With this truth well rooted in our minds, we will now turn to the

investigation of some of those impressions to which we referred at the

beginning of this section, and endeavor to throw light upon them from out

of the additional knowledge we acquire of the nature and characteristics

of the divine Being through the simple process of clearing away some

of our false impressions with respect to time. We had in our modes of

thought more or less hemmed in the Eternal, with our human sense of time,

and subjected even him to the narrowing process of a past, present, and

future. Now we are about to think of ourselves only in that position, and

to contemplate him in eternity, dealing with us through the medium of

time, but distinctly with a reference to eternity, and only apparently

imposing on himself the conditions of time in order to bring himself, as

it were, on a level with us in his dealings with us.

Strange as it may appear, out of the depths of our stupidity we have

fabricated a difficulty to ourselves in his very condescensions, and,

looking back from our present to the past, we find ourselves puzzled at

certain divers revelations of God made to mankind in gone-by times; just

as, in the weakness of our faith, we are sometimes troubled with doubts

about our own condition, and that of those about us, in that future which

must come, and which may not be far off to any one of us.

The God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob--is he really quite the same as

our own God? our God of the womb of Mary, of the manger, of the wayside

places in Palestine, and Mount Calvary, and now, of the silken-curtained

Tabernacle, and the Blessed Eucharist, and the dear, ineffable moments of

silent prayer--is he the same?

Of course we know that, literally and absolutely, he is the same

yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Nevertheless, he appears to us

under such different aspects that we find ourselves unintentionally

contemplating the Old Testament as a revelation of the divine Being with

very different emotions from those with which we contemplate him in the

New Testament, and this, again, differing widely from our view of him

in the church. It may be a mere matter of feeling, perhaps; but it is

nevertheless a feeling which materially influences our form of devotion,

the vigor of our faith, and the power of our hope and love.

If we could take in all these different impressions and amalgamate them;

if we could group them together, or make them like the several rays of

light directed into one focus, we should obtain a more complete and a

more influential knowledge of God than we can do while we seem rather to

be wandering out of one view of him into another, as if we walked from

chamber to chamber and closed each door behind us.

Now, the only way we can arrive at this is by bearing in mind that the

acts of God in governing the world are not momentary and solitary facts,

but continuous acts, or rather one continuous act.

Our difficulty lies in producing a visibly satisfactory harmony in our

own minds as regards the acts of God, and thus (though for our own

appreciation of them, they are to us broken up into fragments, or, in

other terms, into separate facts) arriving at the same mental attitude

towards them as though we saw them as one continuous act.

It will aid us in our search if we, first of all, endeavor to qualify

that act.

Its very continuity, its perpetual instantaneousness, must essentially

affect its character and make the definition no complex matter. It is an

act of love, and it is revealed as such in the whole creation, and in the

way God has let himself down to us and is drawing us up unto himself.

There have been many apparent modifications, but there have been no

actual contradictions, in this characteristic; for even the existence of

evil works round to greater good, to a degree sufficiently obvious to us

for us to know that where it is less obvious it must nevertheless follow

the same law. For law is everywhere; because God is law, though law is

not God.

Modern unbelief substitutes law for God, and then thinks it has done away

with him. To us who believe it makes no difference how far back in the

long continuous line of active forces we may find the original and divine

Author of all force. It is nothing but the weakness of our imagination

which makes it more difficult to count by millions than by units.

What does it matter to our faith through how many developments the

condition of creation, as we now see it all around us, may have passed,

when we know that the first idea sprang from the great Source of all law,

and that with him the present state is as much one continuous act as the

past state and the future state? You may trace back the whole material

universe, if you will, to the one first molecule of chaotic matter; but

so long as I find that first molecule in the hand of my Creator (and I

defy you to put it anywhere else), it is enough for my faith.

You do not make him one whit the less my Creator and my God because

an initial law or force, with which he then stamped it, has worked

it out to what I now see it. You may increase the apparent distance

between the world as it is actually and the divine Fount from whence

it sprang; you may seem to remove the creative love which called the

universe into existence further off, by thus lengthening the chain of

what you call developments; but, after all, these developments are for

ever bridged over by the ulterior intentions of the Triune Deity when

he said,“Let us make man in our image,” and by the fact that space and

time are mere accidents as viewed in relation to the QUI EST. They are,

so to speak, divinely-constituted conventionalities, through which the

Divinity touches upon our human condition, but which in no way affect

the Divine Essence as it is in itself. On the contrary, in the broken-up

developments and evolutions which you believe you trace, and which you

want to make into a blind law which shall supersede a divine Creator, I

see only the pulsations of time breaking up the perpetually instantaneous

act of God, just as I see the pulsations of light in the one unbroken

ray. The act of God passes through the medium of time before it reaches

our ken; and the ray of light passes through the medium of air before it

strikes our senses; but both are continuous and instantaneous.

If we have in any degree succeeded in establishing this to our

satisfaction, it will become easier for us to estimate the acts of God as

they come to us through the pulsations of Time; because we shall be able

to bear in mind that they must be in a measure interpreted to us by the

time through which they reach us. They were modified by the time in which

they were revealed, much as the ray is modified by the substance through

which it forces its way to us.

Now, we arrive at the causes of the different impressions we receive

of the nature and characteristics of the divine Being. They are a

consequence of the different epochs in which we contemplate him. They are

the pulsations appropriate to that epoch. Other pulsations belong to our

portion of time, and to our consequent view of the divine Being; and so

on and on, till time shall be swallowed up in Eternity, and the Beatific

Vision burst upon us.

TO BE CONTINUED.

MISSIONS IN MAINE FROM 1613 TO 1854.

“THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS IS THE SEED OF THE CHURCH.”

To the historical student the following paper can have but trifling

value, as the writer makes no pretension to originality of matter, and

seeks but to bring within the grasp of the general reader, in a condensed

form, the gist of many books, a large number of which are rare, and

almost inaccessible.

It is hoped, however, that there are many persons who will read with

interest a paper thus compiled from undoubted authorities, who have

neither the time nor the inclination to consult these authorities for

themselves. These persons will learn with wonder of the self-abnegation

of the French priests who went forth among the savages with their lives

in their hands, with but one thought in their brains, one wish in their

hearts, one prayer on their lips--the evangelization of the Indians.

As Shea says: “The word Christianity was, in those days, identical with

Catholicity. The religion to be offered to the New World was that of the

Church of Rome, which church was free from any distinct national feeling,

and in extending her boundaries carried her own language and rites, not

those of any particular state.”

The Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit bore the heat and burden of

the day, and reaped the most bountiful harvest in that part of North

America now known as the State of Maine; and the first mission in that

neighborhood was planted at Mt. Desert, and called St. Sauveur. A hotel

at Bar Harbor is so named, but not one in a hundred of the numerous

guests who cross its threshold knows the reason of the French name of

their temporary abiding-place.

This reason, and the facts connected therewith, we shall now proceed to

give to our readers. In 1610 Marie de Médicis was Regent of France. The

king had been assassinated in the streets of Paris in the previous month

of May. Sully was dismissed from court. All was confusion and dissension.

Twelve years of peace and the judicious rule of the king had paid the

national debt and filled the treasury.

The famous Father Cotton, confessor of the late king, was still powerful

at court. He laid before the queen the facts that Henri IV. had been

deeply interested in the establishment of the Jesuit order in Acadia, and

had evinced a tangible proof of that interest in the bestowal of a grant

of two thousand livres per annum.

The ambitious queen listened indulgently, with a heart softened,

possibly, by recent sorrows, and consented to receive the son of the

Baron Poutrincourt, who had just returned from the New World, where he

had left his father with Champlain. Father Cotton ushered the handsome

stripling into the presence of the stately queen and her attendant

ladies. Young Biencourt at first stood silent and abashed, but, as the

ladies gathered about him and plied him with questions, soon forgot

himself and told wondrous tales of the dusky savages--of their strange

customs and of their eagerness for instruction in the true faith. He

displayed the baptismal register of the converts of Father Fléche, and

implored the sympathy and aid of these glittering dames, and not in vain;

for, fired with pious emulation, they tore the flashing jewels from their

ears and throats. Among these ladies was one whose history and influence

were so remarkable that we must translate for our readers some account of

her from the Abbé de Choisy.

Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville had been famed throughout

France, not only for her grace and beauty, but for qualities more rare at

the court where her youth had been passed.

When Antoinette was La Duchesse de Rochefoucauld, the king begged her to

accept a position near the queen. “Madame,” he said, as he presented her

to Marie de Médicis, “I give you a Lady of Honor who is a lady of honor

indeed.”

Twenty years had come and gone. The youthful beauty of the _marquise_ had

faded, but she was fair and stately still, and one of the most brilliant

ornaments of the brilliant court; and yet she was not altogether worldly.

Again a widow and without children, she had become sincerely religious,

and threw herself heart and soul into the American missions, and was

restrained only by the positive commands of her mistress the queen from

herself seeking the New World.

Day and night she thought of these perishing souls. On her knees in her

oratory she prayed for the Indians, and contented herself not with this

alone. From the queen and from the ladies of the court she obtained

money, and jewels that could be converted into money. Charlevoix tells

us that the only difficulty was to restrain her ardor within reasonable

bounds.

Two French priests, Paul Biard and Enémond Massé, were sent to Dieppe,

there to take passage for the colonies. The vessel was engaged by

Poutrincourt and his associates, and was partially owned by two Huguenot

merchants, who persistently and with indignation refused to permit the

embarkation of the priests. No entreaties or representations availed, and

finally La Marquise bought out the interest of the two merchants in the

vessel and cargo, and transferred it to the priests as a fund for their

support.

At last the fathers set sail, on the 26th of January, 1611. Their

troubles, however, were by no means over; for Biencourt, a mere lad,

clothed in a little brief authority--manly, it is true, beyond his

years--hampered them at every turn. They arrived at Port Royal in June,

after a hazardous and tempestuous voyage, having seen, as Father Biard

writes, icebergs taller and larger than the Church of Notre Dame.

The fathers became discouraged by the constant interference of young

Biencourt, and determined to return to Europe, unless they could, with

Mme. de Guercheville’s aid, found a mission colony in some other spot.

Their zealous protectress obtained from De Monts--who, though a

Protestant, had erected six years before the first cross in Maine at

the mouth of the Kennebec--a transfer of all his claims to the lands of

Acadia, and soon sent out a small vessel with forty colonists, commanded

by La Saussaye, a nobleman, and having on board two Jesuit priests,

Fathers du Thet and Quentin.

It was on the 1st of March, 1613, that this vessel left Honfleur, laden

with supplies, and followed by prayers and benedictions.

On the 16th of May La Saussaye reached Port Royal, and there took on

board Fathers Massé and Biard, and then set sail for the Penobscot. A

heavy fog arose and encompassed them about; if it lifted for a moment,

it was but to show them a white gleam of distant breakers or a dark,

overhanging cliff.

“Our prayers were heard,” wrote Biard, “and at night the stars came out,

and the morning sun devoured the fogs, and we found ourselves lying in

Frenchmans Bay opposite Mt. Desert.”

L’Isle des Monts Déserts had been visited and so named by Champlain in

1604, and Frenchman’s Bay gained its title from a singular incident that

had there taken place in the same spring.

De Monts had broken up his winter encampment at St. Croix. Among his

company was a young French ecclesiastic, Nicholas d’Aubri, who, to

gratify his curiosity in regard to the products of the soil in this new

and strange country, insisted on being set ashore for a ramble of a few

hours. He lost his way, and the boatmen, after an anxious search, were

compelled to leave him. For eighteen days the young student wandered

through woods, subsisting on berries and the roots of the plant known as

Solomon’s Seal. He, however, kept carefully near the shore, and at the

end of this time he distinguished a sail in the distance. Signalling

this, he was fortunate enough to be taken off by the same crew that had

landed him. On these bleak shores the colonists decided to make their

future home, and, with singular infelicity, selected them as the site of

the new colony. It is inconceivable how Father Biard, who had already

spent some time in the New World, could have failed to suggest to La

Saussaye and to their patroness that a colony, to be a success, must be

not only in a spot easily accessible to France, but that a small force of

armed men was imperative; for, to Biard’s own knowledge, the English had

already seized several French vessels in that vicinity.

On these frowning shores La Saussaye landed, and erected a cross, and

displayed the escutcheon of Mme. de Guercheville; the fathers offered the

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and gave to the little settlement the name of

St. Sauveur.

Four tents--the gift of the queen--shone white in the soft spring

sunshine. The largest of these was used as a chapel, the decorations of

which, with the silver vessels for the celebration of the Mass and the

rich vestments, were presented by Henriette d’Entraigues, Marquise de

Verneuil.

The colonists labored night and day to raise their little fort and to

land their supplies. Their toil was nearly over, the vessel, ready for

sea, rode at anchor, when a sudden and violent storm arose.

This storm had been felt twenty-four hours earlier off the Isles of

Shoals by a fishing vessel commanded by one Samuel Argall. Thick fogs

bewildered him, and a strong wind drove him to the northeast; and when

the weather cleared, Argall found himself off the coast of Maine. Canoes

came out like flocks of birds from each small bay. The Indians climbed

the ship’s side, and greeted the new-comers with such amazing bows and

flourishes that Argall, with his native acuteness, felt certain that they

could have learned them only from the French, who could not be far away.

Argall plied the Indians with cunning questions, and soon learned of the

new settlement. He resolved to investigate farther, and set sail for the

wild heights of Mt. Desert. With infinite patience he crept along through

the many islands, and, rounding the Porcupines, saw a small ship anchored

in the bay. At the same moment the French saw the English ship bearing

down upon them “swifter than an arrow,” writes Father Biard, “with every

sail set, and the English flags streaming from mast-head and stern.”

La Saussaye was within the fort, Lieut. la Motte on board with Father du

Thet, an ensign, and a sergeant. Argall bore down amid a bewildering din

of drums and trumpets. “Fire!” cried La Motte. Alas! the gunner was on

shore. Father du Thet seized and applied the match.

Another scathing discharge of musketry, and the brave priest lay dead. He

had his wish; for the day before he left France he prayed with uplifted

hands that he might not return, but perish on that holy enterprise. He

was buried the following day at the foot of the rough cross he had helped

to erect.

La Motte, clear-sighted enough to see the utter uselessness of any

farther attempt at defence, surrendered, and Argall took possession of

the vessel and of La Saussaye’s papers, from among which he abstracted

the royal commission. On La Saussaye’s return from the woods, where he

had retreated with the colonists, he was met by Argall, who informed him

that the country belonged to his master, King James, and finally asked

to see his commission. In vain did the French nobleman search for it.

Argall’s courtesy changed to wrath; he accused the officer of piracy, and

ordered the settlement to be given up to pillage, but offered to take

any of the settlers who had a trade back to Virginia with him, promising

them protection. Argall counted, however, without his host; for on

reaching Jamestown the governor swore that the French priests should be

hung. Useless were Argall’s remonstrances, and finally, seeing no other

way to save the lives of the fathers, he produced the commission and

acknowledged his stratagem.

The wrath of Sir Thomas Dale was unappeased, but the lives of the priests

were, of course, safe. He despatched Argall with two additional ships

back to Mt. Desert, with orders to cut down the cross and level the

defences.

Father Biard was on board, as well as Father Massé; they, with refined

cruelty, being sent to witness the destruction of their hopes.

This work of destruction completed, Argall set sail for Virginia. Again

a storm arose, and the vessel on which were the ecclesiastics was driven

to the Azores. Here the Jesuits, who had been so grossly ill-treated, had

but a few words to say to be avenged. The captain of the vessel was not

without uneasiness, and entreated the priests to remain in concealment

when the vessel was visited by the authorities. This visit over, the

English purchased all they needed, and weighed anchor for England.

Arrived there, a new difficulty occurred; for there was no commission

to show. The captain was treated as a pirate, thrown into prison, and

released only on the testimony of the Jesuit Fathers, who thus returned

good for evil.

Father Biard hastened to France, where he became professor of theology at

Lyons, and died at Avignon on the 17th of November, 1622. Father Massé

returned to Canada, where he labored without ceasing until his death, in

1646.

With the destruction of St. Sauveur, the pious designs of Mme. de

Guercheville seem to have perished. At any rate, the most diligent

research fails to find her name again in the annals of that time.

Probably the troubled state of France made it impossible for her to

provide the sinews of war, or of evangelization. Nevertheless, the good

seed was planted, and zeal for the mission cause again revived in Europe,

particularly in the Society of Jesus. Young men left court and camp to

share the privations and life of self-denial of the missionaries. Even

the convents partook of the general enthusiasm, and Ursuline Nuns came to

show the Indians Christianity in daily life, ministering to the sick and

instructing the young.

Many years after the melancholy failure of the mission at Mt. Desert, an

apparent accident recalled the Jesuit Fathers to the coast of Maine.

In 1642 there was a mission at Sillery, on the St. Lawrence, where had

been gathered together a large number of Indian converts, who lived, with

their families about them, in peace and harmony under the watchful care

of the kind fathers. Among these converts was a chief who, to rescue

some of his tribe who had been taken prisoners, started off through the

pathless wilderness, and finally reached the English at Coussinoe, now

known as Augusta, on the Kennebec.

There the Indian convert so extolled the Christian faith and its mighty

promises that he took back with him several of the tribe. These were

baptized at Sillery, and became faithful servants of our Lord Jesus

Christ. In consequence of the entreaties of these converts, Father

Gabriel Drouillettes was sent to the lonely Kennebec.

Here he built a chapel of fir-trees in a place now known as Norridgewock,

a lovely, secluded spot. Some years before Father Biard had been there

for a few weeks, so that the Indians were not totally unprepared to

receive religious instruction. Father Drouillettes was greatly blessed

in his teaching, and converted a large number, inspiring them with a

profound love for the Catholic faith, which the English, twenty years

before, had failed to do for the Protestant religion. He taught them

simple prayers, and translated for their use, into their own dialect,

several hymns. The savages even learned to sing, and it was not long

before the solemn strains of the _Dies Iræ_ awakened strange echoes in

the primeval forests.

Even the English, biassed as they were against the Catholics, watched

the good accomplished by the faithful servant of the great Master, and

learned to regard his coming as a great blessing, though at this very

time the stern Puritans at Plymouth were enacting cruel laws against his

order.

When the Indians went to Moosehead Lake to hunt and fish, Father

Drouillettes went with them, watching over his flock with unswerving

solicitude. But the day of his summons to Quebec came, and a general

feeling of despair overwhelmed his converts. He went, and the Assumption

Mission was deserted; for by that name, as it was asked for on that day,

was this mission always designated.

Year after year the Abnakis--for so were called the aborigines of

Maine--sent deputations to Quebec to entreat the return of their beloved

priest, but in vain; for the number of missionaries was at that time very

limited. Finally, in 1650, Father Drouillettes set out with a party on

the last day of August for the tiresome eight days’ march through the

wilderness; the party lost their way, their provisions were gone, and it

was not until twenty-four days afterwards that they reached Norridgewock.

From a letter written at this time by Father Drouillettes we transcribe

the following: “In spite of all that is painful and crucifying to nature

in these missions, there are also great joys and consolations. More

plenteous than I can describe are those I feel, to see that the seed of

the Gospel I scattered here four years ago, in land which for so many

centuries has lain fallow, or produced only thorns and brambles, already

bears fruit so worthy of the Lord.” Nothing could exceed the veneration

and affection of the Indians for their missionary; and when an Englishman

vehemently accused the French priest of slandering his nation, the chiefs

hurried to Augusta, and warned the authorities to take heed and not

attack their father even in words.

The following spring Father Drouillettes was sent to a far-distant

station, and years elapsed before he returned to Quebec, where he died in

1681, at the age of eighty-eight.

About this time two brothers, Vincent and Jacques Bigot, men of rank

and fortune, left their homes in sunny France to share the toil and

privations of life in the New World. They placed themselves and their

fortunes in the hands of the superior at Quebec, and were sent to

labor in the footprints of Father Drouillettes. During their faithful

ministrations at Norridgewock, the chapel built by their predecessor

was burned by the English, but was rebuilt in 1687 by English workmen

sent from Boston, according to treaty stipulations. And now appears upon

the scene the stately form of one of the greatest men of that age; but

before we attempt to bring before our readers the character and acts of

Sebastian Râle, we must beg them to turn from Norridgewock, the scene

of his labors and martyrdom, to the little village of Castine. For in

1688 Father Thury, a priest of the diocese of Quebec, a man of tact and

ability, had gathered about him a band of converts at Panawauski, on the

Penobscot. This settlement was protected by the Baron Saint-Castine.

This Saint-Castine was a French nobleman and a soldier who originally

went to Canada in command of a regiment. The regiment was disbanded, and

Saint-Castine’s disappointed ambition and a heart sore from domestic

trials decided him, rather than return to France, to plunge into the

wilderness, and there, far from kindred and nation, create for himself a

new home.

After a while the baron married a daughter of one of the sachems of

the Penobscot Indians, and became himself a sagamore of the tribe. The

descendants of this marriage hold at the present day some portion of the

Saint-Castine lands in Normandy.

Twice was the French baron driven from his home by the Dutch; twice

was the simple chapel burned by them. In 1687 Sir Edmund Andros was

appointed governor of New England, and in the following year, sailing

eastward in the frigate _Rose_, he anchored opposite the little fort and

primitive home of Saint-Castine. The baron retreated with the small band

of settlers to the woods. Andros, being a Catholic, touched nothing in

the chapel, but carried off everything else in the village. In 1703 the

war known as Queen Anne’s war broke out. Again Saint-Castine was attacked

by the English, and his wife and children carried off as prisoners, but

were soon after exchanged. From this time the name of Baron Saint-Castine

appears in all the annals of the time, as the courageous defender of his

faith and of its priests. Father Râle, at Norridgewock, turned to him for

counsel and aid, and never turned in vain. From Castine on to Mt. Desert

the shores are full of historical interest; for there were many French

settlements thereabouts, the attention of that nation having been drawn

to that especial locality by a grant of land which M. Cardillac obtained

of Louis XIV. in April, 1691. This grant was evidently made to confirm

possession. A certain Mme. de Grégoire proved herself to be a lineal

descendant of Cardillac, and in 1787 acquired a partial confirmation of

the original grant.

Relics of the French settlers are constantly turned up by the plough in

the vicinity of Castine, and in 1840 a quantity of French gold pieces

were found; but of infinitely more interest was the discovery there, in

1863, of a copper plate ten inches in length and eight in width. The

finder, knowing nothing of the value of this piece of metal, cut off a

portion to repair his boat. This fragment was, however, subsequently

recovered. The letters on the plate are unquestionably abbreviations of

the following inscription: “1648, 8 Junii, S. Frater Leo Parisiensis, in

Capuccinorum Missione, posuit hoc fundamentum in honorem nostræ Dominæ

Sanctæ Spei”--1648, 8th of June, Holy Friar Leo of Paris, Capuchin

missionary, laid this foundation in honor of Our Lady of Holy Hope.

In regard to this Father Leo the most diligent research fails to find

any other trace. The plate, however, was without doubt placed in the

foundation of a Catholic chapel--probably the one within the walls of the

old French fort. Father Sebastian Râle sailed in 1689 for America. After

remaining for nearly two years in Quebec, he went thence to Norridgewock.

He found the Abnakis nearly all converted, and at once applied himself to

learning their dialect. To this work he brought his marvellous patience

and energy, and all his wondrous insight into human nature. He began his

dictionary, and erected a chapel on the spot known now as Indian Old

Point. This chapel he supplied with all the decorations calculated to

engage the imagination and fix the wandering attention of the untutored

savage. The women contended with holy emulation in the embellishment of

the sanctuary. They made mats of the soft and brightly-tinted plumage

of the forest birds and of the white-breasted sea-gulls. They brought

offerings of huge candles, manufactured from the fragrant wax of the

bay-berry, with which the chapel was illuminated. A couple of nuns from

Montreal made a brief sojourn at Norridgewock, that they might teach the

Indian women to sew and to make a kind of lace with which to adorn the

altar. Busied with his dictionary and with his flock, Father Râle thus

passed the most peaceful days of his life; but this blessed quiet ended

only too soon.

In 1705 a party of English, under the command of a Capt. Hilton, burst

from out the forest, attacking the little village from all sides at once,

finishing by burning the chapel and every hut.

About the same time the governor-general of New England sent to the lower

part of the Kennebec the ablest of the Boston divines to instruct the

Indian children. As Baxter’s (the missionary) salary depended on his

success, he neglected no means that could attract.

For two months he labored in vain. His caresses and little gifts were

thrown away; for he made not one convert.

Father Râle wrote to Baxter that his neophytes were good Christians, but

far from able in disputes.

This same letter, which was of some length, challenged the Protestant

clergyman to a discussion. Baxter, after a long delay, sent a brief

reply, in Latin so bad that the learned priest says it was impossible to

understand it.

In 1717 the Indian chiefs held a council. The governor of New England

offered them an English and an Indian Bible, and Mr. Baxter as their

expounder.

The Abnakis refused them one and all, and elected to adhere to their

Catholic faith, saying: “All people love their own priests! Your Bibles

we do not care for, and God has already sent us teachers.”

Thus years passed on in monotonous labor. The only relaxation permitted

to himself by Father Râle was the work on his dictionary. The converts

venerated their priest; their keen eyes and quick instincts saw the

sincerity of his life, the reality of his affection for them, and

recognized his self-denial and generosity. They went to him with their

cares and their sorrows, with their simple griefs and simpler pleasures.

He listened with unaffected sympathy and interest. No envious rival, no

jealous competitor, no heretical teacher, disturbed the relations between

pastor and flock. So, too, was it but natural that they should look to

him for advice when they gathered about their council-fires.

The wrongs which the Eastern Indians were constantly enduring at the

hands of the English settlers kindled to a living flame the smouldering

hatred in their hearts, which they sought every opportunity of wreaking

in vengeance on their foe. Thus, like lightning on the edge of the

horizon, they hovered on the frontier, making daring forays on the farms

of the settlers.

It was not unnatural that the English, bristling with prejudices

against the French, and still more against Catholics, should have seen

fit to look on Father Râle as the instigator of all these attacks,

forgetting--what is undeniably true--that Father Râle’s converts were

milder and kinder and more Christian-like than any of their Indian

neighbors. The good father was full of concern when he heard that a

fierce and warlike tribe, who had steadily resisted all elevating

influences, were about settling within a day’s journey of Norridgewock.

He feared lest his children should be led away by pernicious examples; so

he with difficulty persuaded some of the strangers to enter the chapel,

and to be present at some of the imposing ceremonies of the mother

church. At the close of the service he addressed them in simple words,

and thus concluded:

“Let us not separate, that some may go one way and some another. Let

us all go to heaven. It is our country, and the place to which we are

invited by the sole Master of life, of whom I am but the interpreter.”

The reply of the Indians was evasive; but it was evident that an

impression was made, and in the autumn they sent to him to say that if he

would come to them they would receive his teachings.

Father Râle gladly went at this bidding, erected a cross and a chapel,

and finally baptized nearly the whole tribe.

At this time Father Râle wrote to his nephew a letter, in which he

says: “My new church is neat, and its elegantly-ornamented vestments,

chasubles, copes, and holy vessels would be esteemed highly appropriate

in almost any church in Europe. A choir of young Indians, forty in

number, assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and chant the divine

Offices for the consecration of the Holy Sacrament; and you would be

edified by the beautiful order they preserve and the devotion they

manifest. After the Mass I teach the young children, and the remainder

of the morning is devoted to seeing those who come to consult me on

affairs of importance. Thus, you see, I teach some, console others, seek

to re-establish peace in families at variance, and to calm troubled

consciences.”

Another letter still later, in speaking of the attachment of the converts

to their faith, says: “And when they go to the sea-shore in summer to

fish, I accompany them; and when they reach the place where they intend

to pass the night, they erect stakes at intervals in the form of a

chapel, and spread a tent made of ticking. All is complete in fifteen

minutes. I always carry with me a beautiful board of cedar, with the

necessary supports. This serves for an altar, and I ornament the interior

with silken hangings. A huge bear-skin serves as a carpet, and divine

service is held within an hour.”

While away on one of the excursions which Father Râle thus describes, the

village was attacked by the English; and again, in 1722, by a party of

two hundred under Col. Westbrook. New England had passed a law imposing

imprisonment for life on Catholic priests, and a reward was offered for

the head of Father Râle. The party was seen, as they entered the valley

of the Kennebec, by two braves, who hurried on to give the alarm; the

priest having barely time to escape to the woods with the altar vessels

and vestments, leaving behind him all his papers and his precious Abnaki

dictionary, which was enclosed in a strong box of peculiar construction.

It had two rude pictures on the lid, one of the scourging of our Blessed

Lord, and the other of the Crowning of Thorns. This box is now in the

possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, while the dictionary

itself is at Harvard.

Father Râle saved himself by taking refuge in a hollow tree, where he

remained for thirty-six hours, suffering from hunger and a broken leg.

With wonderful courage Father Râle built up another chapel, and writes

thus, after recounting the efforts of the English to take him prisoner:

“In the words of the apostle, I conclude: I do not fear the threats of

those who hate me without a cause, and I count not my life dear unto

myself, so that I might finish my course and the ministry which I have

received of the Lord Jesus.”

Again, over the council-fires, the Indian chiefs assembled. They decided

to send an embassy to Boston, to demand that their chapel, which had been

destroyed by the English, should be rebuilt.

The governor, anxious to secure the alliance of the tribe, listened

patiently, and told them in reply that it belonged properly to the

governor of Canada to rebuild their church; still, that he would do it,

provided they would agree to receive the clergy he would choose, and

would send back to Quebec the French priest who was then with them. We

cannot forbear repeating here the unequalled satire of the Indian’s reply:

“When you came here,” answered the chief, “we were unknown to the French

governor, but no one of you spoke of prayer or of the Great Spirit. You

thought only of my skins and furs. But one day I met a French black-coat

in the forest. He did not look at the skins with which I was loaded, but

he said words to me of the Great Spirit, of Paradise and of hell, and of

prayer, by which is the only path to heaven.

“I listened with pleasure, and at last begged him to teach and to baptize

me.

“If, when you saw me, you had spoken to me of prayer, I should have had

the misfortune to pray as you do; for I was not then able to know if your

prayers were good. So, I tell you, I will hold fast to the prayers of the

French. I will keep them until the earth burn up and perish.”

At last the final and fatal effort on the life of Father Râle was made,

in 1724.

All was quiet in the little village. The tall corn lay yellow in the

slanting rays of an August sun, when suddenly from the adjacent woods

burst forth a band of English with their Mohawk allies. The devoted

priest, knowing that they were in hot pursuit of him, sallied forth to

meet them, hoping, by the sacrifice of his own life, to save his flock.

Hardly had he reached the mission cross in the centre of the village than

he fell at its foot, pierced by a dozen bullets. Seven Indians, who had

sought to shield him with their bodies, lay dead beside him.

Then followed a scene that beggars description. Women and children were

killed indiscriminately; and it ill became those who shot women as they

swam across the river to bring a charge of cruelty against the French

fathers.

The chapel was robbed and then fired; the bell was not melted, but was

probably afterward buried by the Indians, for it was revealed only a few

years since by the blowing down of a huge oak-tree, and was presented to

Bowdoin College.

The soft, dewy night closed on the scene of devastation, and in the

morning, as one by one the survivors crept back to their ruined homes

with their hearts full of consternation and sorrow, they found the body

of their beloved priest, not only pierced by a hundred balls, but with

the skull crushed by hatchets, arms and legs broken, and mouth and eyes

filled with dirt. They buried him where the day before had stood the

altar of the little chapel, and sent his tattered habits to Quebec.

It was by so precious a death that this apostolical man closed a career

of nearly forty years of painful missionary toil. His fasts and vigils

had greatly enfeebled his constitution, and, when entreated to take

precautions for his safety, he answered: “My measures are taken. God has

committed this flock to my charge, and I will share their fate, being too

happy if permitted to sacrifice myself for them.”

Well did his superior in Canada, M. de Bellemont, reply, when requested

to offer Masses for his soul: “In the words of S. Augustine, I say it

would be wronging a martyr to pray for him.”

There can be no question that Sebastian Râle was one of the most

remarkable men of his day. A devoted Christian and finished scholar,

commanding in manners and elegant in address, of persuasive eloquence and

great administrative ability, he courted death and starvation, for the

sole end of salvation for the Indian.

From the death of Father Râle until 1730 the mission at Norridgewock

was without a priest. In that year, however, the superior at Quebec

sent Father James de Sirenne to that station. The account given by this

father, of the warmth with which he was received, and of the manner in

which the Indians had sought to keep their faith, is very touching. The

women with tears and sobs hastened with their unbaptized babes to the

priest.

In all these years no Protestant clergyman had visited them, for Eliot

was almost the only one who devoted himself to the conversion of the

Indians, though even he, as affirmed by Bancroft, had never approached

the Indian tribe that dwelt within six miles of Boston Harbor until five

years after the cross had been borne, by the religious zeal of the

French, from Lake Superior to the valley of the Mississippi.

But Father Sirenne could not be permitted to remain any length of time

with the Abnakis. Again were they deserted, having a priest with them

only at long intervals.

Then came the peace of 1763, in which France surrendered Canada. This

step struck a most terrible blow at the missions; for although the

English government guaranteed to the Canadians absolute religious

freedom, they yet took quiet steps to rid themselves of the Jesuit

Fathers.

A short breathing space, and another war swept over the land, and with

this perished the last mission in Maine. In 1775 deputies from the

various tribes in Maine and Nova Scotia met the Massachusetts council.

The Indians announced their intention of adhering to the Americans, but

begged, at the same time, for a French priest. The council expressed

their regret at not being able to find one.

“Strange indeed was it,” says Shea, “that the very body which, less than

a century before, had made it felony for a Catholic priest to visit the

Abnakis, now regretted their inability to send these Christian Indians a

missionary of the same faith and nation.”

Years after, when peace was declared, and the few Catholics in Maryland

had chosen the Rev. John Carroll--a member of the proscribed Society of

Jesus--as bishop, the Abnakis of Maine sent a deputation bearing the

crucifix of Father Râle. This they presented to the bishop, with earnest

supplications for a priest.

Bishop Carroll promised that one should be sent, and Father Ciquard

was speedily despatched to Norridgewock, where he remained for ten

years. Then ensued another interval during which the flock was without a

shepherd.

At last a missionary priest at Boston, Father (afterward Cardinal)

Cheverus, turned his attention to the study of the Abnaki dialect, and

then visited the Penobscot tribe.

Desolate, poor, and forsaken as they had been, the Indians still clung

to their faith. The old taught the young, and all gathered on Sundays to

chant the music of the Mass and Vespers, though their altar had no priest

and no sacrifice.

Father Cheverus, after a few months, was succeeded by Father Romagné,

who for twenty years consecrated every moment and every thought to the

evangelization of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes. In July, 1827,

Bishop Fenwick visited this portion of his diocese, and in 1831 sent them

a resident missionary. A beautiful church stood at last in the place of

Romagné’s hut, and two years later Bishop Fenwick, once a father in the

Society of Jesus, erected a monument to Father Râle on the spot where he

was slain a hundred and nine years before. From far and near gathered

the crowd, Protestant as well as Catholic, to witness the ceremony. The

monument stands in a green, secluded spot, a simple shaft of granite

surmounted by a cross, and an inscription in Latin tells the traveller

that there died a faithful priest and servant of the Lord. Bishop Fenwick

became extremely anxious to induce some French priest to go to that

ancient mission, and a year later the Society of Picpus, in Switzerland,

sent out Fathers Demilier and Petithomme to restore the Franciscan

missions in Maine. They conquered the difficulties of the Abnaki dialect

with the aid of a prayer-book which the bishop had caused to be printed,

and in this small and insignificant mission Father Demilier toiled until

his death, in 1843.

The successor of Bishop Fenwick resolved to restore the Abnaki mission

to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, by whom it had been originally

founded. Therefore, since 1848, the Penobscots and Passamaquoddys have

been under the care of the Jesuits, who in that year sent out from

Switzerland Father John Bapst to Old Town, on the Penobscot--a short

distance from Bangor--where he ministered faithfully to the Abnakis until

he nearly lost his life in a disgraceful Know-Nothing riot in 1854.

As we find ourselves thus at the conclusion of our narration, incidents

crowd upon our memory of the wondrous sacrifices made by the Catholic

clergy in the old missions of Maine; but we are admonished that our space

is limited.

Little attention, however, has been paid to the fact that to these

Catholic priests alone under God is due the evangelization of the many

Indian tribes which formerly haunted our grand old forests. Of these

tribes, only a few of the Penobscots are left, and these cling still to

the cross as the blessed symbol of the faith first brought to them, “as

a voice crying in the wilderness,” by Fathers Biard and Du Thet at St.

Sauveur in 1613.

PRUSSIA AND THE CHURCH.

The first attempts to introduce the Christian religion into Prussia

were unsuccessful. S. Adalbert, in 997, and S. Bruno, in 1009, suffered

martyrdom whilst preaching the Gospel there, and the efforts of Poland

to force the conquered Prussians to receive the faith only increased

the bitterness of their anti-Christian prejudices. Early in the XIIth

century Bishop Otto, of Bamberg, made many conversions in Pomerania; and

finally, in the beginning of the XIIIth, the Cistercian monk Christian,

with the approval and encouragement of Pope Innocent III., set to work

to convert the Prussians, and met with such success that in 1215 he was

made bishop of the country. The greater part of the people, however,

still remained heathens, and the progress of Christianity aroused in

them such indignation that they determined to oppose its farther advance

with the sword. To protect his flock Bishop Christian called to his aid

the knights of the Teutonic Order; in furtherance of his designs, the

Emperor Frederic II. turned the whole country over to them, and Pope

Gregory IX. took measures to increase their number, so that they might be

able to hold possession of this field, now first opened to the Gospel.

Pope Innocent IV. also manifested special interest in the welfare of the

church in Prussia; he urged priests and monks to devote themselves to

this mission, supported and encouraged the bishops in their trials and

difficulties, and exhorted the convents throughout Germany to contribute

books for the education of the people. But circumstances were not wanting

which made the position of the church in Prussia very unsatisfactory. The

people had for the most part been brought under the church’s influence by

the power of arms, and consequently to a great extent remained strangers

to her true spirit. The Teutonic Order, moreover, gave ecclesiastical

positions only to German priests, so as to hold out inducements to the

people to learn German; though, as a consequence, the priests were unable

to communicate with their flocks, except by the aid of interpreters.

The grand master, too, had almost unlimited control over the election

of bishops, which was the cause of many evils, especially as the Order

gradually grew lax in the observance of the rule, and lost much of

its Christian character. Unworthy men were thrust into ecclesiastical

offices, the standard of morality among the clergy was lowered, and the

people lost respect for the priesthood. It is not surprising, in view of

all this, that the religious sectaries of the XIIIth and XIVth centuries

should have found favor in Prussia, and made converts among her still

half-pagan populations.

In 1466 the Teutonic Order became a dependency of the crown of Poland.

There was no hope of its freeing itself from this humiliating subjection

without foreign aid; and with a view to obtain this, the knights resolved

to choose their grand master from one or other of the most powerful

German families. First, in 1498, they elected Frederic, Duke of Saxony;

and upon his death, in 1510, Albrecht, Margrave of Brandenburg, was

chosen to succeed him.

Albrecht refused the oath of supremacy to Sigismund, King of Poland, who

thereupon, in 1519, declared war upon him.

To meet the expenses of the war, Albrecht had the sacred vessels of

the church melted down and minted; but he was unable to stand against

the arms of Poland, and therefore sought the mediation of the Emperor

of Germany, through whose good offices he was able to conclude, in

1521, a four years’ truce. He now went into Germany, where Luther was

already preaching the Protestant rebellion, and asked aid from the

Imperial Parliament, which was holding its sessions at Nuremberg; and

as this was denied him, he turned with favor to the teachers of the new

doctrines. The Teutonic Order had become thoroughly corrupt, and Leo X.

urged Albrecht to begin a reformation _in capite et membris_; but the

grand master sought the advice of Luther, from whom he received the not

unwelcome counsel to throw away the “stupid, unnatural rule of his Order,

take a wife, and turn Prussia into a temporal hereditary principality.”

Albrecht accordingly asked for preachers of the new doctrines, and in

1526 announced his abandonment of the Order and the Catholic Church by

his marriage with the daughter of the King of Denmark. Acting upon the

Protestant principle, _cujus regio illius religio_--the ruler of the land

makes its religion--he forced the Prussians to quit the church from which

they had received whatever culture and civilization they had.

At his death, in 1568, Lutheranism had gained complete possession of the

country.

A few Catholics, however, remained, for whom, early in the XVIIth

century, King Sigismund of Poland succeeded in obtaining liberty of

conscience, which, however, was denied to those of Brandenburg Frederic

William, the second king of Prussia, and the first to form the design

of placing her among the great powers of Europe by the aid of a strong

military organization, in giving directions in 1718 for the education of

his son, afterwards Frederic the Great, insisted that the boy should be

inspired with a horror of the Catholic Church, “the groundlessness and

absurdity of whose teachings should be placed before his eyes and well

impressed upon his mind.”

Frederic William was a rigid Calvinist; and if he tolerated a few

Catholics in his dominions, it was only that he might vent his ill-humor

or exercise his proselytizing zeal upon them. He indeed granted Father

Raymundus Bruns permission to say Mass in the garrisons at Berlin and

Potsdam, but only after he had been assured that it would tend to prevent

desertions among his Catholic soldiers, and that, as Raymundus was a

monk, bound by a vow of poverty, he would ask no pay from his majesty.

In 1746 permission was granted the Catholics to hold public worship in

Berlin, and the S. Hedwig’s church was built; in Pomerania, however, this

privilege was denied them, except in the Polish districts.

During the XVIIIth century congregations were formed at Stettin and

Stralsund. In the principality of Halberstadt the Catholics were allowed

to retain possession of a church and several monasteries, in which

public worship was permitted; and in what had been the archbishopric of

Magdeburg there were left to them one Benedictine monastery and four

convents of Cistercian Nuns. These latter, however, were placed under the

supervision of Protestant ministers.

Frederic the Great early in life fell under the influence of Voltaire

and his disciples, from whom he learned to despise all religion, and

especially the rigid Calvinism of his father. He became a religious

sceptic, and, satisfied with his contempt for all forms of faith, did

not take the trouble to persecute any. He asked of his subjects, whether

Protestant or Catholic, nothing but money and recruits; for the rest,

he allowed every one in his dominions “to save his soul after his own

fashion.” He provided chaplains for his Catholic soldiers, and forbade

the Calvinist and Lutheran ministers to interfere with their religious

freedom, for reasons similar to those which had induced his father to

permit Raymundus Bruns to say Mass in the garrison at Berlin. He had

certainly no thought of showing any favor to the church, except so far as

it might promote his own ambitious projects. His great need of soldiers

made him throw every obstacle in the way of those who wished to enter

the priesthood, and his fear of foreign influence caused him to forbid

priests to leave the country. His mistrust of priests was so great that

he gave instructions to Count Hoym, his Minister of State, to place them

under a system of espionage. Catholics were carefully excluded from all

influential and lucrative positions. They were taxed more heavily than

Protestants, and professors in the universities were required to take an

oath to uphold the Reformation.

Notwithstanding, it was in the reign of Frederic the Great that the

Catholic Church in Prussia may be said to have entered upon a new life.

For more than two hundred years it had had no recognized status there;

but through the conquest of Silesia and the division of Poland, a large

Catholic population was incorporated into the kingdom of Prussia, and

thus a new element, which was formally recognized in the constitution

promulgated by Frederic’s immediate successor, was introduced into the

Prussian state. Together with the toleration of all who believed in God

and were loyal to the king, the law of the land placed the Catholic and

Protestant churches on an equal footing. To understand how far this was

favorable to the church we must go back and consider the relations of

Prussia to Protestantism.

What is known as the Territorial System, by which the faith of the

people is delivered into the hands of the temporal ruler, has existed in

Prussia from the time Albrecht of Brandenburg went over to the Reformers.

Protestantism and absolutism triumphed simultaneously throughout Europe,

and this must undoubtedly be in a great measure attributed to the fact

that the Protestants, whether willingly or not, yielded up their faith

into the keeping of kings and princes, and thus practically abandoned

the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers which lies at the

foundation of Christian civilization, and is also the strongest bulwark

against the encroachments of governments upon the rights of citizens.

Duke Albrecht had hardly become a Protestant when he felt that it was

his duty (“_coacti sumus_” are his words) to take upon himself the

episcopal office. This was in 1530; in 1550 he treated the urgent request

of the Assembly to have the bishopric of Samland restored as an attack

upon his princely prerogative.

His successor diverted to other uses the fund destined for the

maintenance of the bishops, and instituted two consistories, to which he

entrusted the ecclesiastical affairs of the duchy.

During the XVIIth century Calvinism gained a firm foothold in Prussia. It

became the religion of the ruling family, and Frederic William, called

the Great Elector, to whose policy his successors have agreed to ascribe

their greatness, sought in every way to promote its interests, though he

strenuously exercised his _jus episcopale_, his spiritual supremacy over

both the Lutherans and the Calvinists.

His son, Frederic, who first took the title of King of Prussia (1700),

continued the policy of his father with regard to ecclesiastical affairs.

“To us alone,” he declared to the Landstand, “belongs the _jus supremum

episcopale_, the highest and sovereign right in ecclesiastical matters.”

The Lutherans wished to retain the exorcism as a part of the ceremony

of baptism; but Frederic published an edict by which he forbade the

appointment of any minister who would refuse to confer the sacrament

without making use of this ceremony. In the same way he meddled with the

Lutheran practice of auricular confession; and by an order issued in 1703

prohibited the publication of theological writings which had not received

his imprimatur.

His successor, Frederic William, the father of Frederic the Great,

looked upon himself as the absolute and irresponsible master of the

subjects whom God had given him. “I am king and master,” he was wont

to say, “and can do what I please.” He was a rigid Calvinist, and made

his absolutism felt more especially in religious matters. It seems that

preachers then, as since, were sometimes in the habit of preaching long

sermons; so King Frederic William put a fine of two thalers upon any one

who should preach longer than one hour. He required his preachers to

insist in _all their sermons_ upon the duty of obedience and loyalty to

the king, and the government officials were charged to report any failure

to make special mention of this duty. Both Lutherans and Calvinists were

forbidden to touch in their sermons upon any points controverted between

the two confessions. No detail of religious worship was insignificant

enough to escape his meddlesome tyranny. The length of the service, the

altar, the vestments of the minister, the sign of the cross, the giving

or singing the blessing, all fell under his “high episcopal supervision.”

This unlovely old king was followed by Frederic the Great, who, though

an infidel and a scoffer, held as firmly as his father to his sovereign

episcopal prerogatives, and who, if less meddlesome, was not less

arbitrary. And now we have got back to the constitution which, after

Silesia and a part of Poland had been united to the crown of Prussia,

was partially drawn up under Frederic the Great, and completed and

promulgated during the reign of his successor; and which, as we have

already said, placed the three principal confessions of the Christian

faith in the Prussian states--viz., the Lutheran, the Reformed, and

the Catholic--on a footing of equality before the law. Now, it must be

noticed, this constitution left intact the absolute authority of the king

over the Reformed and Lutheran churches, and therefore what might seem

to be a great gain for the Catholic Church was really none at all, since

it was simply placed under the supreme jurisdiction of the king. There

was no express recognition of the organic union of the church in Prussia

with the pope, nor of the right of the bishops to govern their dioceses

according to the ecclesiastical canons, but rather the tacit assumption

that the king was head of the Catholic as of the Protestant churches in

Prussia. The constitution was drawn up by Suarez, a bitter enemy of the

church, and in many of its details was characterized by an anti-Catholic

spirit. It annulled, for instance, the contract made by parents of

different faith concerning the religious education of their children,

and manifested in many other ways that petty and tyrannical spirit which

has led Prussia to interfere habitually with the internal discipline and

working of the church.

As the Catholic population of Prussia increased through the annexation

of different German states, this constitution, which gave the king

supreme control of spiritual matters, was extended to the newly-acquired

territories. Thus all through the XVIIIth century the church in Prussia,

though not openly persecuted, was fettered. No progress was made, abuses

could not be reformed, the appointment of bishops was not free, the

training of the priesthood was very imperfect; and it is not surprising

that this slavery should have been productive of many and serious evils.

The French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, which caused social and

political upheavals throughout Europe, toppled down thrones, overthrew

empires, and broke up and reformed the boundaries of nations, mark a new

epoch in the history of Prussia, and indeed of all Germany, whose people

had been taught by these disastrous wars that they had common interests

which could not be protected without national unity, the want of which

had never before been made so painfully manifest.

After the downfall of Napoleon, the ambassadors of the Allied Powers met

in Vienna to settle the affairs of all Europe. Nations, provinces, and

cities were given away in the most reckless manner, without any thought

of the interests or wishes of the people, to the kings and rulers who

could command the greatest influence in the congress or whose displeasure

was most feared. Germany demanded the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine,

but was thwarted in her designs by Great Britain and Russia, who feared

the restoration of her ancient power.

Prussia received from the congress, as some compensation for its

sufferings and sacrifices during the Napoleonic wars, the duchies

of Jülich and Berg, the former possessions of the episcopal sees of

Cologne and Treves, and several other territories, which were formed

into the Rhine province. On the other hand, it lost a portion of the

Sclavonic population which it had held on the east; so that, though it

gained nothing in territory, it became more strictly a German state,

and was consequently better fitted gradually to take the lead in the

irrepressible movement toward the unification of Germany.

In the Congress of Vienna it was stipulated that Catholics and

Protestants should have equal rights before the law. The constitutional

law of Prussia was extended to the newly-acquired provinces and “all

ecclesiastical matters, whether of Roman Catholics or of Protestants,

together with the supervision and administration of all charitable funds,

the confirming of all persons appointed to spiritual offices, and the

supervision over the administration of ecclesiastics as far as it may

have any relation to civil affairs, were reserved to the government.”

In 1817, upon the occasion of the reorganization of the government,

we perceive to what practical purposes these principles were to be

applied. The church was debased to a function of the state, her interests

were placed in the hands of the ministry for spiritual affairs, and

the education of even clerical students was put under the control of

government.

It was in this same year, 1817, that the tercentennial anniversary of

the birth of Protestantism was celebrated. For two centuries Protestant

faith in Germany had been dying out. Eager and bitter controversies,

the religious wars and the plunder of church property during the XVIth

and early part of the XVIIth centuries, had given it an unnatural and

artificial vigor. It was a mighty and radical revolution, social,

political, and religious, and therefore gave birth to fanaticism and

intense partisan zeal, and was in turn helped on by them.

There is a natural strength in a new faith, and when it is tried by

war and persecution it seems to rise to a divine power. Protestantism

burst upon Europe with irresistible force. Fifty years had not passed

since Luther had burned the bull of Pope Leo, and the Catholic Church,

beaten almost everywhere in the North of Europe, seemed hardly able to

hold her own on the shores of the Mediterranean; fifty years later, and

Protestantism was saved in Germany itself only by the arms of Catholic

France. The peace of Westphalia, in 1648, put an end to the religious

wars of Germany, and from that date the decay of the Protestant faith was

rapid. Many causes helped on the work of ruin; the inherent weakness of

the Protestant system from its purely negative character, the growing and

bitter dissensions among Protestants, the hopeless slavery to which the

sects had been reduced by the civil power, all tended to undermine faith.

In the Palatinate, within a period of sixty years, the rulers had forced

the people to change their religion four times. In Prussia, whose king,

as we have seen, was supreme head of the church, the ruling house till

1539 was Catholic; then, till 1613, Lutheran; from that date to 1740,

Calvinistic; from 1740 to 1786, infidel, the avowed ally of Voltaire and

D’Alembert; then, till 1817, Calvinistic; and finally again evangelical.

During the long reign of Frederic the Great unbelief made steady

progress. Men no longer attacked this or that article of faith, but

Christianity itself. The quickest way, it was openly said by many, to

get rid of superstition and priest-craft, would be to abolish preaching

altogether, and thus remove the ghost of religion from the eyes of the

people. It seems strange that such license of thought and expression

should have been tolerated, and even encouraged, in a country where

religion itself has never been free; but it is a peculiarity of the

Prussian system of government that while it hampers and fetters the

church and all religious organizations, it leaves the widest liberty

of conscience to the individual. Its policy appears to be to foster

indifference and infidelity, in order to use them against what it

considers religious fanaticism. Another circumstance which favored

infidelity may be found in the political thraldom in which Prussia

held her people. As men were forbidden to speak or write on subjects

relating to the government or the public welfare, they took refuge in

theological and philosophical discussions, which in Protestant lands

have never failed to lead to unbelief. This same state of things tended

to promote the introduction and increase of secret societies, which,

in the latter half of the XVIIIth century, sprang up in great numbers

throughout Germany, bearing a hundred different names, but always having

anti-Christian tendencies.

To stop the spread of infidelity, Frederic William II., the successor

of Frederic the Great, issued, in 1788, an “edict, embracing the

constitution of religion in the Prussian states.” The king declared

that he could no longer suffer in his dominions that men should openly

seek to undermine religion, to make the Bible ridiculous in the eyes

of the people, and to raise in public the banner of unbelief, deism,

and naturalism. He would in future permit no farther change in the

creed, whether of the Lutheran or the Reformed Church. This was the

more necessary as he had himself noticed with sorrow, years before he

ascended the throne, that the Protestant ministers allowed themselves

boundless license with regard to the articles of faith, and indeed

altogether rejected several essential parts and fundamental verities of

the Protestant Church and the Christian religion. They blushed not to

revive the long-since-refuted errors of the Socinians, the deists, and

the naturalists, and to scatter them among the people under the false

name of enlightenment (_Aufklärung_), whilst they treated God’s Word with

disdain, and strove to throw suspicion upon the mysteries of revelation.

Since this was intolerable, he, therefore, as ruler of the land and

only law-giver in his states, commanded and ordered that in future no

clergyman, preacher, or school-teacher of the Protestant religion should

presume, under pain of perpetual loss of office and of even severer

punishment, to disseminate the errors already named; for, as it was his

duty to preserve intact the law of the land, so was it incumbent upon him

to see that religion should be kept free from taint; and he could not,

consequently, allow its ministers to substitute their whims and fancies

for the truths of Christianity. They must teach what had been agreed upon

in the symbols of faith of the denomination to which they belonged; to

this they were bound by their office and the contract under which they

had received their positions. Nevertheless, out of his great love for

freedom of conscience, the king was willing that those who were known to

disbelieve in the articles of faith might retain their offices, provided

they consented to teach their flocks what they were themselves unable to

believe.

In this royal edict we have at once the fullest confession of the

general unbelief that was destroying Protestantism in Prussia, and of

the hopelessness of any attempt to arrest its progress. What could be

more pitiable than the condition of a church powerless to control its

ministers, and publicly recognizing their right to be hypocrites? How

could men who had no faith teach others to believe? Moreover, what could

be more absurd, from a Protestant point of view, than to seek to force

the acceptance of symbols of faith when the whole Reformation rested upon

the assumed right of the individual to decide for himself what should or

should not be believed? Or was it to be supposed that men could invest

the conflicting creeds of the sects with a sacredness which they had

denied to that of the universal church? It is not surprising, therefore,

that the only effect of the edict should have been to increase the energy

and activity of the infidels and free-thinkers.

Frederic William III., who ascended the throne in 1797, recognizing the

futility of his father’s attempt to keep alive faith in Protestantism,

stopped the enforcement of the edict, with the express declaration that

its effect had been to lessen religion and increase hypocrisy. Abandoning

all hope of controlling the faith of the preachers, he turned his

attention to their morals. A decree of the Oberconsistorium of Berlin, in

1798, ordered that the conduct of the ministers should be closely watched

and every means employed to stop the daily-increasing immorality of the

servants of the church, which was having the most injurious effects upon

their congregations. Parents had almost ceased having their children

baptized, or had them christened in the “name of Frederic the Great,” or

in the “name of the good and the fair,” sometimes with rose-water.

But the calamities which befell Germany during the wars of the French

Revolution and the empire seemed to have turned the thoughts of many

to religion. The frightful humiliations of the fatherland were looked

upon as a visitation from heaven upon the people for their sins

and unbelief; and therefore, when the tercentennial anniversary of

Protestantism came around (in 1817), they were prepared to enter upon

its celebration with earnest enthusiasm. The celebration took the form

of an anti-Catholic demonstration. For many years controversy between

Protestants and Catholics had ceased; but now a wholly unprovoked but

bitter and grossly insulting attack was made upon the church from all

the Protestant pulpits of Germany and in numberless writings. The result

of this wanton aggression was a reawakening of Catholic faith and life;

whilst the attempt to take advantage of the Protestant enthusiasm to

bring about a union between the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia

ended in causing fresh dissensions and divisions. The sect of the Old

Lutherans was formed, which, in spite of persecution, finally succeeded

in obtaining toleration, though not till many of its adherents had been

driven across the ocean into exile.

As the Congress of Vienna had decided that Catholics and Protestants

should be placed upon a footing of equality, and as Prussia had received

a large portion of the _secularized_ lands of the church, with the

stipulation that she should provide for the maintenance of Catholic

worship, the government, in 1816, sent Niebuhr, the historian, to Rome,

to treat with the Pope concerning the reorganization of the Catholic

religion in the Prussian states. Finally, in 1821, an agreement was

signed, which received the sanction of the king, and was published as a

fundamental law of the state.

In this Concordat with the Holy See there is at least a tacit recognition

of the true nature of the church, of her organic unity--a beginning of

respect for her freedom, and a seeming promise of a better future. In

point of fact, however, in spite of Niebuhr’s assurance to the Holy

Father that he might rely upon the honest intentions of the government,

Prussia began almost at once to meddle with the rights of Catholics.

A silent and slow persecution was inaugurated, by which it was hoped

their patience would be exhausted and their strength wasted. And now we

shall examine more closely the artful and heartless policy by which,

with but slight variations, for more than two centuries Prussia has

sought to undermine the Catholic religion. In 1827 the Protestants of

all communions in Prussia amounted to 6,370,380, and the Catholics

to 4,023,513. These populations are, to only a very limited extent,

intermingled; certain provinces being almost entirely Catholic, and

others nearly wholly Protestant. By law the same rights are granted to

both Catholics and Protestants; and both, therefore, should receive like

treatment at the hands of the government.

This is the theory; what are the facts? We will take the religious policy

of Prussia from the reorganization of the church after the Congress of

Vienna down to the revolution of 1848, and we will begin with the subject

of education. For the six millions of Protestants there were four

exclusively Protestant universities, at Berlin, Halle, Königsberg, and

Greifswalde; for the four millions of Catholics there were but two _half

universities_, at Bonn and Breslau, in each of which there was a double

faculty, the one Protestant, the other Catholic; though the professors

in all the faculties, except that of theology, were for the most part

Protestants. Thus, out of six universities, to the Catholics was left

only a little corner in two, though they were forced to bear nearly

one-half of the public burdens by which all six were supported. But this

is not the worst. The bishops had no voice in the nomination of the

professors, not even those of theology. They were simply asked whether

they had any objections to make, _on proof_. The candidate might be a

stranger, he might be wholly unfitted to teach theology, he might be free

from open immorality or heresy; and therefore, because the bishops could

_prove_ nothing against him, he was appointed to instruct the aspirants

to the priesthood.

At Breslau a foreign professor was appointed, who began to teach the

most scandalous and heretical doctrines. Complaints were useless. During

many years his pupils drank in the poison, and at length, after he had

done his work of destruction, he was, as in mockery, removed. Nor is

this an isolated instance of the ruin to Catholic faith wrought by this

system. The bishops had hardly any influence over the education of their

clergy, who, young and ignorant of the world, were thrown almost without

restraint into the pagan corruptions of a German university, in order to

acquire a knowledge of theology. At Cologne a Catholic college was made

over to the Protestants, at Erfurt and Düsseldorf Catholic _gymnasia_

were turned into mixed establishments with all the professors, save one,

Protestants.

Elementary education was under the control of provincial boards

consisting of a Protestant president and three councillors, _one_ of whom

might be a Catholic in Catholic districts. In the Catholic provinces

of the Rhine and Westphalia, the place of Catholic councillor was left

vacant for several years till the schools were all reorganized. Indeed,

the real superintendent of Catholic elementary education was generally a

Protestant minister.

There was a government _Censur_ for books of religious instruction, the

headquarters of which were in Berlin, but its agents were scattered

throughout all the provinces. All who were employed in this department,

to which even the pastorals of the bishops had to be submitted before

being read to their flocks, were Protestants. The widest liberty was

given to Protestants to attack the church; but when the Catholics

sought to defend themselves, their writings were suppressed. Professor

Freudenfeld was obliged to quit Bonn because he had spoken of Luther

without becoming respect.

Permission to start religious journals was denied to Catholics, but

granted to Protestants; and in the pulpit the priests were put under

strict restraint, while the preachers were given full liberty of speech.

Whenever a community of Protestants was found in a Catholic district, a

church, a clergyman, and a school were immediately provided for them;

indeed, richer provision for the Protestant worship was made in the

Catholic provinces than elsewhere; but when a congregation of Catholics

grew up amongst Protestants, the government almost invariably rejected

their application for permission to have a place of worship. At various

times and places churches and schools were taken from the Catholics

and turned over to the Protestants; and though Prussia had received an

enormous amount of the confiscated property of the church, she did not

provide for the support of the priests as for that of the ministers.

At court there was not a single Catholic who held office; the heads of

all the departments of government were Protestants; the Post-Office

department, down to the local postmasters, was exclusively Protestant;

all ambassadors and other representatives of the government, though sent

to Catholic courts, were Protestants.

In Prussia the state is divided into provinces, and at the head of each

province is a high-president (Ober-Präsident). This official, to whom

the religious interests of the Catholics were committed, was always a

Protestant. The provinces are divided into districts, and at the head of

each district was a Protestant president, and almost all the inferior

officers, even in Catholic provinces, were Protestants.

Again, in the courts of justice and in the army all the principal

positions were given to Protestants. In the two _corps d’armées_ of

Prussia and Silesia, one-half was Catholic; in the army division of

Posen, two-thirds; in that of Westphalia and Cleves, three-fifths; and,

finally, in that of the Rhine, seven-eighths; yet there was not one

Catholic field-officer, not a general or major. In 1832 a royal order was

issued to provide for the religious wants of the army, and every care

was taken for the spiritual needs of the Protestant soldiers; but not

even one Catholic chaplain was appointed. All persons in active service,

from superior officers down to private soldiers, were declared to be

members of the military parish, and were placed under the authority of

the Protestant chaplains. If a Catholic soldier wished to get married

or to have his child baptized by a priest, he had first to obtain the

permission of his Protestant curate. What was still more intolerable, the

law regulating military worship was so contrived as to force the Catholic

soldiers to be present at Protestant service.

Let us now turn to the relations of the church in Prussia with the Holy

See. All direct communications between the Catholics and the Pope were

expressly forbidden. Whenever the bishops wished to consult the Holy

Father concerning the administration of their dioceses, their inquiries

had to pass through the hands of the Protestant ministry, to be forwarded

or not at its discretion, and the answer of the Pope had to pass through

the same channel. It was not safe to write; for the government had no

respect for the mails, and letters were habitually opened by order of

Von Nagler, the postmaster-general, who boasted that he had never had

any idiotic scruples about such matters; that Prince Constantine was his

model, who had once entertained him with narrating how he had managed

to get the choicest selection of intercepted letters in existence; he

had had them bound in morocco, and they formed thirty-three volumes of

the most interesting reading in his private library. Thus the church

was ruled by a system of espionage and bureaucracy which hesitated not

to violate all the sanctities of life to accomplish its ends. The

bishops were reduced to a state of abject dependence; not being allowed

to publish any new regulation or to make any appointment without the

permission and approval of the Protestant high-president, from whom they

constantly received the most annoying and vexatious despatches.

The election of bishops was reduced to a mere form. When a see became

vacant, the royal commissary visited the chapter and announced the person

whom the king had selected to fill the office, declaring at the same time

that no other would receive his approval.

The minutest details of Catholic worship were placed under the

supervision and control of Protestant laymen, who had to decide how much

wine and how many hosts might be used during the year in the different

churches.

We come now to a matter, vexed and often discussed, in which the trials

of the church in Prussia, prior to the recent persecutions, finally

culminated; we allude to the subject of marriages between Catholics and

Protestants.

When, in 1803, Prussia got possession of the greater part of her Catholic

provinces, the following order was at once issued: “His majesty enacts

that children born in wedlock shall all be educated in the religion of

the father, and that, in opposition to this law, neither party shall bind

the other.” Apart from the odious meddling of the state with the rights

of individuals and the agreements of parties so closely and sacredly

related as man and wife, there was in this enactment a special injustice

to Catholics, from the fact that nearly all the mixed marriages in

Prussia were contracted by Protestant government officials and Catholic

women of the provinces to which these agents had been sent. As these men

held lucrative offices, they found no difficulty in making matrimonial

alliances; and as the children had to be brought up in the religion of

the father, the government was by this means gradually establishing

Protestant congregations throughout its Catholic provinces. In 1825 this

law was extended to the Rhenish province, and in 1831 a document was

brought to light which explained the object of the extension--viz., that

it might prove an effectual measure against the proselyting system of

Catholics.

The condition of the church was indeed deplorable. With the name of

being free, she was, in truth, enslaved; and while the state professed

to respect her rights, it was using all the power of the most thoroughly

organized and most heartless system of bureaucracy and espionage to

weaken and fetter her action, and even to destroy her life. This was the

state of affairs when, in the end of 1835, Von Droste Vischering, one of

the greatest and noblest men of this century, worthy to be named with

Athanasius and with Ambrose, was made archbishop of Cologne.

The Catholic people of Prussia had long since lost all faith in the

good intentions of the government, of whose acts and aims they had full

knowledge; and it was in order to restore confidence that a man so

trusted and loved by them as Von Droste Vischering was promoted to the

see of Cologne. The doctrines of Hermes, professor of theology in the

University of Bonn, had just been condemned at Rome, but the government

ignored the papal brief, and continued to give its support to the

Hermesians; the archbishop, nevertheless, condemned their writings, and

especially their organ, the _Bonner Theologische Zeitschrift_, forbade

his students to attend their lectures at the university, and finally

withdrew his approbation altogether from the Hermesian professors,

refusing to ordain students unless they formally renounced the proscribed

doctrines.

By a ministerial order issued in 1825, priests were forbidden, under

pain of deposition from office, to exact in mixed marriages any

promise concerning the education of the offspring. A like penalty

was threatened for refusing to marry parties who were unwilling to

make such promises, or for withholding absolution from those who were

bringing up their children in the Protestant religion. To avert as far

as possible any conflict between the church and the government, Pius

VIII., in 1830, addressed a brief to the bishops of Cologne, Treves,

Münster, and Paderborn, in which he made every allowable concession

to the authority of the state in the matter of mixed marriages. The

court of Berlin withheld the papal brief, and, taking advantage of the

yielding disposition of Archbishop Spiegel of Cologne, entered, without

the knowledge of the Holy See, into a secret agreement with him, in

which still farther concessions were made, and in violation of Catholic

principle. Von Droste Vischering took as his guide the papal brief,

and paid no attention to such provisions of the secret agreement as

conflicted with the instructions of the Holy Father.

The government took alarm, and offered to let fall the Hermesians, if

the archbishop would yield in the affair of mixed marriages; and as

this expedient failed, measures of violence were threatened, which were

soon carried into effect; for on the evening of the 20th of November,

1837, the archbishop was secretly arrested and carried off to the

fortress of Minden, where he was placed in close confinement, all

communication with him being cut off. The next morning the government

issued a “Publicandum,” in which it entered its accusations against the

archbishop, in order to justify its arbitrary act and to appease the

anger of the people. Notwithstanding, a cry of indignation and grief

was heard in all the Catholic provinces of Prussia, which was re-echoed

throughout Germany and extended to all Europe. Lukewarm Catholics grew

fervent, and the very Hermesians gathered with their sympathies to uphold

the cause of the archbishop.

The Archbishop of Posen and the Bishops of Paderborn and Münster

announced their withdrawal from the secret convention, which the Bishop

of Treves had already done upon his death-bed; and henceforward the

priests throughout the kingdom held firm to the ecclesiastical law on

mixed marriages, so that in 1838 Frederic William III. was forced to make

a declaration recognizing the rights for which they contended. But the

Archbishop of Cologne was still a prisoner in the fortress of Minden.

Early, however, in 1839, health began to fail; and as the government

feared lest his death in prison might produce unfavorable comment, he

received permission to withdraw to Münster. The next year the king died,

and his successor, Frederic William IV., showed himself ready to settle

the dispute amicably, and in other ways to do justice to the Catholics.

A great victory had been gained--the secret convention was destroyed--a

certain liberty of communication with the Pope was granted to the

bishops. The election of bishops was made comparatively free, the control

of the schools of theology was restored to them, the Hermesians either

submitted or were removed, and the Catholics of Germany awoke from a

deathlike sleep to new and vigorous life.

An evidence of the awakening of faith was given in the fall of 1844, when

a million and a half of German Catholics went in pilgrimage, with song

and prayer, to Treves.

Nevertheless, many grievances remained unredressed. The _Censur_ was

still used against the church; and when the Catholics asked permission

to publish journals in which they could defend themselves and their

religious interests, they were told that such publications were not

needed; but when Ronge, the suspended priest, sought to found his sect of

“German Catholics,” he received every encouragement from the government,

and the earnest support of the officials and nearly the entire press of

Prussia; though, at this very time, every effort was being made to crush

the “Old Lutherans.”

The government continued to find pretexts for meddling with the affairs

of the bishops, and the newspapers attacked the church in the most

insulting manner, going so far as to demand that the religious exercises

for priests should be placed under police supervision. We have now

reached a memorable epoch in the history of the Catholic Church in

Prussia--the revolution of 1848, which convulsed Germany to its centre,

spread dismay among all classes, and filled its cities with riot and

bloodshed. When order was re-established, the liberties of the church

were recognized more fully than they had been for three centuries.

GARCIA MORENO.

FROM THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA.

I.

The atrocious assassination of Garcia Moreno, the President of the

republic of Ecuador, has filled the minds of all good people with the

deepest grief and horror. The liberals are the only ones who have

mentioned it in their journals with indifference. One of them headed

his announcement of it, “A victim of the Sacred Heart”--alluding,

with blasphemous irony, to the act of consecration of his people to

the Adorable Heart of our Lord which this truly pious ruler had made.

But with the exception of these reprobates--who, hating God, cannot

love mankind--no one who has any admiration of moral greatness can

help deploring the death of this extraordinary man--a death the more

deplorable on account of its coming, not from a natural cause, but from a

detestable conspiracy concocted by the enemies of all that is good, who

abhorred equally the wisdom of his government and the soundness of his

faith. The London _Times_ has a despatch from Paris of October 5 with the

following communication: “It appears, from authentic information which we

have received, that Garcia Moreno, lately President of the republic of

Ecuador, has been assassinated by a secret society which extends through

all South America, as well as Europe. The assassin was selected by lot,

and obtained admission to the palace at Quito. One of his accomplices,

an official, who was arrested after the murder, was assured by the

president of the court-martial, before his trial, that he would be

pardoned if he turned state’s evidence. ‘Be pardoned?’ said he. ‘That

would be of no use to me; if you pardon me, my comrades will not. I would

rather be shot than stabbed.’” This decision of the society to kill him

was known to Moreno, and he informed the Pope of it in a letter, which we

will shortly give.

This illustrious man had governed the republic of Ecuador for about

fifteen years--first as dictator, and afterwards, for two consecutive

terms, as president; and to this office he had just been re-elected for

a third term by an unanimous vote. He had taken charge of the state

when it was in an exceedingly miserable condition, and by his lofty

genius, practical tact, and perseverance, but above all by his piety and

confidence in God, had completely renovated and restored not only the

morals of the people, but also the whole political administration, and

made the country a perfect model of a Christian nation. He was intending

to complete the work which he had begun, and was able to rely confidently

on the co-operation of his people, whose reverence and love for him were

unbounded. But all this was intolerable to the liberals of our day; they

could not bear that in a corner of the New World the problem should be

solved, which they are trying to make so perplexing, of harmony between

the state and the church; of the combination of temporal prosperity and

Catholic piety; of obedience to the civil law and perfect submission to

ecclesiastical authority. This was an insufferable scandal for modern

liberalism,[248] especially because such a good example might do much to

frustrate the plans of this perverse sect in other countries.

The Masons, therefore, resolved to murder this man, whom they had found

to be too brave and determined to be checked in any other way; for

all the attempts they had made to intimidate him or to diminish his

popularity had been entirely without effect. Moreno anticipated the blow,

but, far from fearing it, was only the more persuaded to persevere in

his undertaking, regarding it as the greatest happiness to be able to

give his life for so holy a cause. In the last letter which he wrote to

the Supreme Pontiff before his assassination are these words: “I implore

your apostolic benediction, Most Holy Father, having been re-elected

(though I did not deserve it) to the office of president of this Catholic

republic for another six years. Although the new term does not begin

till the 30th of August, the day on which I take the oath required by

the constitution, so that then only shall I need to give your Holiness

an official notification of my re-election, nevertheless I wish not to

delay in informing you of it, in order that I may obtain from Heaven

the strength and light which I more than any other one shall need, to

keep me a child of our Redeemer and loyal and obedient to his infallible

Vicar. And now that the lodges of neighboring countries, inspired by

Germany, vomit out against me all sorts of atrocious insults and horrible

calumnies, and even secretly lay plans for my assassination, I require

more than ever the divine assistance and protection to live and die in

defence of our holy religion and of this beloved republic which God has

given me to govern. How fortunate I am, Most Holy Father, to be hated

and calumniated for the sake of our divine Saviour; and what unspeakable

happiness would it be for me if your benediction should obtain for me

the grace to shed my blood for him who, though he was God, yet shed his

own on the cross for us!” This heroic desire of the fervent Christian

was granted. He was murdered by the enemies of Christ, in hatred of his

zeal for the restoration of the Christian state and of his fervent love

for the church. He is truly a martyr of Christ. Are not S. Wenceslaus of

Bohemia and S. Canute of Denmark numbered among the holy martyrs, for

the same cause? Both of them were killed in the precincts of the temple

of God; and Moreno was carried back to the church from which he had

only just departed, to breathe out his noble soul into the bosom of his

Creator.

II.

The object of Masonic civilization is society without God. The results

which it has succeeded in achieving, and which it deems of such

importance, are the separation of the state from the church, liberty

of worship, the withdrawal of public charities from religious objects,

the exclusion of the clergy from the work of education, the suppression

of religious orders, the supremacy of the civil law, and the setting

aside of the law of the Gospel. Only by these means, according to the

Masons, can the happiness of the people, the prosperity of the state,

and the increase of morality and learning be attained. These are their

fundamental maxims. Now, the difficulty was that Moreno had practically

shown, and was continuing to show more completely every day, that the

peace, prosperity, and greatness of a nation will be in proportion to

its devotion to God and its obedience to the church; that subjection

to God and his church, far from diminishing, ensures and increases,

the true liberty of man; that the influence of the clergy promotes not

only the cause of morality, but also that of letters and science; that

man’s temporal interests are never better cared for than when they are

subordinated to those which are eternal; and that love of country is

never so powerful as when it is consecrated by love of the church.

A man of the most distinguished talents, which had been most fully

cultivated at the University of Paris, Moreno had in his own country

occupied the most conspicuous positions. He had been a professor of the

natural sciences, rector of the university, representative, senator,

commander-in-chief of the army, dictator, and president of the republic.

In this last office, in which he would probably have been retained by

the nation through life, he showed what genius sanctified by religion

can accomplish. His first care was to establish peace throughout the

country, without which there can be no civil progress; and he succeeded

in doing so, not by compromises, as is now the fashion--not by making

a monstrous and abnormal amalgamation of parties and principles--but

by the consistent and firm assertion of the principles of morality and

justice, and by the open and unhesitating profession of Catholicity. His

success was so marked that Ecuador very soon arrived at such a perfect

state of tranquillity and concord as to seem a prodigy among the agitated

and turbulent republics in its neighborhood.

With the exception of some local and ineffectual attempts at revolution

during his first presidency, which were quelled by placing some of the

southern provinces in a state of siege for fifty days, Ecuador was

undisturbed by sedition during the whole of his long government. This

was partly due to the splendor of his private and public virtues, which

dissipated the clouds of envy and hatred, and gained for him the esteem

even of his political opponents. He was chaste, magnanimous, just,

impartial, and so well known for clearheadedness that the people often

stopped him on the streets to decide their disputes on the spot, and

accepted his opinion as final. His disinterestedness seems fabulous when

we think of the immoderate cupidity prevailing among modern politicians.

In his first six years he would not even draw his salary, being content

to live on the income of his own moderate fortune. In his second term he

accepted it, but spent it almost entirely in works of public utility. And

in such works he employed the whole of his time. When any one endeavored

to persuade him not to shorten his life by such continual labor, he used

to say: “If God wants me to rest, he will send me illness or death.”

Owing to this unwearying assiduity and his ardent love for the good of

his people, he was able to undertake and finish an amount of business

that would appear incredible, were not the evidence too strong to admit

of doubt. In No. 1,875 of the _Univers_ there is a catalogue of the

principal enterprises which he carried through in a brief period. They

are as follows:

A revision of the constitution.

The paying of the customs to the national treasury, instead of to the

provincial ones, as formerly.

National representation for the country as well as the cities.

The establishment of a fiscal court, and the organization of the courts

of justice.

The foundation of a great polytechnic school, which was partially

entrusted to the Jesuits.

The construction and equipment of an astronomical observatory, which

was built and directed by the Jesuits. On account of the equatorial

position of Quito, Garcia Moreno, who was well versed in the mathematical

sciences, wished to make this observatory equal to any in the world. He

bought most of the instruments with his own private funds.

Roads connecting different parts of the country. Garcia Moreno laid out

and nearly completed five great national roads. The principal one, that

from Guayaquil to Quito, is eighty leagues in length. It is paved, and

has one hundred and twenty bridges. It is a solid and stupendous work,

constructed in the face of almost insuperable difficulties.

The establishment of four new dioceses.

A concordat with the Holy See.

The reformation of the regular clergy; the restoration among them of a

common and monastic life.

The reconstruction of the army. The army had been a mere horde, without

organization, discipline, or uniform; the men hardly had shoes. Moreno

organized them on the French system, clothed, shod, and disciplined them;

now they are the model as well as the defence of the people.

The building of a light-house at Guayaquil. Previously there had been

none on the whole coast.

Reforms in the collection of the customs. Frauds put an end to, and the

revenues trebled.

Colleges in all the cities; schools in even the smallest villages--all

conducted by the Christian Brothers.

Schools for girls; Sisters of Charity, Ladies of the Sacred Heart,

Sisters of the Good Shepherd, of Providence, and Little Sisters of the

Poor.

Public hospitals. During his first presidency Moreno turned out the

director of the hospital at Quito, who had refused to receive a poor man

and was very negligent of his duties, and made himself director in his

stead. He visited the hospital every day, improved its arrangements, and

put it in good working order. He performed in it many acts of heroic

charity.

The maintenance and increase of lay congregations and orders. He was an

active member of the Congregation of the Poor.

The establishment of four museums.

The Catholic Protectory, a vast and magnificent school of arts and

trades, on the plan of S. Michele at Rome, and conducted by the Christian

Brothers.

Postal conventions with various foreign states.

The embellishment and restoration of the cities. Guayaquil, and

especially Quito, seemed as if they had been rebuilt.

And he accomplished all this, not only without increasing the taxes, but

even diminishing some of them. This is the reason why he was so much

beloved by the people; why they called him father of his country and

saviour of the republic. But it was also this which was his unpardonable

sin, which had to promptly receive a chastisement which should serve

as a warning for his successors, that they might not dare to imitate

his manner of government. For such a course as his was sure to ruin the

credit of Masonry in the popular mind.

III.

Moreno loved his country, and worked so hard for its good, because he was

truly and thoroughly religious. Every one who really loves God loves his

neighbor also; and he who loves God intensely loves his neighbor in the

same way, because he sees in him the image of God and the price of his

blood.

When he was a student in Paris he was admired for his piety. In his own

country, amid the continual cares and heavy responsibilities of his

office, he always found time to hear Mass every morning and say the

rosary every night. In his familiar conversation he spoke frequently of

God, of religion, of virtue, and with such fervor that all who heard

felt their hearts touched and moved by his words. Before beginning the

business of the day, he always made a visit to the church to implore

light from the Source of all wisdom; and he had just left it, as we

have said, when he met the ambuscade which was prepared for him. This

religious spirit produced in him a great zeal for the glory of God, and

that devotion to the Vicar of Christ which in him so much resembled the

affection of a child for his father. Let it suffice to say that when he

had to arrange the concordat with the Holy See, he sent his ambassador

to Rome with a blank sheet signed by himself, telling him to ask his

Holiness to write on it whatever seemed to him right and conducive to

the good of the church and the true welfare of the nation. Such was

the confidence which he reposed in the Pope, with whom politicians are

accustomed to treat as if he were an ambitious and designing foreign

prince, instead of being the father of all the faithful. When the

revolution entered Rome in triumph through the breach of Porta Pia,

Garcia Moreno was the only ruler in the world who dared to enter a solemn

protest against that sacrilegious invasion; and he obtained from his

Congress a considerable sum as a monthly subsidy and tribute of affection

to his Holiness.

But his piety toward God and his filial love to the church can best be

seen from the message to Congress which he finished a few hours before

his death, and which was found on his dead body, steeped in his blood.

Although it is somewhat long for the limits of an article, we think that

we ought to present it to our readers as an imperishable monument of true

piety and enlightened policy, and as a lesson for the false politicians

of the present day and of days to come.

The message is as follows:

“SENATORS AND DEPUTIES: I count among the greatest of the great

blessings which God has, in the inexhaustible abundance of

his mercy, granted to our republic, that of seeing you here

assembled under his protection, in the shadow of his peace,

which he has granted and still grants to us, while we are

nothing and can do nothing, and only give in return for his

paternal goodness inexcusable and shameful ingratitude.

“It is only a few years since Ecuador had to repeat daily

these sad words which the liberator Bolivar addressed in his

last message to the Congress of 1830: ‘I blush to have to

acknowledge that independence is the only good which we have

acquired, and that we have lost all the rest in acquiring it.’

“But since the time when, placing all our hope in God, we

escaped from the torrent of impiety and apostasy which

overwhelms the world in this age of blindness; since 1869, when

we reformed ourselves into a truly Catholic nation, everything

has been on a course of steady and daily improvement, and the

prosperity of our dear country has been continually increasing.

“Ecuador was not long ago a body from which the life-blood was

ebbing, and which was even, like a corpse, already a prey to

a horrible swarm of vermin which the liberty of putrefaction

engendered in the darkness of the tomb. But to-day, at the

command of that sovereign voice which called Lazarus from the

sepulchre, it has returned to life, though it still has not

entirely cast off the winding-sheet and bandages--that is to

say, the remains and effects of the misery and corruption in

which it had been buried.

“To justify what I have said, it will suffice for me to give

a short sketch of the progress which has been made in these

last two years, referring you to the various departments of

the government for documentary and detailed information. And

that you may see exactly how far we have advanced in this

period of regeneration, I shall compare our present condition

with that from which we started; not for our own glory and

self-gratulation, but to glorify Him to whom we owe everything,

and whom we adore as our Redeemer and our Father, our Protector

and our God.”

Here follows an enumeration of all the improvements which had

been made. He continues:

“We owe to the perfect liberty which the church has among

us, and to the apostolic zeal of its excellent prelates, the

reformation of the clergy, the amendment of morals, and the

reduction of crimes; which is so great that in our population

of a million there are not enough criminals to fill the

penitentiary.

“To the church also we owe those religious corporations

which produce such an abundance of excellent results by the

instruction of childhood and youth, and by the succor which

they give so liberally to the sick and to the destitute. We are

also debtors to these religious for the renewal of the spirit

of piety in this year of jubilee and of sanctification, and

for the conversion to Christianity and civilization of nine

thousand savages in the eastern province, in which, on account

of its vast extent, there are good reasons for establishing a

second vicariate. If you authorize me to ask the Holy See for

this foundation, we will then consult as to what measures to

take to promote the commerce of this province, and to put an

end to the selfish speculations and the violent exactions to

which its poor inhabitants have been a prey by reason of the

cruelty of inhuman merchants. The laborers, however, for this

field are not now to be had; and that those which we shall

have may be properly trained, it is right that you should

give a yearly subsidy to our venerable and zealous archbishop,

to assist him in building the great seminary which he has not

hesitated to begin, trusting in the protection of Heaven and in

our co-operation.

“Do not forget, legislators, that our little successes would be

ephemeral and without fruit if we had not founded the social

order of our republic upon the rock, always resisted and always

victorious, of the Catholic Church. Its divine teaching, which

neither men nor nations can neglect and be saved, is the rule

of our institutions, the law of our laws. Docile and faithful

children of our venerable, august, and infallible Pontiff,

whom all the great ones of the earth are abandoning, and who

is being oppressed by vile, cowardly, and impious men, we have

continued to send him monthly the little contribution which you

voted in 1873. Though our weakness obliges us to remain passive

spectators of his slow martyrdom, let us hope that this poor

gift may at least be a proof of our sympathy and affection, and

a pledge of our obedience and fidelity.

“In a few days the term for which I was elected in 1869

will expire. The republic has enjoyed six years of peace,

interrupted only by a revolt of a few days in 1872 at Riobamba,

of the natives against the whites; and in these six years it

has advanced rapidly on the path of true progress under the

visible protection of divine Providence. The results achieved

would certainly have been greater if I had possessed the

abilities for government which unfortunately I lack, or if all

that was needed to accomplish good was ardently to desire it.

“If I have committed faults, I ask pardon for them a thousand

times, and beg it with tears from all my countrymen, feeling

confident that they have been unintentional. If, on the

contrary, you think that in any respect I have succeeded,

give the honor of the success, in the first place, to God

and to his Immaculate Mother, to whom are committed the

inexhaustible treasures of his mercy; and, in the second place,

to yourselves, to the people, to the army, and to all those

who, in the different branches of the government, have assisted

me with intelligence and fidelity in the fulfilment of my

difficult duties.

“GABRIEL GARCIA MORENO.

“QUITO, August, 1875.”

That is the way that a really Catholic ruler can speak, even in this

XIXth century. It seems, while we read his words, as if we were listening

to Ferdinand of Castile or some other one of the saintly kings of the

most prosperous days of Christianity. With great justice, then, did the

government of Ecuador, when it published this message--which was found,

as we have said, on Moreno’s dead body--append to it the following note:

“The message which we have just given is the solemn voice of one who is

dead; or, better, it is his last will and testament actually sealed with

his own blood; for our noble president had just written it with his own

hand when he was assailed by his murderers. Its last words are those of a

dying father who, blessing his children, turns for the last time toward

them his eyes, darkened by the shadow of death, and asks pardon of them,

as if he had been doing anything during all their lives but loading them

with benefits. Deeply moved and distressed by grief, we seek in vain for

words adequate to express our love and veneration for him. Posterity

no doubt will honor the undying memory of the great ruler, the wise

politician, the noble patriot, and the saintly defender of the faith who

has been so basely assassinated. His country, worthily represented by

their present legislators, will shed tears over this tomb which contains

such great virtues and such great hopes, and will gratefully record on

imperishable tablets the glorious name of this her son, who, regardless

of his own blood and life, lived and died only for her.”

This splendid eulogy is an echo of the eternal benediction and a

reflection of the brilliant crown which we cannot doubt that God has

given to this his latest martyr.

IV.

The reader will see that this message of Garcia Moreno contains a true

and genuine scheme of Christian government which he applied in the

republic of Ecuador, in direct opposition to the ideas and aspirations

of modern liberalism. Every point of it is in most marked contrast to

the liberalist programme. At some risk of repetition, we will here make

a short comparison between the two, on account of the importance of the

conclusions which all prudent men can draw from it.

Moreno begins with God, and puts him at the head of the government of

his people; liberalism would have the state atheistic, and is ashamed

even to mention the name of God in its public documents. Moreno desires

an intimate union between the state and the Catholic Church, declaring

that the social order must be founded on the church, and that her divine

teaching must be the rule of human institutions and the law of civil

laws; liberalism, on the other hand, not only separates the state from

the church, but even raises it above her, and makes the civil laws the

standard in harmony with which the ecclesiastical laws must be framed.

It even would subject the most essential institutions of the church to

the caprice of man. Moreno desires full liberty for the bishops, and

ascribes to this liberty the reform of the clergy and the good morals

of the people; liberalism wants to fetter episcopal action, excites

the inferior clergy to rebellion against their prelates, and endeavors

to withdraw the people from the influence of either. Moreno not only

supports but multiplies religious communities; liberalism suppresses

them. Moreno respects ecclesiastical property, and promotes by the

resources of the state the foundation of new seminaries, saying that

without them it will not be possible worthily to fill the ranks of the

sacred ministry; liberalism confiscates the goods of the church, closes

the seminaries, and sends the young Levites to the barracks, to be

educated in the dissipation and license of military life. Moreno confides

to the clergy and to the religious orders the training and instruction

of youth; liberalism secularizes education, and insists on the entire

exclusion of the religious element. Moreno removes from his Catholic

nation the wiles and scandals of false religion; liberalism promulgates

freedom of worship, and opens the door to every heresy in faith and

to every corruption in morals. Moreno, finally, sees in himself the

weakness inherent in man, and gives God credit for all the good which he

accomplishes; while liberalism, full of satanic pride, believes itself

capable of everything, and places all its confidence in the natural

powers of man. The antagonism between the two systems is, in short,

universal and absolute.

Now, what is the verdict of experience? It is that the application

of Moreno’s system has resulted in peace, prosperity, the moral and

material welfare of the people--in a word, social happiness. On the

contrary, the application of the liberalist system has produced discord,

general misery, enormous taxation, immorality among the people, and

public scandals, and has driven society to the verge of destruction and

dissolution. The liberty which it has given has been well defined by

Moreno; it is the liberty of a corpse, the liberty to rot.

And at this juncture the infamous wickedness and the despicable logic of

the liberalist party can no longer be concealed. It has laid it down as

certain that the principles of the middle ages, as it calls them--which

are the true Catholic principles, the principles affirmed by our Holy

Father Pius IX. in his Syllabus--are not applicable to modern times, and

can no longer give happiness to nations. But here is a ruler, Garcia

Moreno by name, who gives the lie to this grovelling falsehood, and shows,

by the irresistible evidence of facts, that the happiness of his people

has actually come simply from the application of these principles. What is

the answer of the liberalist sect to this manifest confutation of their

theory? First, it endeavors to cry down its formidable adversary by

invective and calumny; and then, finding that this does not suffice to

remove him from public life, it murders him. This is the only means it

has to prove its thesis; and, having made use of it, it begins to shriek

louder than before that Catholic principles cannot be adapted to the

progress of this age. No, we agree that they cannot, if you are going to

kill every one who adapts them. What use is it to argue with a sect so

malicious and perverse? O patience of God and of men, how basely are you

abused!

A REVIVAL IN FROGTOWN.

There was quite an excitement in Frogtown. The Rev. Eliphalet Notext,

“The Great Revivalist, who had made more converts than any other man in

England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the United States and Territories,

and the British Provinces of North America,” was to “open a three weeks’

campaign” in the town.

Now, Frogtown prided itself on being the wickedest little town in

the West. Its inhabitants claimed for it the enviable distinction of

being “the fastest little village of its size in the United States”--a

weakness common to most small towns. This pride in vice is a widespread

weakness. The lean and slippered pantaloon will wag his fallen chaps

and give evident signs of pleasant titillation when some shank-shrunken

contemporary tells “what a rascal the dog was in his youth.”

Well, the Frogtowners flattered themselves that Brother Notext would

find their burgh a very hard nut to crack. Brother Notext was not a

theologian. He was not a scholar. He was not a preacher. In truth, he

was almost illiterate. But he understood the “business” of getting up

revivals. He knew how to create a sensation. He could, at least, achieve

a success of curiosity, as the French say.

He began with the newspapers, of course. He contrived to have them say

something about him and his “work” in every issue. He was not particular

whether what they said of him was favorable or unfavorable. Indeed,

he rather preferred that some of them should abuse him roundly. Abuse

sometimes helped him more than praise. It made some people his friends

through a spirit of contradiction. It appealed to the pugnacious

instincts of some “professors of religion.” It enabled him to hint that

the inimical editors were papal myrmidons, Jesuit emissaries, etc., etc.