Volume Ii Part 121 (1/2)
The love of souls and the love of wealth do not, indeed, grow in the same heart. We have already faintly sketched the result of the Church's love of souls on the temporal and spiritual well-being of the indigenous population of California. Under her gentle care was realized for its inhabitants the happiness, peace, and plenty of Paraguay. The Anglo-Saxon and the thirst for gold ushered in, alas! on these poor creatures--made in the divine image, and called equally with ourselves to an eternal share in the love of the Sacred Heart--not a miserable existence, but absolute destruction. The love of mammon has been the murderer of the native owners of the soil. The iron heart and the iron arm of the Anglo-Saxon invaders have cleared all before them. In 1862, Mr. Hittel, who is not a Catholic, and whom we hold to be an impartial witness, made a study of the subject, and he thus speaks of the destruction of the Indian population of California, page 288:
”The Indians are a miserable race, destined to speedy destruction.
Fifteen years ago, they numbered 50,000 or more: now there may be 7,000 of them. They were driven from their hunting-grounds and fis.h.i.+ng-grounds by the whites, and they stole cattle for food (rather than starve); and to punish and prevent their stealing, the whites made war on them and slew them. Such has been the origin of most of the Indian wars, which have raged in various parts of the state almost continuously during the last twelve years. For every white man that has been killed, fifty Indians have fallen. In 1848 nearly every little valley had its tribe, and there were dozens of tribes in the Sacramento basin, but now most of these tribes are entirely destroyed.”
We have been ourselves a.s.sured by eye-witnesses that such an incident as the following has frequently happened in the gold diggings. A man would be quietly cleaning his gun or rifle on a Sunday morning, when he would espy an Indian in the distance, and, without the least hesitation, would fire at him as a mark. The Indians were fair game, just as bear or elk were, and men would shoot them by way of pastime, not caring whether the mark was a ”buck” or a ”squaw,” as they call them--that is, a man or a woman. Murder became thus a relaxation. And we must add, that not only American citizens, but also men who pride themselves on the greater civilization and virtue of their country nearer home, thus imbrued their bands with reprobate levity in the blood of their fellow-creatures. We should be very sorry to imply that these horrible deeds are perpetrated only by inhabitants of the United States. On the contrary, it is certain that men who from circ.u.mstances lapse into a state of semi-savage life, without public opinion to check them, living in the wilderness and the bush, and without religion, naturally become so enslaved to their pa.s.sions that at last they commit the foulest abominations and the most horrible murders as though they were mere pastimes. We have read abundant examples of this in India and other British colonies. The American government pa.s.sed many wise and humane laws in favor of the Indian. It was not her fault that pioneers, squatters, buccaneers, and outlaws, at a distance, laughed at her laws and set them at defiance.
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The other contrast is quickly drawn. It shall be the contrast of names. We do not wish to found any strong argument upon it. Names are not actions, and yet to call a man hard names is the next thing to giving him hard blows; and we know that ”out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Let the two lists go down in parallel columns, and ill.u.s.trate the old times and the new:
_Spanish baptisms of localities or settlements._
San Francisco Sacramento La Purisima Concepcion Trinidad Jesus Maria Santa Cruz Nuestra Senora di Solidad.
Los Angeles, Reina de.
San Jose San Pedro San Miguel San Rafael Santa Clara Santa Barbara San Luis Obispo San Paolo Buena Vista Mariposa San Fernando Alcatraz Contra Costa San Mateo Plumas
_Yankee baptisms of localities or settlements_
Jacka.s.s Gulch Jim Crow Canon Loafer Gill Whiskey diggings Slap Jack Bar Yankee Doodle Skunk Gulch Chicken Thief Flat Ground Hog's Glory h.e.l.l's Delight Devil's Wood Sweet Revenge s.h.i.+rt-tail Canon Rough and Ready Rag Town Git up and Git Bob Ridley Flat Humpback Slide Swell-head Diggings b.l.o.o.d.y Run Murderers' bar Rat trap Slide Hang town
We may now dismiss these contrasts, which we have only insisted on in order to bring into greater relief the spirit of G.o.d and the spirit of mammon. The Spaniard went with the tenderest devotedness to serve and save the Indian, recognizing him from the first as a brother. The Yankee came, straining every nerve and energy in the pursuit of wealth; the Indian was in his way; he recognized no spiritual ties of brotherhood; his soul presented to him no divine image deserving of his love and service; rather it was said, let him be trodden into the mire, or perish from the face of the land. The former cast over their humble settlements, on the coast and inland, the sacred a.s.sociation of the names of mysteries and holy saints, so that men for all generations might be reminded that they are of the race of the people of G.o.d; whereas the latter have named many of the places where they have dug for gold with the names of their hideous crimes, and with terms compared to which the nomenclature of savage and uncivilized tribes is Christian and refined.
This sketch of the princ.i.p.al features of the two occupations of California, as they have borne upon the native population, may be sufficient for our present purpose. We shall presently dwell upon the better qualities in the American character--the natural foundations upon which religion has to be built. Our object is not to write a political or commercial essay; all we attempt is to note the action of the Church at the present day upon the heterogeneous elements which compose the population of California, and to record as briefly as may be the several influences observable as making up that action.
It has long been a favorite theme with the anti-Catholic philosophers of the day to descant upon the feebleness of the Catholic Church. They judge her as a purely human inst.i.tution, good in her day; but her day is gone. She was a good nurse, who held the leading-strings which mankind needed in early childhood. But we have grown to the ripeness of perfection; and the good nurse has grown old and past work: she may be allowed therefore to potter about the world, as an old servant round her master's hall and grounds, till she dies and is buried away.
We may render some little service if we point to one more instance of her present vigor and vitality in our own day; if we can show that she is stamping her impress upon the lettered horde that has overrun the western sh.o.r.e, as she did formerly upon the unlettered hordes that possessed themselves of the plains of Italy or of the wolds of England. We believe that she is by degrees a.s.similating into herself the strange ma.s.s of the Californian population; she is standing out in the midst of them as the only representative of religions unity, order, and revelation. She is executing her commission in California to-day as faithfully as she did when Peter entered Rome, or {801} Augustine Kent, or Xavier Asia, or Solano the wilds of South America.
The work of grace, through the Church of Christ, is gaining sensibly and irresistibly upon the population of California. We are far from foreseeing a day when all its inhabitants will be of one faith and one mind, or from saying that the number of conversions to the faith is prodigious and unheard-of. But we affirm that the Catholic Church, with a far greater rapidity than in England, is daily attaining a higher place in the estimation of the people, is becoming more and more the acknowledged representative of Christianity, and is actually gaining in numbers, piety, and authority. The sects there, as elsewhere in America, are ceasing by degrees to exercise any religious or spiritual influence upon the people; they act as political and social agents, and hold together as organizations by the force of local circ.u.mstances, which are wholly independent of religion. As forms of religion, the people see through them, and have no confidence in them; the consequence is, that an immense proportion are without any religion at all, and many join the Catholic Church. It was the policy of imperial Rome to open her gates to every form of heathenism: every G.o.d was tolerated, every G.o.d was accepted, no matter how incongruous or contradictory its presence by the side of others. The empire was intent upon one thing, self-aggrandizement; and for religion it did not care. Thoughtful men smiled or sneered at those mythologies and divinities, and their forms of wors.h.i.+p; and the people became cold and indifferent to them. They were dying of this contempt, when behold the newly imported presence of the Fisherman into their midst, with his Catechism of Christian Doctrine, inspired one and all with a new life and energy; the G.o.ds began to speak, and the people began to hear them. It was not that a new faith had been awakened in their old idolatry; but a new hostility and hatred had been aroused against the majesty of consistent truth, which stood before them humble, yet confounding them. They began to believe themselves to be devout pagans, and to prove the sincerity of their convictions by endeavoring to smite down the divine figure of the Catholic Church, which claimed a universal homage and a universal power. Events strangely repeat themselves in the world. That which occurred among the sects of ancient Rome is now taking place among the sects of America. Men smile at their pretensions; their convictions are not moulded by them, and they will not submit to their discipline or bow to their authority. But the sects object to death, and they think to prolong the term of their existence not by a life of faith, but by a life of sustained enmity against the religion which is slowly gaining upon them, and supplanting them in the mind and affection of the people.
There are many who believe that the day is not far distant when the Catholics of America will have to brace themselves up to go through the fire, for American religious persecution would be like an American civil war, determined and terrible. It would carry us beyond the limits of our scope to attempt to trace the steps by which persecution is approaching. This spirit has ever existed in the New England states. _Know-nothingism_ was a political and social form of it which failed for a time; and the knowledge of the immense progress made by the Church amidst the din of war, in the camp and in the hospital, in North and South, among officers and men, has quickened this movement.
The government is not to blame for this. We believe the American government, in point of religion, to be perfectly colorless. It is noteworthy that nowhere in the world has religion made more rapid progress in this century than in the United States.
We cannot doubt that the Church is repairing in America the losses she {802} has suffered in Europe through the pride, abuse of grace, and apostacy of many of her children.
In California the Church has no easy task before her. It is no longer the simple and rude Vandal, Dane, or Lombard she has to lead into her fold, but a population composed of men of keen wits, of the most varied, world-wide experiences, and drawn from countries in which they have been more or less within the reach of Catholic teaching. These are the men whom she has now to reduce into the obedience of faith.
We are not of those who imagine that Almighty G.o.d has lavished all the treasures of natural virtues upon one nation, and has withheld them proportionately from others. In intellectual gifts men differ much less one from another than is often supposed, as with their physical strength and stature the difference, on the whole, is not very large.
And so their moral natural gifts, if considered in their full circle, will be found before the tribunal of an impartial judge to be on the whole pretty evenly distributed among the nations. One nation has faith and trust, another understanding and subtlety, another mercy and compa.s.sion, another truthfulness and fidelity, another tenderness and love, another humility and docility, another courage and energy, another determination and patience, another purity, another reverence.
These natural virtues may be elevated into supernatural, and then that nation is _really_ the _greatest_ which has made best use of the grace of G.o.d. The bounteous hand of G.o.d has enriched every part of the canopy of heaven with stars and planets, differing infinitely in light, color, distance, size, and combination, and he leaves no portion in absolute poverty or darkness; and the ”distilling lips” and ”s.h.i.+ning countenance” have scattered in every direction over his immortal creation precious gifts of natural virtues, set like gems in the souls of men the moment his fingers first fas.h.i.+oned them. It will, no doubt, often require the study and patient love of an apostle's heart to discover them, so defiled and obscured have they become; but they are ever there, though dormant, and when once they become subject to the touch of divine grace, it is surprising what inclination and facility toward their eternal Father break forth and become apparent.
Now, in speaking of the sufferings of the Church in California, we have been marking some of the worst features of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. But in viewing, as we are about to do, the future prospects of the Church, we must, at the outset, point toward some of those better qualities and characteristics, upon which, under G.o.d, the Church has to build her hopes.
If once turned to G.o.d from materialism and mammon-wors.h.i.+p, we are persuaded that the American would rank among the foremost Catholics of the world; not s.h.i.+ning, perhaps, in the extraordinary gifts of faith, and in the offices of the contemplative life, like the children of Italy and Spain, but fruitful and overflowing in good works and in pus.h.i.+ng forward every active operation of charity.
Of the Californians it may be said that they are bold and independent adventurers, and that they admire these qualities in others. They are quick and devoted in their own business, and appreciate devotedness in the business (the Chinese call it ”sky business”) of priests and nuns.
They are practical and determined, and failure after failure does not discourage them. Health and life have no value when any temporal end is to be gained. And, therefore, they are struck by the Catholic Church, her bishops and missionaries, steadily pursuing her supernatural end, in spite, of the allurements, distractions, and threats of the world; preaching always and at all times the same doctrines of faith and charity; ready day and night to obey the call of her poorest member, in the camp and the battle-field, in the penury and hards.h.i.+p of' emigration, in {803} pestilence and fever-wards, in no matter what clime or among what people; always alike joyful to save the soul of the negro, the red man, or the white man; esteeming suffering, illness, contempt, poverty, and persecution, when endured for G.o.d or for his souls, as so many jewels in her crown, and holding life itself cheap and contemptible in comparison with the one end she has in view.
The Californians are a singularly inquisitive and intelligent race.
Everybody is able to read and write; and even the common laborer has his morning newspaper brought every day of his life to his cottage door. The state prison of St. Quintin shows some curious statistical of the proportion of native Americans and foreigners who are able to read and write. The comparison, as will be seen, is in favor of the United States: January 1, 1862, there were 257 prisoners, natives of the United States; of these only 29 were unable to read or write. And there were 333 of foreign birth; of these 141 were unable to read or write. The spirit of free inquiry and private judgment, which brought about the apostacy of the sixteenth century, is carried by Californians to its legitimate conclusions. They are not stopped half-way as Anglicans are by love or reverence for what may appear to be a venerable, time-honored establishment, full of nationality and wealth, and h.o.a.ry with respectability. They wish to learn the reason _why_ of everything, and they are little inclined to take anything upon a mere _ipse dixit._They love knowledge, and desire to obtain it easily, so they are great frequenters of lectures and sermons; and will go anywhere to hear them when they believe them to be good. This gives the Catholic priest a strong and solid advantage over every other minister. He is able to give an account of his faith, to show the reasonableness of submission, to prove that faith rests upon an infallible basis, that religion is not a caprice of reason, not a mere expedient, not a police, which was useful in ignorant days, and may be still useful for superst.i.tious minds and a leading-string for children and the weak. Show the American that the submission of his intellect to the divine intellect of the Church of G.o.d is not its destruction, but its perfection, and elevation, and his intellectual pride will yield as quickly as any man's. Explain to them the doctrine of the Holy Ghost and his indwelling life in the Church and in the individual, and they will be ready to call out, ”Give us also the Holy Ghost.” There are some natures so confiding and so simple that it is enough to address them as the centurion did his soldiers, or to tell them what to believe, and they believe at once. It is a blessed thing to have the grace of little children to believe from the first; but there are some who have placed themselves out of the pale of this great grace, or have been born outside it, on account of the sins of their parents, and the mould they have been formed in. This is the case with the Anglo-Saxon race, and pre-eminently so with the American. And the Church accommodates herself to the peculiarities of the human mind, with infinite charity and condescension, seeking the surest avenue to the conversion of the soul to G.o.d, in faith, hope, and charity. She is ready to meet the American on his own ground, and to give the clearest and most convincing of explanations. Again, the Americans are what has been called ”viewy,” and with all their practical power and love for the positive, they prefer to have the truth presented to them as in a landscape, in which the imagination is able to throw the reason into relief on the foreground. Compare the instructions and sermons of Peach, Gother, Fletcher, and Challoner, excellent and solid though they be, where the imagination has no play, with those of Cardinal Wiseman, Archbishop Manning, Dr. Newman, and our meaning is at once ill.u.s.trated.
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A priest who should draw his sermons out of Suarez or Petavius, rather than from Perrone or Bouvier, or some hand-book of controversy--his homilies on the gospel from, _e.g._, Dionysius the Carthusian, ill.u.s.trating them from such works as ”Burder's Oriental Customs,”