, leading through a
succession of small sounds, connected by narrow, serpentine
rivers, where you seem to be sailing over the meadows, usually in
sight of the ocean, and quite often aground for some hours at a
time. The steamer was very small and very crowded, our progress
very leisurely and interrupted by several long stoppages, so that
our voyage was protracted for five days. It is seldom that a more
motley or singular and amusing group of passengers is collected
in a small cabin.
{159}
Besides the three Catholic priests, who were to the others the
greatest curiosities on board, we had an army lieutenant, since
then the commander of a _corps d'armée_ in the great civil
war, an old wizard who was consulting his familiar spirits
incessantly for the amusement or information of the passengers; a
plantation doctor, a wild young Arkansas lawyer of the
fire-eating type, a professor of mathematics, a crotchety,
good-humored New York farmer, with very peculiar religious
opinions, a young man who professed himself a universal sceptic,
two or three gentlemen of education and polished manners, who
were not at all singular, but appeared quite so in such an odd
assemblage; and some others in no way remarkable. The cramped
accommodations, the long voyage, and the usual _bonhommie_
which prevails on such occasions were well fitted to draw out all
the oddities and idiosyncrasies of the company. The spiritualist,
who was an uneducated and uncouth specimen of humanity, with a
great deal of native shrewdness, and a good-humored, loquacious
disposition, was the center of attraction. The professor and the
philosophical farmer engaged with him in a long and earnest
discussion of spiritualism, which ended in his exhibiting his
powers as a consulter of the spirits. Most of the passengers made
trial of his skill in this respect, although his performance was
the most patent of silly impostures, only amusing from its
absurdity. The professor tried him sorely by asking him a
question which seemed to have caused himself many an hour of
anxious and fruitless thought, and which he appeared to despair
of solving metaphysically: "Can God annihilate space?" The old
gentleman's spirit did not appear to have investigated this
question to his own complete satisfaction, for he gave him no
positive answer. He was silent for a moment, with a puzzled look,
evidently fearing a trap, and at last answered, "I don't know,
but I guess He could if He tried; He made it, and I guess He
could annihilate it." Just as the professor was going to retire
to his berth, the old man took revenge by telling him that he had
just been informed by the spirits that one of his children was
sick of scarlet fever. The wizard left the boat at Brunswick, but
as the conversation had taken a religious and philosophical turn
at first, it continued in that direction, the two individuals
before mentioned being the principal interlocutors.
{160}
We did not join much in it, as it was evidently distasteful to
several of the company, who wished to read quietly or converse on
ordinary topics. Before we parted, however, one of our number
took the opportunity which offered itself of having a little
pleasant and rational discussion with the professor and one or
two others, who were really intelligent and well-informed. On New
Year's Day we remained several hours at St. Mary's, Georgia,
where we found the mayor of the place to be a Catholic gentleman,
of Acadian descent, and were hospitably entertained at his house.
The boat passed the night at Fernandina, and the next day we went
out of the St. Mary's River, across a short and dangerous stretch
of ocean between a line of breakers and the shore, into the St.
John's, and up that romantic river, so full of historical
associations. Friday evening saw us befogged above Jacksonville,
and on Saturday morning we learned to our dismay that our captain
was going past our landing, and on to Pilatka, which would keep
us on board his miserable little craft until the next week, and
prevent the opening of the mission on the Sunday. Touching for a
few moments at Fleming's Island, we found friends at the little
dock, who were passing the winter on the island, and who informed
us that we could go from there that afternoon to our destination.
We debarked accordingly, our friend the professor in company with
us, and were refreshed with a good breakfast at the hotel where
our friends were lodging, and a stroll around the little island.
On the arrival of the steamer, the whole party went on board and
proceeded to Picolata, where we took stage-coaches for St.
Augustine, arriving there on Saturday evening. About halfway
between Picolata and St. Augustine there is a post-house, where,
in the last Florida War with the Seminole Indians, a party of
travelling actors were surprised and murdered by Indians, who
dressed themselves in their fantastic costumes, and in that guise
made a hostile demonstration in the neighborhood of St.
Augustine.
{161}