Chapter LIV: Part II: Excelsior! (2)

“As I left the city I met my doctor’s daughter, and explained my intention to her, so that they should not be alarmed at my sudden disappearance. After I had travelled a few leagues, I thought I would try whether I could live on herbs like the anchorites. I took some growing wheat, put it in my mouth, chewed it, but could not swallow it, so I fell back on my trade of beggar, which did not prevent my suffering considerably from hunger, even in Rome, for I did not know the religious houses where alms were given at stated days and hours. The novitiate of the Jesuits at St. Andrew’s is one of these charitable places, and the only one I knew. Although my would-be vocation to the eremitical life was somewhat shaken, I started from Rome intending to return to France. Retracing the same road I came by, I reached Terni, but not daring to return to my master, I retired to a soap-maker of my acquaintance, where I spent the night. The next morning he told the doctor, who was good enough to invite me back to his service. I at once accepted his offer, renouncing for ever beggary, for which I had now a greater horror than ever.

“My good master had an intimate friend called Il Signore Capitone, who some time after my return to Terni told my doctor that he would like to have me at his house as tutor to his two sons, who were studying at the college of the Society of Jesus. My master consented, and, after speaking to me, sent me to his friend. I was received with open arms, and presented the next day to our fathers, who put me in rhetoric. I was not long studying under them without feeling stimulated to imitate the virtues which I admired in these worthy servants of God. One thing prevented openness with my confessor, and it was that I could not bring myself to acknowledge my low birth, for up to this time I had boasted that my father was a _procureur du roi_ (district attorney), and I was ashamed to unsay it or keep on saying it. Several months rolled on in this combat of nature and grace, the latter pressing me to declare my vocation, the former preventing it. However, God, wishing me to be received into the Society, prepared the occasion.

“A young ecclesiastic paid by the fathers taught one of the lower classes, but, getting tired of it, asked to be relieved. They cast their eyes on me, and promised me the same salary. The gentleman with whom I dwelt consenting, I became regent or teacher. God gave me grace to economize my earnings, and when I had a pretty good sum I divided it between the churches and the poor. I even tried to imitate at least in something the great St. Nicholas, by throwing some money one night into a house where there was a girl in want.

“Our Lord rewarded me well for these liberalities by the great grace he did me by calling me strongly to the religious state. One day among others, while they were celebrating in the church the feast of Blessed Francis Borgia, not then canonized, I was so touched by the sermon of the Jesuit father that, to follow as far as I could the example of the blessed Francis, I made a vow to leave the world and enter religion either among the Jesuits, if they were willing to receive me, or, in case they deemed me unworthy of that favor, among the Capuchins or Recollects.”

We will not follow his account of some interior struggles that followed. When the provincial of the order arrived at Terni, the accounts given were so favorable that Chaumonot was received and sent with good letters to the novitiate of St. Andrew’s at Rome. “I was twenty-one years old,” says he, “when I entered the novitiate May 18, 1632.” But he did not finish it there. A nobleman had founded a novitiate at Florence, and young Chaumonot with others was sent there six months after his entrance. The master of novices here, less austere than his former one, encouraged him to reveal the great deception that troubled his conscience.

“One of the first things I asked this second master of novices was that, to punish my pride, he should question me in public as to the condition of my parents, my coming into Italy, and how I had been employed. I hoped thus to expiate to some extent my faults, and especially the falsehood I had uttered to conceal my low birth. He consented. One day, when all the novitiate was assembled, he questioned me on all these points. God gave me grace to practise the humiliation which he had inspired, and I publicly declared who I was, how and why I had left France, and what had been my adventures in Italy. The holy man added to my avowal as I had proposed making it, another act of mortification that I had not counted on. He told me to sing one of my village songs, and for this purpose made me mount on a trunk as my stage. I tried to obey, but the music was not long. My memory could bring up only a dancing tune. I started it. After the first couplet, the father stopped me, crying: ‘Shame! what a ridiculous song! If you don’t know a better one, never sing again.’”

His joy in the abode of religion was unbounded. To find himself admitted among young men so far superior to him in all that the world esteems, gave him constant occasions for zeal and fervor. Yet his trials were not ended. The health which had stood the hardships of his gipsy life now became so impaired that there was some hesitation whether he should be allowed to take his vows.

But heaven favored his desires. He returned to Rome, and was thence sent to the college at Fermo, to his intense delight; for it was but a short distance from that Holy House which was to his last breath the one beloved spot of earth to his warm heart, throbbing with love for the Holy Family.

He easily won permission to make a pilgrimage to that shrine; and the young French runaway of former days, a spectacle to excite pity and horror, would not now be recognized in the talented young Italian Jesuit, Calmanotti. His mother tongue even was lost, but a French father at Loretto gave him some books in his native language, and urged him to recover it. After a time it came back, and he could read with ease.

As a teacher, he won the favor of his pupils and his superiors, for he seemed to possess the _donum famæ_, that singular gift which constitutes popularity, and wins its way with men of all nations and places.

While pursuing his theology at Rome, he became acquainted with Father Poncet de la Rivière, a Parisian Jesuit just completing his divinity course in the Holy City, destined at a later day to be hurried through Northern New York by savage captors and to reach the Mohawk amid torture and suffering.

One day this father placed in the hands of his young and brilliant countryman one of those Jesuit _Relations_ our bibliomaniacs now prize so highly. Chaumonot read with wonder and excited interest the narrative of the heroic Brébeuf and his call for religious to labor with him in converting the Indians of New France. To him it was a personal call, and he responded. There were obstacles, but he applied for everything, permission to abridge his course of study, permission to be ordained, permission to start as early as possible for France to catch the ships on their annual voyage.

Yet with all his eagerness and haste, he clung to one spot of Italy. He could not leave it without kneeling once more as a pilgrim in the Santa Casa, and bearing it in his heart of hearts to the New World, till he could erect there a Loretto on the model of that he so revered. His devotion to the Holy Family led him to adopt the name of Joseph and Mary, and to choose for saying his first Mass the Loretto Chapel, erected after the model of the Santa Casa by Cardinal Pallotti.

An unfortunate hiatus in his autobiography prevents our following him through France, and witnessing his meeting with his family and his long farewell. The uncle, we can well believe, readily pardoned the escapade of one who was now showing such devotion and self-sacrifice; while the mother must have pressed to her heart the son now more than ever dear to her.

The Canada fleet sailed from Dieppe, and thither Chaumonot and Poncet bent their way. The fleet and its voyage are historical. As the old chronicle remarks, it bore “a College of Jesuits, a House of Hospital Nuns, and an Ursuline Convent,” the last accompanied by Madame de la Peltrie, the foundress and Mother Mary of the Incarnation, as first superior. Of the Hospital Nuns--whose contemplated establishment was endowed by Richelieu’s niece, the Duchess d’Aiguillon, and the great cardinal himself--Mary Guenet of St. Ignatius had in chapter been appointed to assume direction. The passage of the ocean was not without its risks. Richelieu’s attempt to create a French navy, and his motto, so adroitly alluding to the arms of France:

“Florent quoque lilia pronto”
(E’en on the waters lilies bloom),

had excited jealousy, and cruisers, privateers of all kinds, were ready to sweep away the cargoes destined for the colonies the far-sighted minister sought to create.

But fearless of this danger the fleet swept out of Dieppe on the 4th of May, 1639, and the convent life, with almost daily Masses, made the flagship vie in its regularity with the time-honored monasteries of the Old World.

But if the danger of hostile cruisers did not alarm them, the feast of the Holy Trinity came with a new peril. Dense fogs hung over the bosom of the ocean while the Masses were offered. Just as they had risen from their adoration, a sailor on the deck shrieked: “Mercy! mercy! we are all lost!” Through the lifting vapors he caught, within two fathoms of the ship’s side, the flash and the glitter of ice. While all sank in prayer, offering vows and Masses, and the Ursuline Sister St. Joseph began to chant the Litany of Loretto, the vanishing mist showed them the fearful extent of their danger. The iceberg towered high above their topmast, its summit still wreathed in a cloud of mist, while far and wide it extended over the sea. “You would have called it a city,” says Mother Mary of the Incarnation, “and there are cities which are far less extensive than this berg,” with turrets and spires, streets and dwellings, as it were of crystal.

The sails were straining, the wind being full in their favor, and the iceberg advancing. All passed in a moment. Captain Bontems’ voice rang out, but providentially the man at the wheel, appalled by terror, gave a wrong movement, the wind suddenly changed, and the vessel was saved, as the ice fairly grazed it, and bore away from the magnificent object that so recently sent a thrill through every heart--even the best pilots averring that it was a miracle, as no human skill could have saved them.

Still storms and fogs delayed the ships, and it was not till the 15th of July that they entered the port of Tadoussac on the lower St. Lawrence. Transferred to a fishing-smack, the whole party were here detained several days, but at last on the 1st of August reached the lower town of Quebec.

The gallant Knight of Malta, Huault de Montmagny, Governor-General of Canada, received them at the wharf, and the city made it a general holiday. As the nuns stepped on the American soil which was to be the scene of their labors for God and the Indians, they knelt to kiss the earth. All then proceeded to the church, where a Te Deum was chanted.

Father Chaumonot was not to linger long at Quebec. A letter of August 7th announces that he with three other fathers was about to start for the Huron country. His stormy sea voyage of three months was followed by a month’s journey over the rivers and lakes and through the vast forests of the New World. On the 10th of September, the six Hurons ran their bark canoe ashore at the end of Lake Tsirorgi, where Father Jerome Lalemant was at the moment in a rude cabin he had recently thrown up.

Chaumonot was on the field of his labor. Strange indeed was all around him. “Our dwellings are of bark, like those of the Indians, with no partitions except for the chapel. For want of table and furniture, we eat on the ground and drink out of bark. Our kitchen and refectory furniture consists of a great wooden dish full of _sagamity_, which I can compare to nothing but the paste used for wall paper. Our bed is bark with a thin blanket; sheets we have none, even in sickness; but the greatest inconvenience is the smoke, which, for want of a chimney, fills the whole cabin.”

“Our manner of announcing the Word of God to the Indians is not to go up into a pulpit and preach in a public place; we must visit each house separately, and by the fire explain the mysteries of our holy faith to those who choose to listen to it.”

The superior soon recognized in the young father--to whom the Hurons gave the name of Oronhiaguehee (the Bearer of Heaven)--a great facility for languages, as well as zeal, courage, and perseverance.

Father Chaumonot began his Huron labors at a critical moment. The mission among the Wyandot tribes, renewed by the great apostle Brébeuf soon after the restoration of Canada to France, had been fruitful in crosses and gave little to encourage the ministers of religion.

Most of these Indians, obdurate in their errors and superstitions, not only turned a deaf ear to the teachings of the missionaries, but, regarding them as powerful sorcerers, attributed to them every misfortune that befel the tribe or any individual. In those wild communities, every one rights his own wrongs, real or imaginary. Hence the fearless Jesuits actually carried their lives in their hands, never free from danger, or without the probability of being tomahawked.

The flotilla that brought up Father Chaumonot and Poncet carried also the deadly small-pox. As it devastated town after town, the missionaries were compelled to bear the responsibility of this new scourge. Their very efforts to reach the sick, to baptize and instruct, were resisted with superstitious terror; they were driven from cabins; and often, on reaching a town, would find every lodge closed against them.

Their crosses were cut down, the crucifix torn from their necks, the tomahawk often menaced their lives while on their errands of mercy or at prayer in their cabins.

It was a position to appall the stoutest heart. Yet Chaumonot entered on his work with alacrity and courage, fit associate for those who had already braved all the risks and perils. None faltered or hesitated.

They took, however, at this time an important step. To enable them to act more independently and give them at all times a place for retreats, as well as a centre of mission work, they established St. Mary’s, the first mission settlement in the West. It was on the river Wye, easy of access from all the towns where they had been laboring. From it the fathers, generally two together, proceeded to the towns assigned as their field of labor.

The large fortified town of Ossossane was entrusted to Father Ragueneau, and Chaumonot was named his assistant. Here the opposition and obduracy were such that they had actually driven out the missionaries. The young Jesuit went forth bravely into this hardened field--Ossossane and twelve neighboring towns.

In St. Teresa, as the missionaries styled one of these villages, a young man solicited instruction and seemed to hear it with pleasure. While Father Ragueneau was speaking, another Indian rushed furiously in and ordered the two missionaries to be gone. As Father Ragueneau rose, the young man whom he had been instructing sprang upon him, tore his crucifix violently from his neck, and, brandishing his tomahawk, bade him prepare to die. “I fear not death,” said Ragueneau; “you should thank me for what I have just taught you. If you wish to kill me I shall not fly, for death will place me in heaven.” His tomahawk was raised, and he dealt the blow. “Father Chaumonot and I thought that we that moment beheld our long-cherished desire gratified,” but the blow was averted--how they knew not. As he raised his hatchet again his arm was caught.

One day the two fathers were passing near a cabin full of sick Hurons, whom they were not permitted to see. A bright little boy ran out and welcomed them with kind words. His danger of taking the epidemic touched them. Father Ragueneau felt impelled not to lose the opportunity which Providence seemed to offer them to baptize him, and he asked our young missionary to baptize him secretly. Father Chaumonot took up a handful of snow, and, melting it in his hand, poured it upon his head. The little fellow smiled, and then, as though he had accomplished his errand, ran back to his death-stricken home. A few days later they heard that he had sunk under the fatal malady.

The next year he was sent to the Arendaenronnon with Father Daniel. As the great object was to learn the language, his experienced companion made him daily visit a certain number of cabins and pick up all the words he could, writing them down. “So great a repugnance had I to making these visits,” he tells us, “that every time I entered a cabin I seemed to be going to the torture, so much did I shrink from the railleries to which I was subjected.”

After this rude apprenticeship he set out with the great Father Brébeuf to attempt to establish a mission among the Attiwandaronk, a tribe lying on both sides of the Niagara, or, as they called it and one of their towns near the Senecas, Onguiaahra. This tribe, fiercer and more brutal than the Hurons, had hitherto observed a neutrality between them and the Iroquois--a fact which led the French to call them the Neutral Nation. A journey of four days and nights through the woods from Teananstayae on the Huron frontier brought them to Kandoucho, the first of the Neuter towns.

In the beginning they were well received, and all awaited the return of the great chief Tsohahissen from war, there being no one in his absence to treat with them; but gradually pagan Hurons came, and represented the missionaries as great magicians who sought their ruin. Then every door was closed against them, and they often nearly perished at night, deprived of all shelter. After visiting eighteen towns, they sadly turned back towards Kandoucho, but the snow came on so rapidly that they could not proceed beyond Teotongniaton. There they found a charitable woman who not only welcomed them to her cabin, but during their twenty-five days’ stay was their patient and intelligent instructor in her language, enabling them to adapt the dictionary and grammar of the Huron language to that of this nation.

Yet even this good woman could not protect her guests from all injury. A crazy fellow in her cabin spat upon Father Chaumonot, tore his cassock, and kept up such a din that they could not sleep, and tore from their persons any object that took his fancy.

After a stay of four months and a half they finally abandoned this field, and the Neuter Nation rejected its last call, for it was soon after destroyed by the Iroquois.

Still greater suffering awaited him. With the early summer he joined Father Daniel once more. They entered the cabin of a dying woman in the town of St. Michael to baptize her; one of her relatives, incensed at this, awaited them without, and as Father Chaumonot issued forth tore off his hat with one hand, and with the other dealt him a terrible blow with a stone. “I was stunned by the blow,” says he, “and the assassin seized his tomahawk to finish me, but Father Daniel wrested it from his hands. I was taken to our host’s cabin, where another Indian was my charitable physician. Seeing the large tumor I had on my head, he took another sharp stone to make some incision, through which he endeavored to press out all the extravasated blood, and then bathed the top of my head with cold water, in which some pounded roots were steeped. He took some of this infusion into his mouth and squirted it into the incisions. This treatment was so successful that I was soon well. God was satisfied with my desire of martyrdom, or rather deemed me unworthy to die a victim to the hatred of the first of our sacraments.”

Amid such men, with all the horrors of war--for the Iroquois from New York were gradually conquering the land--Chaumonot labored on, suffering in health but undaunted and unappalled, even when, in 1648, Father Daniel perished in his village, and in the following March Father Brébeuf and his young associate Gabriel Lalemant underwent the fearful torture which gave them the highest crown among our martyrs.

A general panic seized the Hurons after this last blow. “At the time of this greatest defeat of the Huron nation,” says Father Chaumonot, “I had charge of a town almost entirely Christian. The Iroquois, having attacked the villages about ten miles off, gave our braves a chance to sally out and attack them; but the enemy were in greater force than they supposed, and our men were defeated. Two days after their defeat news came that all our warriors were killed or taken. It was midnight when the intelligence came, and at once every cabin resounded with wailing, sobs, and piteous cries. You could hear nothing but wives bewailing their husbands, mothers mourning for their sons, and relatives lamenting the death or captivity of those nearest to them. Thereupon an old man, justly fearing lest the Iroquois might dash on the town, now deprived of its defenders, began to run through the town crying: ‘Fly! fly! let us escape; the hostile army is coming to take us.’

“At this cry I ran out and hastened from cabin to cabin to baptize the catechumens, confess the neophytes, and, arm all with prayer. As I made my round I saw that they were all abandoning the place, to take refuge with a nation about thirty-three miles distant. I followed these poor fugitives with the view of giving them spiritual aid, and as I did not even think of taking any provisions, I made the whole journey without eating or drinking or ever feeling any fatigue. While marching on, I thought only and busied myself only with administering consolation to my flock, instructing some, confessing others, baptizing those who had not yet received that sacrament. As it was still winter, I was forced to administer baptism with snow-water melted in my hands. What showed me clearly that my strength in flight was given me from on high, is that a Frenchman in the party, a man incomparably stronger in constitution than I, almost perished on the way, spent with weariness and overexertion.”

He was with the surviving missionaries when they committed to the grave at St. Mary’s the bodies of Brébeuf and Lalemant; and when tidings came of Garnier’s heroic death, and of Chabanel’s disappearance, he accompanied the Hurons who fled to St. Joseph’s Island in Lake Huron. There is nothing in the annals of the missions more touching than Father Chaumonot’s letters describing the fearful sufferings of the fugitives there.

When they at last resolved to seek a refuge at Quebec with their allies the French, Father Chaumonot bore them company, bidding adieu to the land which for eleven years had been the constant scene of his labors.

No missionary had more thoroughly entered into the Indian character or identified himself with them in thought. To him, therefore, they gave the name which the illustrious Brébeuf had borne, that of Hechon; and he was naturally the one to whose direction they were committed on Isle Orleans.

His labors on the Huron language were now probably completed. He had thoroughly mastered it, and drew up a grammar and dictionary, which continued for years to be the guide, not only for Huron, but for all the kindred Iroquois languages. “It pleased God,” he says, “to give my work so much benediction, that there is no turn or subtlety in Huron, nor manner of expression, that I am not acquainted with, or have not, so to say, discovered.” This knowledge he attributed as much to prayer as to his natural talent and assiduity.

His grammar was published some years since in the second volume of the _Collections_ of the Quebec Literary and Historical Society, and is one of the most important of those linguistic treasures which American ethnology owes to the early Catholic missionaries.

Father Chaumonot had scarcely organized his Huron church on Isle Orleans when he was summoned to a new field. The Iroquois, their hands reeking with the blood of Goupil, Jogues, Daniel, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Garnier, asked for missionaries. They began to respect the faith which gave such heroes, able to read the grandeur of Christianity in the virtues of its apostles.

Father le Moyne had led the way to Onondaga. Dablon and Chaumonot followed. In a general assembly of the cantons, Father Chaumonot proclaimed the faith with such eloquence, and in a style so adapted to reach the Indian mind, that the Indians lost their cold indifference, and applauded loudly, while Father Dablon himself listened in wonder to the language of his fellow-missioner. The mission was established. Huron captives formed a nucleus, around which gathered Iroquois converts, warriors and matrons, sachems and orators.

There was no sparing of vice. Amid all the suspicion that lurked in the Indian mind against the motives of the missionaries, and compelled constant discourses and apologies, the fearless missionaries rebuked them for their evil life.

Once, when accusations were made that the blackgowns came to diminish their numbers and blight their race, Father Chaumonot boldly retorted the charge on the men, and showed them that, by their infidelity and harshness to their wives, their divorces, abandoning them, and overtasking their strength, they caused the death of their children, and were forced to adopt captives to fill their cabins. Christian marriage alone, he showed them, could save the race from extermination.

This advocacy of woman’s real rights closed the mouths of his assailants, and so won the women of Onondaga to the cause of Christianity that they wished to render public thanks to the fearless missionary. They gave him a great banquet, to which they came adorned in all their finest ornaments, to dance to the cadence of two native minstrels, while they sang his praises and thanked him for his advocacy.

Strange that alarmed statisticians in this country point now to the same causes as producing the rapid decline in the birth-rate of the Americans as a people, while the church, echoing Chaumonot’s sermon of two centuries ago, points to the sacrament of matrimony as the only sure hope for the country.

The Onondaga mission of 1655 is full of beautiful details. Its end was strange and romantic. A plot formed for the destruction of all the French was baffled by a secret flight, so adroitly managed that the Indians believed that the French had become invisible.

Montreal was the next field of our missionary. Here, in 1663, with the aid of Madame d’Ailleboust, Margaret Bourgeoys, foundress of the Congregation Sisters, Mother de Brésoles, of the Hôtel Dieu, and other pious persons, he founded a society which has for its model the Holy House of Nazareth, to which he was so devoted, and which has for two hundred years been the instrument of incalculable good in Canada--one of the mighty aids in maintaining the family faith and family piety--the Society of the Holy Family. Amid our great wants is such a society, to sanctify Christian families, by modelling them on that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

The remnant of his Huron flock had gathered beneath the fort of Quebec, but before he returned permanently to them he was sent as chaplain to Fort Richelieu, at the mouth of the Sorel. Adapting himself to any life, he labored among those committed to him with his habitual zeal. He soon gained the hearts, not only of the private soldiers, but of the officers; and established among them regular practices of piety. One officer, touched by his words and example, hung up his sword at the altar, and, receiving in due time holy orders, was for many years a devoted missionary in Nova Scotia; while a soldier, formed by Father Chaumonot, devoted himself to the service of the missionaries, and became an excellent teacher.

At last he is with his Hurons, never to leave them. He reared for them the Chapel of Notre Dame de Foye, so called after a celebrated shrine of Mary near Dinan. A copy of the miraculous statue there venerated excited the devotion of his flock, and was the instrument of God’s blessings and favors. To commemorate these, the Hurons, through Father Chaumonot, sent to the Old World shrine a wampum belt with the inscription, “_Beata quæ credidisti_,” and this token of Indian homage was laid before the altar of Our Lady with the offerings of kings and princes. Others followed the example, and to this day celebrated shrines in Belgium, France, and Italy preserve the wampum belts sent from the depths of our forests by the converts of our early missionaries.

Six years later, the wants of the Indians compelled them to select a new site, where unbroken land and fuel were abundant. When it was chosen, Father Chaumonot carried out a long-cherished design, and with the alms of the Children of Mary in Europe and America erected a brick chapel of the exact dimensions and arrangement of the Santa Casa of Loretto. It soon became a renowned pilgrimage for the supernatural favors obtained there. And here in this favored sanctuary the servant of Mary spent nearly a quarter of a century, giving his time to God and his neighbor. He rose at two, spent four or five hours in prayer or contemplation, recited his office, said Mass, preaching almost daily, then attended to the affairs of the mission, instructing some of his colleagues in Huron, catechising children; after a slight repast at noon, he again spent some time in prayer, and visited some cabins to give special instructions. At nightfall, his chapel was filled for evening prayer, and with his private devotions he closed his day.

In 1689, he celebrated at the Cathedral of Quebec the fiftieth anniversary of his first Mass, being the first one who had ever there attained such years of ministry. The Governor and Intendant, with many other persons of distinction, sought the privilege of receiving at the hands of the venerable priest on this day.

At the close of the year 1692, he began to sink under a complication of disorders, and was conveyed to Quebec. He rallied for a time, but after suffering intense pains, which he bore with unshaken patience and admirable piety, he died the death of a saint. As such, his austerities, his mortifications, his uninterrupted union with God, his zeal and love for his neighbor, had long caused him to be regarded. All gathered around his venerated remains seeking some relic, and many afflicted in soul or body sought his intercession--as documents show, not without effect. His funeral was the most imposing yet seen in Canada. Such was the repute of his sanctity that even Frontenac, the Governor-General, bitter and fanatical in his hostility to the Jesuits, attended, as well as the Bishop of Quebec, who had long revered the aged missionary.

None who beheld his unpromising start in life could have dreamed of such a career or of such a close.

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN INDIA.[190]

The contents of this book, put forward with all the apparent sanction possible of the sect that employs Mr. Butler, may be looked upon as the quintessence of all that has been or can be said on the subject of missions in Hindostan, by a writer who feels that he has a claim to challenge our attention and command our belief. That it is orthodox in character, according to the notions of his class, cannot be doubted in view of the official position of the author, and the innumerable extracts from the Old and New Testaments, particularly the former, with which its pages are interspersed; quotations the frequency of which, if not reflecting much credit on the reverend doctor by their charity or appositeness, give to the work an air of ponderous learning and holiness that must be highly relished by his brother Methodists. But in justice to the author, it must be said that he does not altogether confine himself to the sacred writers. When the grandeur of the pagan temples or the horrors of Mohammedanism become too great even for his descriptive powers, he freely draws on that profane child of the muses, Tom Moore, whose merits, however, he is careful, in his clerical capacity, to depreciate by assuring us that the author of _Lalla Rookh_ “was for a good part of his life a _Romanist_”; an objection which he seems to forget might be urged with equal truthfulness against the majority of the gifted minds of the past eighteen centuries, and even against the inspired penmen of the New Testament and the fathers of the church.

However, aside from the attractions of the work in an artistic point of view, we do no injustice in selecting it as a very favorable specimen of this sort of literature, and, recognizing its author as a tried and approved servant of the Methodist Episcopal Church, we shall proceed to gather from its veritable pages a history of his labors, sufferings, and triumphs in the cause of Protestant Christianity.

India, as our readers are aware, is one of the most densely peopled and, in one sense, highly civilized of Asiatic countries. Its population numbers considerably more than two hundred millions, or about one-sixth of the whole human race, speaking many languages and professing various forms of faith. The Hindoos, the original inhabitants, forming the mass of the people, are polytheists, worshipping according to the _Vedas_ and other books considered sacred, their priests being known to the Western world as Brahmins--an hereditary religio-social aristocracy, the most ancient, and at one time considered the most learned, body of men in existence. The Mohammedans, who are said to amount to some twenty-five millions, are the descendants of the conquerors of the eleventh century, and follow more or less strictly the teachings of the Koran. The Brahminical classes or castes, which are numerous, though not enjoying their full immunities since the advent of Europeans on their shores, are still ardently devoted to learning, and indeed, in common with all their countrymen, may be said to develop remarkable mental acuteness and quick perception, though still unfortunately strongly attached to the grossest forms of idolatry. To wean them from these degrading practices, and to introduce in their stead the pure teaching of the Gospel, has been the professed object of the Protestant sects of Europe in sending out crowds of missionaries and innumerable Bibles since the commencement of the century--a work in which some of their brothers in this country have not been behindhand. But American Methodism, until 1856, had no representative in the “land of the Veda,” and the Indians up to that time were ignorant of its peculiar and manifold blessings till Dr. Butler was despatched from Boston to enlighten them. He sailed in April, and arrived at Bareilly in the autumn of that year, where, as he tells us, “his appearance caused a great deal of talk and excitement.” He was accompanied from Allahabad by a native named Joel, wife and child, and, having his own wife and two of his children with him, he commenced his labors. This Joel, who is frequently mentioned in the book, was, it seems, already converted, and when transferred to Dr. Butler by his spiritual guardians they “playfully intimated that Joel had been trained a Presbyterian, knew the Westminster Catechism, and was sound on the five points of Calvinism, and that they would naturally expect him to continue in the faith even though he was going with a Methodist missionary; but,” continues the sly doctor, “I felt assured that these things would regulate themselves hereafter”--and he was right, for, as he tells us in another place, his faithful helper “was destined to become the first native minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in India.” He became in a manner the corner-stone of the vast edifice that was about to be erected on the ruins of heathenism.

We have often heard the anecdote of lending a congregation, but this is the first instance, within our knowledge, of borrowing, not to use a harsher term, a convert; still, we can sympathize with honest Joel in the confusion of mind he must have experienced in discriminating between the Christianity of John Calvin and that of John Wesley, and his mystification at receiving as the Word of God two different and distinct versions of the same law, not to speak of his trying to expound them to his audience in his capacity of first native pastor. Still, he was a beginning, the nucleus of that great conglomeration of religion and intelligence about to be called into existence by the potent spells of the grand magician. Nor was he long left alone. There was a Christian girl, it seems, named Maria, who had formerly been converted by the Madras Baptists, but whom Dr. Butler speedily reconverted to Methodism. “This precious girl,” says the author, “who, of her race and sex in Bareilly, alone loved us for the Gospel’s sake, seemed raised up to encourage and aid us in our new mission;” and with this encouragement, and two such followers, he forthwith set about the conversion of Rohilcund, having first secured “a furnished house, and began to study the language.”

If there is something absurd in the commencement of a Methodist church with only a Presbyterian and a Baptist, the idea conveyed in the last sentence is excessively ridiculous. Can we imagine a heaven-appointed minister, filled with holy energy, so eager to christianize the heathen and elevate his mind that he leaves his distant home and two of his (four) children in tears, penetrates into the heart of the enemy’s country, and, having made his “comfortable arrangements,” established his wife and family, and procured two ready-made helpers, quietly sits down for the first time to learn the language of the highly astute and observant people to whom he is sent to preach, and consequently ignorant of the prejudices and doctrines against which he would have to combat? We are not surprised therefore to hear that for several months after the establishment of the mission Mr. Butler’s congregation, as he delights to call it, did not increase perceptibly. Says Dr. Russell, a Protestant and the correspondent of England’s leading journal: “So long as a Christian minister can argue with a Moulvie or a pundit with patience and ingenuity, he will be listened to with interest and respect; he will be permitted to expound the Scriptures, and to warn his hearers against the errors of their faith, provided that he refrains from insulting, contemptuous, and irritating language; but if he be a mere ignorant, illiterate zealot, without any qualification (temporally speaking) except a knowledge of Hindostanee and good intentions, he may be exposed to the laughter, scorn, and even abuse of the crowded bazaar in consequence of his manifest inability to meet the subtle objections of his keen and practised opponent. From what I have heard I regret to state my conviction is, that no considerable success, so far as human means are concerned, can be expected from the efforts of those who are like the ancient apostles in all things but their inspiration and heavenly help.”[191]

In May, 1857, the Sepoy rebellion, caused to a great extent by the conduct of just such “illiterate zealots” and the criminal neglect of the East India Company, broke out, and the terror extending to Bareilly, the foreign women and children were ordered to be sent to the mountains for safety, Dr. Butler being advised to accompany them. After “prayerfully considering” this message, he resolved not to go, not to abandon his post in the hour of danger; but, with the inconsistency of poor weak human nature, from which even missionaries, it would appear, are not exempt, he tells us that “before going to bed we arranged our clothes for a hasty flight should any alarm be given.” As the doctor is an advocate of the superiority of married over single missionaries, we give literally his own account of the domestic scene that followed the warning, which, to say the least, is very complimentary to his amiable spouse:

“As soon as the adjutant had gone, I communicated the message
to Mrs. Butler. She received it with calmness, and we retired
to our room to pray together for divine direction. After I
had concluded my prayer, she began, and I may be excused in
saying that such a prayer I think I never heard; a martyr might
worthily have uttered it, it was so full of trust in God and
calm submission to his will. But when she came to plead for the
preservation of ‘these innocent little ones,’ she broke down
completely. We both felt we could die, if such were the will
of God; but it seemed too hard for poor human nature to leave
these little ones in such dreadful hands or perhaps to see them
butchered before our eyes! We knew that all this had been done
on Sunday last at Meerut, and we had no reason to expect more
mercy from those in whose power we were should they rise and
mutiny. But we tried hard to place them and ourselves, and the
mission of our beloved church, in the hands of God, and he did
calm our minds and enable us to confide in him. On arising from
our knees, I asked her what she thought we ought to do? Her reply
was that she could _not_ see our way clear to leave our post; she
thought our going would concede too much to Satan and to these
wretched men; that it would rather increase the panic; that it
might be difficult to collect again our little congregation if
we suspended our services; and, in fact, that we ought to remain
and trust in God. I immediately concurred, and wrote word to the
commanding officer.”

But all flesh is weak. Notwithstanding the result of this combined appeal for “divine direction,” the doctor knew better, and, instead of imitating his wife’s brave determination in that trying hour, he hearkened to the counsel of a _Moonshee_, and Methodism, while it retained its missionary, lost its first and, it may be surmised, its only chance of having a martyr. “Being a Mohammedan,” he says, “with more worldly wisdom than consistency, and having a pecuniary loss in the suspension of my lessons in the language, his warning had much weight with me. I had then to settle the question raised by the commanding officer whether our resistance to going, under those circumstances, was not more a tempting of, rather than a trusting in, Providence? I hated to leave my post, even for a limited time. Yet to remain looked, as he argued, should an insurrection occur and I become a victim, like throwing away my life without being able to do any good by it; and the Missionary Board would probably have blamed me for not taking advice and acting on the prudence which foreseeth the evil and takes refuge ‘till the indignation is overpast.’” Was there ever as prudent an apostle or one so entirely anxious to avoid (after death) the reproach of his superiors by the exhibition of too much courage? Not that he cared for his personal safety, by no means, but the thought of the censure he would have incurred for not having taken more care of his precious life could not be endured. “Still,” continues this intrepid contemner of ‘wifeless priests,’ “had I been _alone_, or could I have induced Mrs. B. to take the children and go without me (a proposition she met by declaring that she would never consent to it, but would cling to her husband and cheerfully share his fate, whatever it might be), I would have remained. But then, to all the preceding reasons, the reflection was added that Mrs. B.’s situation required that if moved at all it must be then, as a little later flight would be impossible, and she and the children and myself must remain and take whatever doom the mutineers chose to give us.” What one of the “wifeless priests” would have done amid similar circumstances, those at all conversant with the history of Catholic missions in every portion of the world--and there is no part of it but has been hallowed by their footsteps--can be at a loss to determine; but then, those short-sighted celibates have never allowed family or other human ties to come between them and their manifest duty to their Master. The result of the lady’s sickness, so indelicately introduced, we think, as a cloak for her husband’s cowardice and hypocrisy, was, we subsequently learn, the increase of the Methodist “congregation” of India by one member known by the sobriquet of the “mutiny baby,” and it is pleasant to consider that, despite the disasters of the times, the conversion of the country was thus progressing, even though slowly.

Moved by all these considerations, the author left Bareilly with his family, and proceeded to the assigned refuge in the mountains, some seventy miles distant, with surprising alacrity, considering that for many days after everything remained quiet in the neighborhood. But what a hegira was that, so full of perils, adventures, and even miracles, performed, of course, by him alone! In his narration of the journey he rises above himself, and becomes almost apocalyptic in style. At one time, when the bearers showed an unwillingness to carry Mrs. B. and the children further, this was his noble device:

“But in spite of urging, there stood my men. It was an awful moment. For a few minutes my agony was unutterable; I thought I had done all I could, but now everything was on the brink of failure. I saw how ‘vain’ was the ‘help of man,’ and I turned aside into the dark jungle, took off my hat, and lifted my heart to God. _If ever I prayed, I prayed then._ I besought God in mercy to influence the hearts of these men, and decide for me in that solemn hour. I reminded him of the mercies that had hitherto followed us, and implored his interference in this emergency. My prayer did not last two minutes, but how much I prayed in that time!”

No wonder that his heart was glad at the result, particularly at the fact that the men not only took up their valuable burden cheerfully, but forgot to ask for their hire when their task was accomplished, which to any one acquainted with that class of men in the East certainly savors of the supernatural. “The divine interposition in the case will appear more manifest,” he modestly continues, “when I add that even the ‘bucksheesh’ for which the bearers were contending they started off without staying to ask for or receive.” The ladies who met the party at the first halting-place were astonished, and one of them, Miss Y., asked: “Why, what could have happened to Mrs. Butler’s bearers that they started so cheerfully, and arrived here so soon without giving her the least trouble?” “Ah! she knew not,” ejaculates the self-contained missionary, “but I knew, there is a God who heareth and answereth prayer!” But let not this remark be misunderstood. That initial lady, if at all in the flesh, was a Christian, and must have believed in the efficacy of prayer. The true meaning is that she did not know what a holy man Dr. Butler really was, and of what special graces he had became the favored recipient. Poor Miss Y., how we commiserate her ignorance!

While the civil war lasted, the refugees remained in the mountains at Nynee Tal, a pleasant summer resort, where, for a rent of $225, our missionary and family had no difficulty in securing the inevitable “furnished house,” and, save an occasional scarcity of milk for the baby, suffered no great inconvenience from want of the necessaries and even luxuries of life. Food was readily and cheaply supplied by the natives, and the Nawab of Rampore, though an infidel, generously furnished them with food and money. Still, in this comfortable shelter, and while his brother missionaries were exposed to all sorts of dangers, our hero was rivalling Nana Sahib in the fierceness of his denunciation and maledictions; for, while the rebellious Peishwa was petitioning his tutelary gods to destroy the English, and send them _en masse_ to the infernal regions, the American Christian was invoking the Deity, in all the forms peculiar to Methodist camp-meeting exhorters, to weed out, root and branch, the very people to whom he had been commissioned, and upon whose hospitality and forbearance so many of his co-religionists depended for safety. The utter want of decency and common humanity exhibited by many of the Protestant ministers during and subsequent to the war cannot better be illustrated than by transcribing the following gratuitous account given in this book of a visit to the deposed Emperor of Delhi while _in prison_:

“A day or two previously, my friend, Rev. J. S. Woodside,
missionary of the American Presbyterian Church, was here. He
went to see the emperor, and took the opportunity of conversing
with him about Christianity. The old man assented to the general
excellence of the Gospel, but stoutly declared that it was
abrogated by the Koran--as Moses and the law were abolished by
Christ and the Gospel--so, he argued, Mohammed and the Koran had
superseded Christ and every previous revelation. Brother Woodside
calmly but firmly told him that, so far from this being the case,
_Mohammed was an impostor and the Koran a lie_, and that, unless
he repented and believed in Christ alone, without doubt he must
perish in his sins. He then proceeded to enforce upon his bigoted
hearer the only Gospel sermon which he had ever heard; and
Brother Woodside _was the very man to utter it_!”

Surely this Woodside, who could thus wantonly insult a feeble old man, the fallen monarch of two hundred millions of subjects, heathen though he was, must have been one of the ignorant zealots alluded to by Mr. Russell; and the writer who could mention him with unctuous satisfaction runs the risk of being considered little better.

For nearly a year the missionary toils of Dr. Butler were suspended; but when all danger was passed, he returned to his former scene of action, or rather inaction, this time reinforced by two “brothers” from America, who, having been lately ordained, knew as little of the language, religion, and disposition of the natives as he did on his arrival. The reunion took place at Agra, and the trio, with their respective families, of course, proceeded to Nynee Tal, “as we could there best devote ourselves,” says the author, “to the acquisition of the language, and be ready to descend to Bareilly and our other stations, where God had prepared our way, after the reoccupation of Rohilcund by the English Government”--rather a strange precursor, we should suppose, for the servants of the Prince of Peace; but tastes, particularly Methodist tastes, cannot always be accounted for. The “Church in India” also received at this time another valuable member (number four) in the person of a small boy, the orphan of a deceased sepoy officer, who had been found on the battle-field by Lieutenant Gowan, and “made over”--to use his own expression to the superintendent--by that officer. “No man in the East or in America,” observes the matter-of-fact missionary, “has given half as much money to develop our work in India as Colonel Gowan has contributed.... His liberality to our mission work, up to the present, cannot be much less than $15,000.”