A'LOYAL LIFE' KK J'HAVENS -RICHARDS'Sd' /^ / / '^^ .^ Columbia 5.^nitJcrfi!ttp intl)fCitpofllfttjg0rk THE LIBRARIES /( ^ 9,^. dk '7'/' A W rison i Co, Bo SI or: A LOYAL LIFE A BIOGRAPHY OF HENRY LIVINGSTON RICHARDS WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS LETTERS AND A SKETCH OF THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT IN AMERICA BY JOSEPH HAVENS RICHARDS Priest of the Society of Jesus st. louis, mo., 1913 Published by B. Herder 17 South Broadway FREIBURG (Baden) GERMANY LONDON, W. C. 6^,. QisKVi; Russell Str. niPRHII POTEST Anthony J. Maas, S. J. Provincial NIHIL OB ST AT Sti. Ludovici, die 11. Aprilis, 1913 F. O. Holweck, Censor Librorum. IMPRIMATUR Sli. Ludovici, die 12. Aprilis, 1913 J, Joannes J. Qlenncn, Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici Copyright, 1913, by Joseph Oummersbach — BECKTOLD— PRINTING AND BOOK MFG. CO. ST. LOUIS, Aip. . . , CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE List of Authokities . i Introduction iii I Boyhood: 1814-1829 1 II First Experience of College; Kenyon College AND Bishop Chase: 1829-1830 24 > >** III Early Life in Ohio; the Village Store; the ^ Temperance Movement: 1830-1832 . ... 36 IV College; Graduation; Engagement: 1832-1839 68 V BraiNNINGS of the CaTHOLIC MOVEMENT ... 84 VI Seminary; Ordination; Marriage: 1839-1840 . Ill VII The Ministry; High Churcu Tendencies: 1840- 1848 139 VIII Conversion: 1848-1852 195 IX Early Catholic Life 241 X New Friendships and Labors 264 XI Boston: 1868-1878 302 XII Winchester; Last Illness and Death: 1878- 1903 342 Appendix. Sermon on the Organic Nature of Christianity 377 BOOKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS WORK. The History of Granville, Licking County, Ohio. By Rev. Henry Bushnell, A.M. Columbus, Ohio, Press of Hann and Adair, 1889. The Plan of Union, or a History of the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of the Western Reserve. By WiUiara S. Kennedy, Hudson, Ohio, Pentagon Steam Press, 1856. The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism. By Willis- ton Walker, Ph.D. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893. The Congregationalists. Bv Leonard Woolsey Bacon. New York, The Baker & Taylor Co., 1904. A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. By Charles C. Tiffanj-, D.D. N. Y. The Chris- tian Literature Co., 1895. Bishop Chase's Reminiscences. 2 vols. Boston, James B, Dow, 1848. Life of Philander Chase, First Bishop of Ohio and Illinois, Founder of Kenyon and Jubilee Colleges. By his grand- daughter, Laura' Chase Smith. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1903. Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Sarah Peter. By Margaret R. King. 2 vols. Cincinnati, Robert Clark & Co., 1889. ^ The Oxford Movement in America, or Glimpses of Life in an Anglican Seminary. By the Rev. Clarence E. Wal- worth. New York, Catholic Book Exchange, 1895. The Road to Rome, and How Two Brothers Got There. By William Richards. New York, Benziger Bros., 1895. Orestes A. Brownson's Early Life, from 1803 to 1844. By Henry F. Brownson. Detroit, Michigan. Henry F. Brownson, Publisher, 1898. Orestes A. Brownson's Middle Life, from 1845 to 1855. Ibid. 1899. Life of Father Hecker. By Rev. Walter Elliott, C.S.P. New York. History of the Catholic Church in the United States. By John Gilmary Shea. 4 vols. New York, John G. Shea, Publisher, 1890. ii BOOKS CONSULTED A Genealogical Register of the Descendants of Several Ancient Puritans. Vol. 3 (The Richards Family). By the Rev. Abner Morse, A.M. Boston, Press of H. "W. Button & Son, 1861. A Genealogical Register of the Felton Family. By Cyrus Felton. Marlborough, Pratt Brothers, 1886. The Oxford Movement. By R. W. Church, M.A., D.C.L., Sometime Dean of St. Paul's, and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. London, Macmillan & Co., 1900. Hurrell Froude, Memoranda and Appreciations. By Louise Imogen Guiney. N. Y., E. P. Dutton & Co., 1906. William George Ward and the Oxford Movement. By Wilfrid Ward. London and New York, Macmillan & Co. William George Ward and the Catholic Revival. By Wilfrid Ward. London. Macmillan & Co., 1893. The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman. By Wilfrid Ward. 2 vols. London, Longmans Green & Co., 1897. Memorials of Charles Pettit Mcllvaine, Late Bishop of Ohio. Rev. William Cams, M.A., New York, Thomas Whittaker, 1882. The Anglican Revival. J. H. Overton, D.D. London, Blackie, 1897. American Catholic Historical Researches. Martin I. J. Griffin, Philadelphia. Catholics in the American Revolution. Martin I. J. Griffin. 3 vols. Philadclpliia, Published by the Author. The Kenyon Book. Rev. William B. Bodine, D.D., President. Published by the College. La Renaissance Catholique en Angleterre au XIX siecle. Par Paul Thureau-Dangin. Paris, E. Plon et Cie. 1899. "The House, When It Was In Building." By Rev. John Hewett, Columbus, Ohio, 1903. Distinguished Converts to Rome in America. D. J. Scannell- O'Neill. Benziger Bros., New York. The History of New London. Frances Mainwaring Caulkins, New London, H. D. Utley, 1895. INTRODUCTION The subject of the following biography was not a man of world-wide, nor even, in any com- plete sense, of national reputation. The his- tory of his life is, therefore, not put forth in response to any imperious demand or general desire on the part of the public. Nevertheless, it is hoped that such a work will not be without a certain measure of inter- est to more than one class of readers in the United States, and possibly beyond the limits of our country. Mr. Richards filled a place in the public eye at a critical period in the reli- gious history of America. He was a factor, even if not one of the most important, in that great movement of return to the Catholic Church, which formed so notable a feature of the nineteenth century. While this current attained its greatest vol- ume in England under the guidance of John Henry Newman and his associates, it did not fail to make its presence felt simultaneously in many parts of the world. Wherever the Eng- lish language was read and spoken, the printed utterances of the Oxford Tractarians could iii iv INTRODUCTION not fail to arouse intense interest and vehe- ment discussion. In the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, every step of the Cathol- icizing party in England was followed closely by disciples as ardent as any to be found in the ancient university of the Mother Country. Moreover the movement in America was not merely an imitation and a following in the foot- steps of foreign guides. It had features of its own ; and its leaders worked out their own sal- vation in ways, which, though in many cases similar to the methods of thought and argu- ment employed by their brethren in England, were yet often strongly marked with their own individual and national characteristics. Their paths, though in the main parallel and leading to the same goal, were by no means identical, nor even in all cases similar. Hence a close study of the soul-history of a single one of the protagonists in this great religious struggle can scarcely fail to arouse interest and furnish in- struction. Moreover, the scene of Mr. Richards' career prior to his conversion lay in a region of pecul- iar interest. Ohio was then still the West. It had been in his youth the Far West. All the energy and rude vigor characteristic of the region and the time were fully shared by the Protestant Episcopal body, tempered in the latter by traditional refinement and the educa- INTRODUCTION v tion received by its Divines in the East or abroad. Of the early Catholic movement in this environment no adequate account, so far as the writer knows, has hitherto been given. The Eev. Clarence A. Walworth, late Pastor of St. Mary's Church, Albany, published in 1895 a most important and admirable history of the '' Oxford Movement in America"; but as indi- cated in the sub-title, ''Glimpses of Life in An Anglican Seminary," the scope of the work is to some extent restricted, and it deals almost exclusively with New York and the Eastern States. In the same year was printed under the title "The Road to Rome, and How Two Brothers Got There," the substance of two lec- tures delivered by Mr. William Richards of Washington, D. C, the younger brother of the subject of this memoir. This document is also extremely valuable, especially as illustrating the divergency of the various paths leading dis- similar minds to the unchangeable Unity and Truth of the Catholic Church. But it is neces- sarily brief and is even more strictly personal in its reminiscences than Father Walworth's book. After Mr. Henry L. Richards' conversion and removal to the East, his earnest activity in all Church affairs brought him into frequent contact w^ith the leaders of religious thought and work. While his extraordinary humility vi INTRODUCTION and spirit of lowly self -depreciation impelled him always to keep in the backgroimd and to consider himself unable and unworthy to as- sume any leading part, yet this inclination was frequently counteracted to some extent by his natural ardor of character, his burning zeal, and his love of God and the Church, for all of which he was no less remarkable than for his humility. A very large proportion of the con- verts from Protestantism were reckoned among his personal friends, some were brought into the Church by his efforts, many more were at least cheered and encouraged in their trials by his warm friendship or sympathetic letters. All this makes his life, during the exceptionally long period over which it extended, a com- pendium, so to speak, of Catholic Church his- tory in the United States. Finally, it is an added element of interest, impelling to the publication of this biography, that Mr. Richards, always remaining, by the necessity of his position, a layman, gave from the time of his conversion a notable example of enthusiastic fulfilment of the duties of an educated layman in the Church, not only by his intense personal piety and devotion, but also in active labors for the good of souls and the ex- tension of the true religion. In the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and in every form of or- ganized charity, in the teaching and superin- INTRODUCTION vii tending of Sunday schools, in public lectures and in regular editorial contributions to the Catholic press, his zeal was actively employed. More remarkable than all these perhaps was his personal influence in private life, both by word and example, which, joined to his inde- fatigable zeal, enabled him to dissipate many prejudices and attract earnest souls like him- self from darkness to the light of the true Faith. Such laymen are as important to the Church in modern times (perhaps at all times) as good priests. A word remains to be said as to the materials drawn upon in preparing this life. The most important document is a manuscript autobio- graphical sketch. This was begun by Mr. Rich- ards in 1874 in consequence of the repeated and urgent solicitations of the present writer, sec- onded by other members of the family. It is of a very intimate personal character, intended chiefly to give to his children the interior his- tory of his conversion and to illustrate the goodness of God to one who, in his lowliness of self -appreciation, considered himself one of the greatest of sinners. To print in full for public perusal a paper of this kind would be manifestly a proceeding of at least doubtful propriety. It has been judged best to make numerous extracts from this document and to incorporate the substance of the remainder in viii INTRODUCTION the text. Unfortunately, this paper does not bring the narrative beyond the year mentioned as the date of its inception. Mr. Richards left a considerable number of private papers, including the manuscripts of most of his lectures and lists of the very numer- ous articles contributed by him to the Sacred Heart Review of Cambridge and the Catholic Review of New York ; togetlier with a few let- ters, particularly those received by him at the period of his conversion. Of letters written by Mr. Richards to others, a vast number are ex- tant, as it was the habit of many of his corre- spondents to preserve carefully, even rever- entially, everything received from him. Only a very limited use of this mass of material has been feasible in the present work, without swell- ing the dimensions of the latter beyond due bounds. A list of the most important works consulted will be found on a preceding page. Perhaps the most valuable source of all has been the recollections of the members of his family and his intimate friends and disciples. The great age at which he died has left him without the testimony of contemporaries of his youth and middle age, almost all of whom he outlived. But enough remains to give a vivid impression of his natural character, wholesome, cheery, zealous and thoroughly loyal to man, to con- INTRODUCTION ix science and to God, and of the exalted super- natural virtues by which that character was gradually chastened, elevated and spiritualized, until his very aspect became to those who knew him an attraction to the higher life, and his every word and action a commentary on the beauty of virtue. The writer desires to express his cordial thanks to the Rev. William Foster Pierce, L.H.D., President of Kenyon College, for re- searches made by his direction in the archives of the College, and to the Rev. John Hewitt, present Rector of St. Paul's Church, Columbus, Ohio, for similar services most kindly rendered. He is also indebted to the Very Rev. C. Lecoq, S.S., D.D., President of St. Mary's Seminary of Montreal, to the Rev. Benedict Guldner, S.J., Mrs. A. Newton Wliiting of Columbus, Ohio, Mr. D. J. Scannell O'Neil and many other friends for information, loan of letters and as- sistance of various kinds. A LOYAL LIFE CHAPTEK I BOYHOOD 1814-1829 Henry Livingston Ricliarcls was born on tlie twenty-second day of July, 1814, in the little village of Granville, Licking County, Ohio. He was the oldest of four children, two boys and two girls, born to his father, Dr. William Samuel Eichards, from his first marriage, all of whom lived to maturity and married. A second marriage increased the family by three boys, of whom one died in childhood. The only one of all these who followed Henry into the Church was his brother William, who came into the world some five years later than the first- born. Dr. Eichards was sprung from the early Pil- grim and Puritan stock of Massachusetts. The names appears frequently in the earliest records of both the Pl^Tiiouth and the Massa- chusetts Bay colonies. No less than twelve men bearing the name of Eichards came from 1 2 A LOYAL LIFE England, mostly, it would seem, from Dorset- shire, in the first days of New England col- onization, and settled in various places, giving rise to as many different branches of the fam- ily. There seems to have been a strong re- ligious tendency in the family character, for among those who inherited it are found many ministers. The first American progenitor of the subject of this work was John Richards of Eele River in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He is first men- tioned on July 12th, 1637, in the records of the General Court of Plymouth, which put him un- der bonds to keep the peace, especially with re- gard to one Mark Mendall. In spite of this somewhat questionable introduction to the light of history, John Richards seems to have been a very respectable citizen. Removing about 1658 to New London, Connecticut, he built a house at the comer of State and Huntington Streets which remained the seat of the family for more than a centuiy, and became quite a center of what social life existed in the austere colonial town. But all the consideration he en- joyed could not shield his family from the Blue Laws, for in 1693 his second son, Israel, was sentenced to pay a fine of ten shillings, and to stand in the stock for two hours, as a penalty for walking abroad and otherwise misbehaving himself on the Sabbath evening. His oldest BOYHOOD 3 son, also named John, figures in the military history of New London. He was a lieutenant in the local forces, and in 1711, when the town was menaced by French privateers, he com- manded the troops who kept watch of the coast and harbor. But the chief glory of the family from a mili- tary point of view was Colonel William Rich- ards, of the fourth generation, our Henry's grandfather. As Captain in the Revolutionary forces, he fought with distinction at Bunker Hill, and later, during the British occupation of Long Island, New York, he headed a for- lorn hope at night, and made a desperate at- tack on an entrenched body of the British, in which daring enterprise he was comjjletely suc- cessful. He was made Colonel, and after the close of the war, High Sheriff of New London, which post he held for twenty-five years, dying in 1825. His sword remains as an heirloom in the family, and during the Civil War was in the possession of Captain William Richards Hillyer of the Union Army. In Mr. Richards ' manuscript notes of his life prepared for his children, he discourses at some length of his Puritan ancestors, for whom his respect had not been diminished, but if anything increased, by his secession from their faith to one higher and more ancient. He says : * ' I remember the time when I attached 4 A LOYAL LIFE not the slightest consequence to the matter of lineage and family pedigree. As I have grown older, I have changed in that respect. . . . That there were some things in our good old Puritan ancestors that we have no reason to be proud of, I readih^ admit. I have even seen the time, when I looked at things through Protestant Episcopal spectacles, when I af- fected to despise the Puritans. The Catholic standpoint, being the very center of all truth, enables me to judge my Puritan ancestors more justly, and to give them credit for great virtues, which they undoubtedly inherited from their Catholic ancestors, or rather perhaps derived from the remains of Catholic principles and Catholic traditions which they had preserved, notwithstanding their apostasy from the old Faith. Their honesty and truthfulness, their directness and manly independence are worthy of imitation by all. What the descendants of the Puritans want in these days is the Old Faith. Grafted again into the original vine of Christ's Church, with all its aids and graces, its authority, its fkedness of faith, its beauti- ful models of sanctity and wonderful incentives to virtue, I really think they would make a nation of saints." Of the seven children of the Eevolutionary hero, the oldest, William Samuel, was brought up as a boy on his father's farm. His early BOYHOOD 5 education was, no doubt, received at the New London Latin School, of which his grand- father, John, had been one of the earliest trus- tees. He afterward studied medicine, and, having arrived at the age of twenty-four years, and being qualified to practice, he set his face toward the great West to begin his profes- sional career amid new surroundings. It may be well here to endeavor to gain some idea of these surroundings and of the state of that new yet not altogether crude society of which he and his future family were to form a part. At that period, when Europe was busy, with allied armies and combined statecraft, in re- pressing the schemes of the still formidable Napoleon to resuscitate his empire, a vaster and richer empire was peacefully but rapidly growing up on the western continent. The American Colonies, having succeeded in shak- ing off the yoke of Great Britain, and estab- lishing a Eepublic of Confederated States, offering freedom and land to all comers, had be- gun to attract that unexampled tide of immigra- tion which later became one of the wonders of historv, and which continues, in undiminished volume but with varying components, in our own day. While much of this inflowing current re- mained stagnated in the cities and towns of the eastern seaboard, much also found its way. 6 A LOYAL LIFE either immediately or by degrees, to the forests and plains of the still imdeveloped West. Another feature of this western colonizing movement, more important, perhaps, than even the foreign immigration, was found in the rest- less energy and ambition of the descendants of the eastern settlers, notably in New England. The same spirit of sturdy independence that brought the Pilgrims and Puritans to the New World urged their sons to penetrate still fur- ther into its wilds and fastnesses. They were no passive, stay-at-home race. Moreover, to the rural population, conditions of soil and cli- mate in New England made of life a hard and wearisome struggle. To their ears the stories brought by explorers and returning settlers of level and fertile lands, free from rocks, stones and gravel, of mild winters and fruitful harvests, all to be had almost without money and without price, must have sounded like the Biblical account with which they were so fa- miliar, of a promised land flowing with milk and honey. Hence, for some years before the time of which we write, a great stream of im- migration of native American pioneers had been flowing steadily into the western and north- western territories adjacent to the more thickly settled regions of the original colonies. They pushed back the Indian tribes to new seats, at times ruthlessly exterminating the bands BOYHOOD 7 that opposed their progress; they felled the forests, cleared the land, opened up roads, and founded villages which in many cases grew with amazing rapidity into towns and cities. As early as the year 1788, the columns of organized emigration had crossed the Ohio Eiver. In that year was made, at Marietta, on the northerly bank of the great waterway where it is joined by the Musking-um, the first permanent settlement in what is now the State of Ohio. Then it was a part of the great Northwestern Territory, constituted by Con- gress only a year before by the famous ordi- nance in which slavery was forever excluded from the region. This settlement was carried out by the Ohio Land Company, an association formed in Boston, which had purchased a mil- lion and a half of acres on the Ohio and in the Muskingum valley, between the last named stream and the Scioto. To the influence of this great company is generally attributed, in great part, the drafting and enactment of the Con- gressional ordinance. But the colonization was greatly retarded by frequently recurring strifes with the Indian tribes, provoked most commonly, no doubt, by the rapacity and ex- cesses of the white settlers themselves, until, in 1794, the complete victory of General Wayne, ''Mad Anthony," over the confederated tribes at Maumee Rapids broke the spirit of the red- 8 A LOYAL LIFE men, and resulted in tlie treaty of Greenville. By this convention the Indians were limited to a reservation lying to the northward of the Greenville Treaty Line, which, extending from east to west, divided the state into two unequal portions. To the southern and larger division, immigration then poured in unchecked. One great stream crossed the Ohio near Wheeling, and thence rolled westward, meeting the Ohio Company's settlements, which were rapidly ex- tending northward and westward from Mari- etta among the hills and valleys of the Muskingum, and coalescing with other similar currents from the south and southwest. One quite typical instance of the hardy energy of New England agricultural settlers of the period was the settlement of the little village of Granville, Ohio. It lies near the center of the state, twenty-eight miles E. N. E. of Columbus and some few miles west of Newark, the county seat of Licking County. Up to the year 1805, it was an unbroken forest, traversed by wandering bands of Indians and by the bears, wolves and deer which together with smaller game roamed its thickets and glades in abundance, and haunted by number- less flocks of wild turkeys. Even at the time of Mr. Eichards' birth, nine years later, it was a backwoods settlement of rude surroundings and primitive conditions, yet with smiling BOYHOOD 9 farms that attested as well the remarkable fer- tility of the soil as the thrift of its inhabitants. The first settlement was effected by a company of emigrants from Granville, Massachusetts, and the adjoining township of Granby in Con- necticut. Some details of the history of this settlement may be of interest here, not only as illustrating the influences surrounding Mr. Richards' early years, but as affording a vivid picture of events and conditions that were repeated many times and in numberless places, with some varia- tion of circumstances, during that formative period. The motives of the emigration, so far as any are needed beyond the spirit of enterprise and restless vigor native to the New England char- acter, may be summed up in the desire for more fertile land and a milder climate. The former is illustrated by a story told of Alfred Avery, one of the original settlers, afterward con- nected by marriage with the family of Mr. Richards. ''When he was a mere child (in Massachusetts)," we are told in the History of Granville by the Eev. Henry Bushnell, "his father went out to plant corn, and (Alfred) himself, ambitious to help, took his hoe and went out also, tugging and sweating to do what a little boy could. At length his father noticed that Alfred was crying, and asked him what was 10 A LOYAL LIFE the matter. The child's reply was a turning point in the history of the family: *I can't get dirt enough to cover the corn.' Then the father thought it was time to go where the world had more dirt. Soon afterward he became a member of the Licking Company." Another source of the migratory spirit which seems not to have attracted so much attention as it would deserve, is that New England families at that period were uniformly large, and con- tinued so to a comparatively recent period. Genealogical tables reveal the fact that the numl)er of children varied from five or six to twelve, thirteen and even higher figures, and this numerous offspring had to be provided for. A company was organized among the far- mers with regular articles of incorporation, known, after some changes of name, as the Licking Land Company, and Levi Buttles was made President. This organization suffered at first to some extent from the perfidy of land speculators, who abounded at the period; but finally it secured some twenty-nine thousand acres of excellent land at the average price of one dollar and sixty-seven cents an acre. The number of families taking part in the actual colonization was about one hundred. They set out in successive parties, during the autumn of 1805, and traveled the seven hundred miles, BOYHOOD 11 in great part through a wild country, in wagons drawn by oxen. A feature of the emigration which is well worth noting is the strong devotion shown by the colonists to the allied interests of religion and education. Most of the farmers professed the Congregational form of Calvinism, which had been established by law in both the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, and which even at the present day is commonly known throughout the state as the Orthodox Religion. Before leaving their Massachusetts homes, they organized themselves into a sepa- rate church, though only twenty-five persons were formally admitted as members. On the arrival of the chief party in the depth of the forest which was to be their future home, their first act, after loosing the oxen from their yokes, was to assemble for divine worship and to listen to a sermon. They then established a little camp between two enormous trees that they had felled, and set to work to subdue the forest. The log schoolhouse seems to have been the first building erected for the ser^dce of the community in general, being used also on Sun- days for religious services. Although the main body of the settlers did not arrive before November, and had to face the speedy coming of winter, yet their first thought was not for 12 A LOYAL LIFE the comforts and conveniences necessary for existence, but for the establishment of school and meeting house. Zeal for education and what we should now call general culture was evidenced by the ap- pointment of a committee, even before the de- parture from their homes, "to receive sub- scriptions for the encouragement of a library, and to draw up and form a constitution for the said Library Company." This plan was faithfully carried out, a charter was obtained early in 1807, and books were purchased and put in use the same year. It would be inter- esting to know how many pul)lic libraries were in existence at that early period. Such facts throw a strong light on the char- acter of these sturdy pioneers and give the key, no doubt, to much of their subsequent his- tory. When the little settlement had progressed somewhat and the colonists had made clearings in the thick forest, erected log cabins and sown their first crops, they found it necessary to make a regulation obliging every inhabitant to spend at least one day every week in hunting snakes. The reptiles killed were gathered into heaps and burned. "Wolves and bears were so close neighbors that it was felt to be dangerous to wander from home at night, and occasionally roaming bands of Indians looked in upon the BOYHOOD 13 busy settlers, but always with peaceful inten- tions. Into this little world of primitive conditions, plain living and high thoughts came the young Dr. Eichards on Friday, July 19, 1811. He had traveled the whole distance from his home in New London on horseback, coming by way of Marietta. On December 16th, Dr. Richards began to teach school in the house of Elias Gil- man, one of the earliest settlers, indeed the head of the first party of emigrants to arrive upon the ground. But this occupation was given over by the next spring or summer, no doubt in consequence of the growth of his medical practice; and some time later, after his mar- riage. Dr. Richards erected for himself a house, almost in the center of the village. From that time to the end of his life in 1852, Dr. Richards was the beloved physician of the whole country for many miles about Granville, universally re- spected for his sterling character, and loved for his untiring, unselfish care of the poor and his even too great leniency toward his debt- ors. In the year 1813, the young physician mar- ried Isabella Mower, oldest daughter of Samuel Parish Mower and Jane Felton. Mr. Mower had moved from Barre, Massachusetts, to the outskirts of Granville, where he owned a large farm. His wife, Jane Felton, was the daughter 14 A LOYAL LIFE of Captain Benjamin Felton, of Brookfield, Massacliusetts. This noted man served in the French and Indian War of 1756, and afterward in the Eevohition, taking part in the battles of Bunker Hill, Long Island, White Plains, Tren- ton, Monmouth, etc. After this war, he was made Captain of Militia, and commanded a body of cavaliy in the putting down of Shays 's Insurrection in Massachusetts in the winter of 1786. He died in 1820, at the age of eighty- one, after rearing a family of thirteen chil- dren, all of whom lived to be married. Mr. Richards was thus of sound Revolution- ary ancestry on his mother's side, as well as his father's. But what caused him perhaps quite as much satisfaction as this distinction, after he became a Catholic, was that a marked strain of Irish blood seemed to come to him from the same source. The name Mower is, very prol)ably, a modification of Moore, and the tradition of the family pointed to an Irish origin. Moreover, the name of Benjamin Fel- ton 's wife, Jennie Dorrity, would seem to point with equal probability to the Green Isle. He entertained a hearty admiration for several traits of character found in the Irish race, par- ticularly their strong faith and unconquerable loyalty to the Church; and he jDleased himself with the conjecture that his own return to the religion of his fathers was the effect in part BOYHOOD 15 of liis Irisli blood, coming to the surface after many generations. Henry's mother was a capable and industri- ous woman, with a strongly religious bent of mind. The only relic of her in existence, a fragment of a letter, is entirely taken up with religious considerations and news of revivals and conversions. Though couched in the phraseology of the Calvinistic system in which she was educated, which now appears to us stilted and unnatural, it reveals vigor of mind and depth of sincere religious feeling. It con- cludes : ' ' My husband and all his family have been prof est Christians this ten years, and oh ! that I were a Christian indeed and that this stony heart of mine was transformed into flesh that I might be susceptible of ardent love to the immaculate Savior." Mrs. Richards died in 1821 at the age of thirty, after the birth of her fourth child, Isabella, Henry being then seven years old. Her place was taken after an interval of two years by a second wife, who proved to be an excellent mother to her step- children. Henry was born in the house of *' Gaffer'* Gilman, hard by the old town spring. In later years, " 'Grandma Gilman' used to amuse us," he writes, "with wonderful stories of her fav- orite child. She insisted that I was the smart- est child she had ever seen. Among other 16 A LOYAL LIFE things, she said I used to pound up brick to a powder, do it up in doses, and start off on an imaginary visit to the sick. "I began to go to school when I was very small. I have a dim recollection of wading through the snow when my little legs were scarcely long enough to measure its depth. As I advanced in years, I fear I did not increase in industry or wisdom. I remember being punished once fearfully by 'Paddy McMillan,' who had been employed to teach the public school. He was a Reverend. I fear I must have tried his patience, for liis Irish blood rose to fever heat, and he used up a good-sized switch upon my back. I remember when about ten or twelve years old, having a contest in writing with a boy about my own age, 'Vet' Ly- man, for a premium. We both worked hard, and the result was a tie. We each had our backers. I do not think my competitor bore his disappointment well, — and one day we somehow came into collision on the streets and had a regular pitched battle. I fought like a tiger, crying all the time. It was a drawn battle. I was never pugnaciously inclined, and I do not think I could have been drawn or even goaded into a fight without being imposed upon or treated unjustly in some way. ''Now I must confess that I was not entirely truthful during my boyhood's days. I was BOYHOOD 17 thoughtless, fond of fun, extremely enterpris- ing, and easily influenced by bad companions. I would sometimes play truant and tell a lie to excuse mvself when I went home. But some- how my sin would almost always find me out, and then. Ah me ! what punishment would fol- low. The scene is vividly before my mind's eye to-day. The old parlor, with closed door and blinds drawn, the very chair I sat in while my venerable father, with grave and sorrow- ful face, expostulated with me and tried to show me the heinousness of my sin, and to lead me to repentance and amendment. ' I am sorry, my son, that you have been guilty of this fault. You were guilty of an act of disobedience, and then committed another sin to hide it. It pains me to have to punish you, but it must be done. He that spareth the rod, hateth the child.' Then he took me bv the collar with firm grip and applied the birch vigorously to my nether extremities, while I commenced a series of gyrations, keeping time meanwhile at the top of my voice with the measured stroke of the baton. How hard it is to beat sin out of a child! But it seems to be the divinely ap- pointed way for expelling the devil ; and I fear the multiplied cases of 'possession' in our time and day are to be accounted for by the gen- eral disuse of the wholesome Scriptural mode of exorcism. 18 A LOYAL LIFE ''After the death of my own mother, when I was seven years old, my father married Miss Tryphena Bushuell, the youngest of a family of five, two brothers and three sisters, origi- nally from Norwich, Connecticut, all remarkable for the excellence of their character and es- pecially for their strict adherence to the tradi- tions of the fathers. The two brothers were deacons in the Congregational Church and had the reputation of saints. My stepmother was intelligent, refined and very pious. She was just, too, and kind to us children, and proved an exception to the alleged rule of stepmothers. She was a good mother to us and made no dis- tinction between us and our half-brothers. She, of course, had the principal care of our domestic education, and she strove to discharge her duty with conscientious fidelity." This would seem to be the best place to inter- polate into Mr. Eichards' narrative the names of his brothers and sisters. The second child, Mary Ann, was born two years after Henry, in 1816. AVilliam, of whom we shall hear much in the course of this biography, saw the light in 1819, and Isabella in 1821. By his second wife. Dr. Eichards had three children, Peter, George and Ebenezer, of whom the last named died at the age of six years, while Peter still lives at the writing of this account, the sole survivor of the family of seven. All the chil- BOYHOOD 19 dren were united in the closest bonds of affec- tion. Isabella in particular seems to have been cherished with exceptional tenderness by her oldest brother, Henry, and all the other members of the family, Mr. Eichards goes on to describe the educa- tion to which this double but united family of children was subjected. ^' There were some pe- culiarities of that education which are now fast passing away among the descendants of the Puritans, but which were curious and interest- ing. How different the habits of those times from the luxurious customs of later days! Then we went to meeting in an old frame meet- ing house, with high-backed square pews, and without any fire. To keep from freezing in the extremely cold winter weather, the ladies took 'foot stoves' to church. These were square tin boxes with wooden frames and perforated with small holes through which the welcome heat from the hot coals within escaped under the enveloping drapery of the ladies, diffusing a genial, albeit a somewhat selfish and exclusive warmth over the whole person. Ah ! if we children could but get the loan of the thing for a few moments, how happy we were ! And when meeting was out, how we did scamper home to the great fire in the fireplace, made with backlog, forestick and middle sticks, piled high in the chimney! 20 'A LOYAL LIFE "The 'Assembly's Shorter Catechism' was, next to the Bible, the textbook of our instruc- tion — 'What is the chief end of man?' and so on. That same catechism is a wonderful pro- duction. It must be confessed it was rather long for a 'Shorter' catechism, and its theo- logical depths are rather beyond the plummets of most young persons. There are many excel- lent things in it, but it is of course marred by the strong infusion of Calvinism. It was heavy work for us children, and I shall never forget the relief with which the end of our les- sons was reached, and the joy with which we closed our books and bounded away to our play. My father also had Bible lessons on Sunday evenings, before the sun went down, in which we read considerable portions of Holy Scripture, and were asked questions and re- ceived explanations of what we read. We were encouraged to read the Bible through in course by the time we were fourteen years old, when we each received a copy of a pocket Bible in reward for our industry. The encouragement for us children to read the Bible through was no doubt injudicious, but I have always been thankful that my mind was so well stored and so thoroughly familiarized with Holy Scripture, especially the New Testament. In that respect it might be said of us children as of Timothv, that from childhood we had known the Holy BOYHOOD 21 Scriptures which were able to make us wise unto salvation. I am afraid however that in the thoughtlessness of youth, even the Bible lessons were not relished as they should have been; for I remember well with what longing eyes we watched the slowly declining sun. You must know that our good stepmother was a strict observer of that curious old custom of the Puritans which commenced the 'Sabbath' on the Saturday at the going down of the sun and closed it at the same point on the day it- self. Saturday evening at sundown all work was laid aside, even to the sewing and the in- evitable knitting work. The joy with which, on the succeeding clay, we young folks, who had been reined in and restrained from every, even the least, appearance of play, and kept diligently at work with our Bibles, Catechisms and re- ligious duties, watched the decline of the king of day, was an indication that at that hour the sacred time had passed and we were free. Then the knitting work was resumed, the wash tubs were brought out and preparations com- menced for the hebdomadal cleansing, and all things indicated that the 'Sabbath,' with its gloomy strictness, its prim propriety and its forced reserve, had passed. I have a distinct remembrance of having been chided for look- ing out of the window on the Sabbath, when a wagon was passing by. 'Henry! Henry! 22 A LOYAL LIFE my child! I am surprised to see you looking out of the window on the Sabbath, allowing your mind to be diverted by every noise, in- stead of looking on your book and studying your lesson in the catechism!' Oh, if those good souls, with all their strfctness and zeal, and especially their faithfulness in instructing their children, had only had the true Catholic faith and the benefit of the grace of the sacra- ments of Holy Church, what saints many of them would have been!" Mr. Richards' account of his early youth and domestic education may be said to end here. There are in his manuscript allusions to a period spent with his grandfather on the farm, which was no doubt a very happy phase of his boyhood, and which certainly left in him a permanent love for the country and a desire, to which he perpetually recurred throughout his professional and mercantile life, to spend his leisure hours in the rural delights of farm- ing or horticulture. The boy was now to be- gin studies of a somewhat less elementary nature than those afforded by the country dis- trict school, and was soon to engage in those mental conflicts and moral decisions which pre- sent themselves imperiously to every develop- ing human soul, and which, according to the answer made and the victory gained or lost, mold one's character and settle, with virtual BOYHOOD 23 certainty, one's future line of conduct for good or evil. It can hardly be denied that with a character like that of Henry Livingston Eich- ards, the stern Calvinistic home training was in many respects an excellent preparation for the trials that awaited him. The system, if it did not crush or permanently sour the youth- ful character, or drive it into hypocrisy, would no doubt tend to impart to it a firm sense of duty and a determination to prefer the right to the pleasant or profitable under all circum- stances. This was its effect certainly in Mr. Eichards' case. He was naturally very docile, conscientious, high-minded and thoroughly un- selfish, but ardent and sympathetic, and there- fore perhaps inclined to follow where others led. This weaker trait, if it existed, was thor- oughly corrected by the strictness of his home training, mingled as this was with the tender affection of his excellent parents and thus re- lieved of much of its harshness. CHAPTER II FIRST EXPEEIENCE OF COLLEGE LIFE. KENYON COLLEGE AND BISHOP CHASE 1829—1830 It "^as in the year 1829, when he was between fifteen and sixteen years of age, that Henry L. Richards entered college for the first time. One of his uncles on his mother's side, Lucius D. Mower, was the most prosperous merchant in the little village. Having no children of his own, he had taken Henry's younger brother, "William, with the intention of providing for him and bringing him up as his own son. lie now proposed that Henry also should enter his store as a clerk. But Dr. Richards was anx- ious that all of his sons should have the bene- fit of a liberal education, and he refused to con- sent to Mr. Mower's plan unless on condition that Henry should first spend some time at college. It was finally agreed that he should go to Kenyon. This institution had been opened only a year before this time, at Gam- bier, in Knox County, the neighboring county to Licking, in which Granville is situated, and 24 FIRST EXPERIENCE OF COLLEGE 25 therefore for the young boy it was not far from home. As it was here that the first seeds of his future faith were sown in Henry's mind, though not apparently during his first stay, a somewhat detailed account of the college and the remarkable man who founded it may not be out of place. We give it from Mr. Richards ' notes, only slightly supplemented from other sources. The institution was entirely the creation of the venerable Philander Chase, first Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Ohio. This prelate was a man of immense stature and rugged strength, and of executive ability in a measure corre- sponding to his size. Though his energy of character seems to have been somewhat want- ing in balance and control and he was some- times judged to be imperious and capricious, yet he was withal condescending and affable to those who confided in him. His ambition, though unbounded, was not selfish. As was remarked by one who knew him well. Bishop Chase embraced, in his immense physique, two separate and distinct individualities, the little child and the stern and vigorous man. Feeling deeply the necessity for a college and seminary where candidates for the ministry could be trained under his own eye and in a manner that would fit them for their future work under the hard conditions of his young and poor diocese. 26 A LOYAL LIFE the Bishop undertook a journey to England for the purpose of raising the necessary funds. To his surprise and grief, he met with bitter opposition on the part of some of his brother clergj'men, particularly Bishop Hobart of New York. This prelate feared the effect of the new project on the fortunes of the General Seminary of New York, which had been established by authority of tlie General Convention with the explicit purpose of serving the needs of the Episcopal Church throughout the United States. Notwitlistanding this opposition, which followed him even to England, Bishop Chase met with entire success in his mission. Gaining access to aristocratic circles in the mother country, he impressed them deeply by his strength and sincerity of purpose, and by his accounts of the vast field of the AYest, with its rapidly increasing population, rude condi- tions and spiritual destitution. The result was that he received encouragement and sub- stantial aid, especially from Lord Kenyon, Admiral Lord Gambler, Lady Harcourt, Lord Bexley, Lady Rosse, George W. Marriott and others, whose names he was afterward careful to affix to the various buildings and other fea- tures of his college. Returning to Ohio with some thirty thousand dollars, a large sum for those days, Bishop Chase purchased from a citizen of Pennsylvania, familiarly known as FIEST EXPERIENCE OF COLLEGE 27 "Old Nat Hogg," a tract of eight thousand acres of land near the centre of the state, some five miles from Mt. Vernon. Here he began the erection of a college and theological semi- nary, and laid out the site of a town. The whole was destined in his magnificent plans to rival the universities of the old world; but it was as yet only a dense and almost unbroken forest. Into this forest the Bishop went al- most alone, camping out, living in a log cabin, in which his family was also sheltered for a time, working with his own hands and enduring hardships that would soon have disheartened men of weaker temperament. With stone quarried on the premises he erected the main building of his college, making the foundations and walls of amazing thickness. In 1828 the school was opened with some sixty-five stu- dents brought from the preexisting school at Worthington ; and when young Henry Richards arrived in the following year, conditions were still most primitive. One building sheltered the Bishop and his family, the professors and the students. A large stone kitchen stood at a short distance south of the college; but the kitchen girls were not the daintiest or most skillful cooks, and the college commons were often anything but inviting. Mr. Richards re- cords one incident of this nature. As the waiter poured out a cup of coffee from an old- 28 A LOYAL LIFE fashioned tin coffee pot, a considerable length of candle wick came with the liquid, indica- ting plainly that the spout had been employed as a substitute for a candle-stick. The beds of the students, at least in some of the dormi- tories, were arranged in three tiers about the walls, like berths on a steamboat, and the straw beds were not without numerous and unwel- come inhabitants. It is little to be wondered at that when Dr. Eichards, who had accom- panied his son and spent the first night on Gambier Hill, took leave of him, the usual homesickness of the new college student closed in upon the boy's soul with a sense of utter loneliness and desolation. This was not re- lieved by the fact that he was immediately introduced to the study of Euclid, which at first was hard and distasteful work for him. The ''Pons Asinorum," as he declares, was a bridge of sighs to him, and some time and effort were required to turn the wayward cur- rent of his thoughts into the fixed channels of mathematical science. But he was naturally a verj^ intelligent and earnest student, and he soon entered with zest into the labor and play of college life. Many of his recreation hours were spent in singing, for which he had great natural talent and of which he was very fond throughout life, retaining his clear, sweet and smooth voice even to very advanced age. He FIRST EXPERIENCE OF COLLEGE 29 thus describes the amusement afforded him by this resource at college. ''My friend, Forshey, (who "Was very ambitious and afterward grad- uated from West Point) was very fond of music. He had a pretty good voice and plenty of assurance, but his efforts were disfigured by a nasal Yankee twang. But he was an en- thusiast and so was I, and we took to each other. ... I commenced singing when I was very young. I had a clear, shrill, high soprano voice at first, and took a leading part at the singing schools, which were fashionable in those days. I remember very well the myste- rious longing with which I first began to con- template the cabalistic signs of music, and how I pored over them, determined if possible to find the secret clew by which the initiated could read the tunes from the book. And I did study over it until I found and learned the secret. . . . Forshey and I did have the most glorious sings. He had an old-fashioned singing book, full of the good old tunes and anthems, and every Sunday evening we would have a regular set-to. Our grand piece was the anthem called the 'Resurrection,' commencing, 'The Lord is risen indeed, hallelujah!' You, my dear chil- dren, have often heard me sing snatches of the old favorite almost every year since you were born, especially on Easter morning. It was a rattling, rumbling, noisy thing, and I shall 30 A LOYAL LIFE never forget the enthusiasm with which my musical friend and I would execute the 'Eesur- rection.' 'Coronation' was another favorite." As to religious and moral influences, Mr. Richards* recollections of this first year at Kenyon were not particularly favorable. He writes that their church was the dining-room. Daily prayers were said while all the students were in their places at table. But on Sundays, the tables were all cleared away, the folding doors between the Bishop's room and the din- ing-room were throAMi open, and the Bishop, or **Pop" Williams, as he was lovingly but ir- reverently called, or some other cleric offici- ated, preaching generally, it is to be feared, to unwilling and impatient ears. Mr. Rich- ards retained very little recollection of any marked religious influence exerted over him, but instead a painful impression that the year had been more damaging to his moral and spiritual l)eing than any other in his whole life. His room-mate, during at least a portion of the term, was a profane and reckless fellow, who apparently had never enjoyed any religious training whatever. It was from this companion that Henrv received the nickname of Dick Fid, the name Dick continuing to be his common designation among the students throughout the year. He accuses himself with great contri- tion of falling into profanity, under the force FIEST EXPERIENCE OF COLLEGE 31 of example, and of constant neglect of his prayers, although he had been so strictly brought up and had recited his prayers regu- larly for many years. "What a terrible ordeal," continues Mr. Eichards, "is that period of life when the young boy is just budding into adolescence! How many souls then lay the foundation of their eternal ruin! How wonderful are the provisions of Holy Church for that season! Since I have become a Catholic, I see how much I suffered and what awful risks I ran by not having a director. The only wonder is that any Protestants grow up pure and free from vice. True, there are plenty of bad boys in the Church, but it is not the fault of our Holy Mother. It is the fault of careless, vicious parents, who do not realize their responsibility, and allow their children to run at loose ends." Some anecdotes given by Mr. Richards as il- lustrating the character of Bishop Chase are not without interest. "One evening, about nine o 'clock, I had mounted my berth, the upper- most tier, for the night, when some noisy fel- lows came in. There were three of us in the room and my two companions had not yet re- tired. Amid the noise which they were mak- ing, there came a vigorous knock at the door, and in answer to the summons to enter, the door flew open and what should appear but the im- 32 A LOYAL LIFE mense form of the Bishop with his big cane in hand, darkening the door like a threatening thunder cloud, while with stentorian voice he thundered : ' 'Apov rbv Kpd(3aTT6v aov koL TTepnrdTei (Take up thy bed and walk!)'. How I did slink back into my berth! 'What are you do- ing here, you young rowdies!' 'Nothing, Sir!' 'Nothing! 'Who rooms here?' The names are given. ' Every one of you appear at my room to-morrow morning and give an ac- count of yourselves and receive the punishment due to your offenses ! ' In the morning we were summoned before 'Pop' Williams, Professor of Languages, a good easy soul, who let us off easily. "Among the visitors Avho frequently came from the East to view the wonderful works of which they had hoard was a gentleman from New York, who took a deep interest in the in- stitution, and to whom the Bishop paid very special attention. The Bishop generally rode on horseback. He had a favorite bobtailed horse, which, I think, had some intelligent ap- preciation of the distingiiished character of his master. He certainly had an abundant op- portunity for learning, sometimes perhaps to his cost, that the Bishop was a man of great weight in the community (he must have weighed over three hundred pounds), yet I am sure old 'Bob' was always proud of his burden. FIRST EXPERIENCE OF COLLEGE 33 The way he would prance up and down the avenue, with the episcopal cloak floating in the wind and the tricornered university hat, brought from England, nodding to the meas- ured time of the canter, was beautiful to be- hold. On the occasion of which I am speaking, the Bishop had taken his New York friend over the plantation. ... As they ascended the hill leading into the main street of the town from the west, the Bishop, inspired by the mag- nificence of his schemes and the greatness of the w^ork in which he was engaged and upon which he had been descanting with his usual eloquence, rose proudly in his stirrups, and with a lordly sweep of his hand, indicating the extent of the domain over which he presided, exclaimed: ^They call me King of Gambler — and so I am ! ' Yet that same King of Gambler I have seen, when prancing in right royal style along the avenue between the town and college, and meeting one of the little boys from the lat- ter, raise his tricornered hat with a lordly grace, and with a most condescending inclina- tion, sweep on as though he had saluted a prince of the blood royal." We may add here another anecdote of Bishop Chase, derived from another source and not given in his published life. "When the Bishop, then occupying the see of Illinois, returned to the East to preside, as senior Bishop, over the 34 A LOYAL LIFE General Convention, lie met in the company a minister whom he had not seen for several years. In the meantime, the Reverend gentle- man had published a book in which he advo- cated the opinion that the Virgin Mary had given birth to other sons after our Lord Jesus Christ. Bishop Chase refused to notice in any way his former friend, and when the latter pressed forward, offering his hand, the Bishop, drawing himself up to his full height, uttered with intense scorn, the words, ''You beast!" It is interesting to note in this connection that one of Bishop Chase's descendants became in after vears a Catholic and a nun, Sister Mary F. de Sales of the Visitation order. Un- der the signature of Edselas, her contributions to various Catholic periodicals have been fre- quent up to the time of her death in recent years. When the lad Henry Richards returned in the summer of 1830 to his home in Granville, he little imagined that the King of Gambler, whose greatness had so deeply impressed his boyish imagination, was soon to be ignomini- ously dethroned and to retire in discomfiture from his college and even his diocese. This was the result, in part at least, of those dissen- sions between High and Low Church parties, which were already beginning to tear asunder the Protestant Episcopal body, but of which FIKST EXPEEIENCE OF COLLEGE 35 the future Ritualist and convert was still in happy ignorance. The history of this change, so far as it bore on Mr. Richards ' future career, belongs to another chapter. CHAPTER III EARLY LIFE IN OHIO THE VILLAGE STORE RELI- GIOUS EXPERIENCES — THE TEMPER- ANCE MOVEMENT 1830—1832 On his return from college in the autumn of 1830, Henry Richards entered the store of his Uncle, Lucius D. Mower, as a clerk. As usual in country districts, all kinds of goods were sold in one establishment, a custom which curiously enough has recently been adopted by the largest city merchants, both wholesale and retail, in the enonnous agglomerations now called in America department stores. But in those days, before the advent of railroads and the invention of the telegraph and the tele- phone, the methods of inland commerce were far more primitive, and perhaps more pictur- esque, than now. Twice a year, as Mr. Rich- ards records, his Uncle made the journey, ''over the mountains," to visit the eastern cities in order to lay in his summer or winter stock of goods. Traveling nvas usually per- formed in the stage coach, and the entire trip 36 EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 37 consumed about six weeks. Sometimes, how- ever, the merchants went on horseback, with a drove of cattle or hogs, animals which served not uncommonly as a circulating medium for the transaction of business. For this western traffic, the great hig'hway was the National Mili- tary Road, authorized by Congress in 1796, and intended to extend from Baltimore to St. Louis, passing through the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. The great event in the village was the arrival of these goods in the spring or autumn. They were transported in immense Pennsylvania wagons, each drawn by six powerful horses. The wag- ons often went in caravans, those destined for towns or villages off the main highway drop- ping out of the line as they reached the cross- roads leading to their respective destinations. The collar of every horse was surmounted by a chime of bells, suspended in a bow and jingling as he walked. Sweet and cheering was the sound of the bells to the ears of the expectant village folk. "The new goods have come! There are the bells! The new goods have come!" ''Talk about your fashionable open- ings in modern times," writes Mr. Richards in high scorn, "where fastidious ladies in elabo- rate toilets visit some fashionable display of the latest styles, partly to indulge an idle cu- riosity, but partly also p-erhaps to display them- 38 A LOYAL LIFE selves! We sat up all night. Such a hammer- ing and opening of boxes and piling up of goods on the counter! Cottons, dimities, calicos, broadcloths, silks and satins, ribbons and laces, hats and caps, boots and shoes, hardware, crockery, tea and coffee and spices, sugar and molasses, and last though by no means least in the estimation of the 'boys,' vines, brandies and liquors of every description." Those opening niglits saw some jolly times. Accord- ing to the ideas of the period, for such arduous labors the workers needed to be fortified and stimulated; so, as the weary watches of the night approached the small hours, casks were placed in position, faucets were inserted and the sparkling streams flowed freely. We shall see hereafter that this part of the proceedings possessed few, if any, chaiTns for the young collegian. This sketch of life amid the primitive condi- tions prevailing in the early settlements of Ohio would be incomplete without some refer- ence to the great flocks of wild pigeons which then came periodically to that region as a feed- ing ground. Their numbers were so great as sometimes to extend in a compact mass for many miles, shutting out the sunlight like a dense cloud, while the noise of their wings re- sembled thunder. Wlien they were observed to be about to settle in the woods in the neighbor- EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 39 hood of some village or town all the inhabitants went out, armed with guns, pistols and clubs, and slaughtered them in thousands. So great was the noise and confusion that the reports of the fire-arms were often inaudible amid the general clamor, and yet the pigeons continued to take their position on the branches, which sometimes broke beneath their weight. Some years later, the annual migration of the pigeons ceased and nothing more was seen of them. The change occurred so suddenly as to preclude the hypothesis of a gradual exter- mination. The matter remained a mystery until a few years ago, when a traveler in South America gave accounts of immense flocks of the birds in South America, precisely resem- bling the wild pigeons of Ohio and the West. No doubt they discovered better feeding grounds and less dangerous conditions in the great Southern forests, and, as by a concerted arrangement, directed their annual x^ourse thither. About two years of Mr. Eichards' youth had passed in the ordinary routine of business. "While the lad of eighteen was most conscien- tious in the discharge of his duties, mnning the high respect of all who came to know him, and the strong affection as well as confidence of his employer, he yet remained unaffected by any strong religious feeling or purpose in life. 40 A LOYAL LIFE He had given up the habit of daily prayers, did not entirely eschew profane expressions, and while never an unbeliever or a scoffer, while indeed attending the Sunday services regularly in the old-fashioned Congregational meeting house and singing in the choir, he nevertheless took little interest in the more intense mani- festations of religious feeling, and did not hesitate to joke the young men who had taken part in the meetings, asking them whether they had yet got religion. But at this time, he was himself caught up on one of those waves of re- ligious excitement which swept periodically over the community. His conversion to God was sincere and profound, and however mis- taken in some of its features, it implanted in his soul an intense religious fervor and deter- mination of will which never failed or slackened tliroughout his future life and which ultimately brought him into the Catholic Church. The course and circumstances of this change are not only necessary to the full understanding of Mr. Eichards' character and life, but they are in themselves so interesting and valuable as a study of religious experience and of mental and moral processes of a kind now less frequent and popular than formerly, that we think it right to give them at length and for the most part in Mr. Richards' own words. The original Congregational Church of Gran- EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 41 ville, to which the great majority of the settlers had belonged, had been split in the course of time by the dissensions inseparable from Prot- estantism into four diverse bodies, the Con- gregational, the First Presbyterian, the Second Presbyterian, and finally the Episcopalian. This last secession had taken place under the leadership of Dr. Richards, Henry 's father, un- der circumstances which will find a place later in our narrative. The three sections still ad- hering to Calvinism had consented to reunite under a form of compromise known as the Plan of Union, devised in the year 1801 by the Con- gregational General Association of Connecticut and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, and sent forth to the missionaries and missionary churches of the West. By this agreement, the congregation, while retaining substantially its independence of all others both in matters of faith and dis- cipline, and in the appointment of its own min- isters, yet acquired a right of appeal to the Presbytery in certain cases, and of representa- tion therein. Of the Presbyterio-Congrega- tional church thus constituted in the little vil- lage, the Reverend Jacob Little was pastor at this time and for many years after. Small as was his field of labor, Mr. Little was a remark- able man. A native of New Hampshire, ed- ucated at the noted theological school at An- 42 A LOYAL LIFE dover and in character and temperament as well as by education a Puritan of the Puritans, IDlain and nigged, with strongly marked and even somewhat eccentric characteristics, a shrewd observer of human nature, a good man- ager, possessed of enough order, method and executive ability to qualify him for the suc- cessful government of states. Parson Little devoted himself with the utmost diligence, fidelity and earnest zeal to the labors of his narrow ministry. The children were all care- fully taught in Sunday School until they were fourteen years of age, when they were trans- ferred to the Bible Class conducted by the Pas- tor himself. Those who were found suitable finally became Sunday School teachers in their turn. This Bible Class Avas an interesting thing. Its members occupied the front seats of the gallery which surrounded on three sides the interior of the old-fashioned meeting house. Sometimes the class was numerous enough to fill some rows of seats besides. The Pastor occupied the pulpit, which brought him nearly on a level with the galleries, so that he could survey the whole class, composed of young and old of both sexes, ranged in order around him. That pulpit, by the way, with its unusual height, stiff double stairway and cushioned book stand, deserves especial mention. Once, when preaching from it, Dr. Sparrow, a Pro- EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 43 fessor of Kenyon College, a very tall and slender man, remarked that lie felt like a spar- row on the housetop. In his plain and even quaint and homely way, Mr, Little asked ques- tions and explained and commented on the pas- sages of Holy Writ under discussion. Nearly all the members of the class sang well — indeed the little village has been notable throughout its histoiy for the universal interest taken in music of all kinds by its inhabitants — and it was not a little impressive to see and hear sev- eral hundred persons, old and young, joining heartily in some favorite hymn and then en- gaging with pleased interest in the study of God's word. There can be little doubt that the old-fashioned Bible Class, as carried on before the advent of the Higher Criticism and of that mania for purely exterior and archaeological details which now permeates so much of Prot- estant teaching of the Scriptures, almost, it would seem, to the exclusion of the spiritual significance, was a great cause of sturdy and conservative religious faith among those sub- jected to its training. Then this faithful pas- tor had a series of methodically organized weekly gatherings, prayer meetings for men and women separately, conferences, inquiry meetings, and a weekly lecture by himself, pre- pared and written out with much care. *^I have often thought," writes Mr. Richards, 44 A LOYAL LIFE **what an admirable Catholic priest he would have made." Eveiy two or three years, he had a Protestant mission — Protracted Meetings or Revivals, as they were and are still called in Presbyterian j^hraseology. These were times of harvest, at which were reaped all the fruits of the labors bestowed on the working of his system. The young people who had reached a suitable age and who had been in the meantime so carefully instructed were now stirred up in these meetings and were "brought out," "ob- tained hopes," and were converted and "be- came Christians." Two or three of the most earnest, zealous and popular preachers avail- able were invited to come and hold the exer- cises, for which in the meantime the jieople had been carefully prepared. As a large pro- portion of the congregation were farmers, a season of the year w^as chosen when they were most at leisure, and they were exhorted to make ready for the period of revival with as much care as they bestowed on the plowing and the sowing of their fields for the future crop. Sometimes the effect of these meetings was startling. The people gave themselves up to the work with entire abandon, and the whole community became affected with the most pro- found seriousness and solemnity. The preach- ing generally was very effective. The farmers came in from every direction in long proces- EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 45 sions of wagons and carriages, the mercliant left his counter, the artisan his shop, business of all kinds was almost wholly suspended, and scarcely any matter was thought or talked of but religion, the concerns of the soul, the in- terests of eternity. Then particularly the in- quiry meetings were brought into play. Any- one who had begun to be seriously impressed with the importance of the affair of salvation, was set down as an inquirer, and if he could be induced to commit himself so far as to at- tend one of these meetings, his case was con- sidered pretty safe. "How like our Confes- sional," says Mr. Richards, ''yet how diifer- ent!" Like the Confessional in the purpose of relieving the overburdened heart and leading it to an assurance of forgiveness and to en- couragement and guidance for the future, yet very unlike in method of procedure, and of course destitute of the saving grace of the sac- rament. These spiritual conferences, as they might have been called, were generally held in a room of the Pastor's house, though sometimes more ample space was required, as the school- room or the "Session Room." Here the in- quirers came to lay open their hearts to the Pastor, or to the revival preacher, or sometimes even to a grave, pious and well-tried deacon of the church, and to receive such counsel and en- couragement as their cases might require. 46 A LOYAL LIFE Generally the inquirers would "find peace" in the course of a few days. But there were al- most always some very difficult cases ; and these seemed generally to be the most thoughtful and least sentimental and excitable of the candi- dates. It took them a long time to "get reli- gion," and sometimes they sought and sought, but never found. At times such candidates were encouraged to go forward and do their duty, even though they had not gone through the stereotyped process and could not say that they had "experienced a hope." Sometimes they became discouraged, gave up the pursuit of what seemed always to elude their grasp, and went back to the "weak and beggarly ele- ments of the world." Henry's first impulse toward the process of conversion seems to have arisen from a boyish attachment, which illustrates the powerful and silent influence exerted by woman in matters of religion, an influence undoubtedly designed by Providence and felt at this day in the Catho- lic Church in America as one of the strongest elements of her stability and progress. He had fallen deeply in love with one of the village maidens, Martha Munson, with the sole result that when she appeared in the store, the young clerk became speechless with embarrass- ment and was almost incapable of waiting on her or any other customer. Martha died in her EAKLY LIFE IN OHIO 47 sixteenth year, but not before her example had exercised an unconscious influence over the future life of her boyish admirer. During one of the revivals, when Martha, who was a very good and pious girl, was singing with the choir one of the most solemn hymns, "Oh, there will be Mourning at the Judgment Seat of Christ," she was completely overcome and had to sit down. In a word, she was converted and in due time joined the church. Henry immedi- ately became serious and thought of following her example. Meantime his relatives were anx- iously praying for his conversion. His step- mother particularly, whom he loved tenderly, ''agonized" for him and wrote him a letter, still preserved in his papers, in which she begs him to attend now to the concerns of his never- dying soul, and in which the most earnest love and anxiety shine through the envelope of somewhat conventional Calvinistic phrases. ''My dear stepmother's brother, Uncle Thomas Bushnell," goes on Mr. Richards, "was a man of great good sense and judgment, and very active and energetic in these meetings. There is no mistake about it, some of those descend- ants of the old Puritans, who had been strictly brought up and were content to walk in the traditions of the fathers, were very sincere, earnest and devoted men. Uncle Thomas was one of the best. He met me on the street and 48 A LOYAL LIFE gave me an earnest word of warning and ex- hortation. I became an inquirer. I believe I was already a general favorite with the leading members of the Church. I taught in the Sun- day School, I sang in the choir, I was on in- timate terms with Deacon Bancroft, Mr. Brace, a leading musician, and others. They all be- came deeply interested in me. I was em- phatically a seeker. I made up my mind to try to get religion. ... I remember distinctly going into the meeting house one evening when the revival services were going on, taking my seat in the corner of one of the square high- backed pews, and there making a positive effort to get religion on the spot. In answer to my anxious inquiries what I should do, I was told to 'give myself uji,' to 4rust in Christ,^ to 'sur- render myself without reserve to Him,' to 'be willing to give up all for Christ,' to 'throw my- self into His anns,' to 'yield myself without re- serve to His guidance and direction.' All this I was willing, nay, anxious to do. But in an- swer to the question, 'How shall I do it!' the answers were vague, indefinite and unsatisfac- tory. The most that they could say was 'Don't be discouraged, but go on seeking and it will come bye and bye in God's own good time.' My good father saw the condition of mind I was in, and breaking through his ordinary re- serve on such subjects, took me aside one Sun- EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 49 day when I had returned home from meeting evidently in great distress of mind, and told me frankly that he feared I was making too much account of feeling, that for his part he did not believe in the necessity of these ex- traordinary experiences which apparently at- tended the conversion of some people. He thought it enough for me to go on and do my duty as a Christian. But the tyranny of the system in which I had been so carefully ed- ucated weakened my confidence in my father's opinion. I thought I must 'find peace,' I must 'obtain a hope,' and so I went on from day to day and from week to week, seeking and striv- ing after something I could not find. I do not remember clearly how long this state of things continued ; it must have been some weeks, when one Sunday morning, I went up to the gallery of the church and sat down in a pew by the window which looked out upon the town and the surrounding hills. It was a lovely day and answered well to the beautiful though perhaps somewhat hackneyed description of George Herbert : 'Sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright, The bridal of tlie earth and sky!' A hymn was given out and the choir commenced to sing. All this had a soothing effect. A calm and peaceful feeling stole over me. The 50 A LOYAL LIFE thought flashed upon my mind, perhaps this is what I have been seeking. The very thought gave me happiness. The burden was gone. After meeting I told my friends how I felt. They said the work was done, I was converted at last, and they rejoiced with me. I had ob- tained a hope, I had found peace, thenceforth I was on the Lord's side. Certainly God was good to me. I have always looked upon it as a most kind providence ; for I might have gone on in my blindness, seeking an ignis fatuus un- til I had become discouraged and had fallen into despair or become disgusted. Of course it is easy to see the defects of this miserable Calvin- istic system, which insists upon a stereotyped process of conversion for every one. I was converted the day I made up my mind to be a Christian and to do mv dutv. I commenced praying. I am sorry to say that for some time past I had become so careless that I had given up my prayers. Now I resumed that duty with others; and I remember wtII how I sought the garret of the old store during the day, and there, among boxes and barrels and the rubbish there stowed away, kneeling down and agoniz- ing in prayer, begging God to have mercy on me and forgive me and show me what He would have me to do. I was very serious, very much in earnest. "The experience of the Protestant sects EAELY LIFE IN OHIO 51 proves that the great danger of these extraor- dinary conversions, even under the most favorable circumstances, lies in the fact that the subjects of them almost invariably err in mis- taking feeling for true religion. If a happy state of feeling is the evidence of true conver- sion, why should not a continuance of pleasur- able emotion be sought as evidence of continu- ing in a state of acceptance with God? And when that pleasurable emotion subsides, as it must subside at times even in the most happily constituted, since a state of constant exaltation is incompatible with our condition in this world, what is to prevent the mistaken devotee from falling into despondency and perhaps into de- spair? Such, in fact, is oftentimes the case- I saw enough while I was a Protestant to con- vince me that the safety and reputation of the so-called Evangelical sects lay in the fact that by a happy, practical inconsistency they felt obliged to receive a fair proportion of members who could not say that they had ever gone through the approved process of conversion, but to use a common and favorite expression of such persons, all they could say was that 'where- as once I was blind, now I think I see.' They were the sober, steady, thoughtful, well-bal- anced characters who acted from principle and conscience, and who never would have thought much about feeling, had it not constituted so 52 A LOYAL LIFE important an element in the popular theory, and been so constantly harped upon by the over- zealous. It was this sober, conservative ele- ment, after all, that constituted the most trust- worthy church members and did most credit to the various societies, whereas the sticklers for extraordinary conversions, the enthusiasts who had been converted upon the high pressure principle, were generally erratic, unreliable, unstable as water. Alas ! how many thousands of souls have been brought in at the floodtime of revival, who have subsequently been left high and dry, like the riff-raff on the banks of a stream after a freshet. Hardened they were too, often times, like the nether millstone, with a strong disposition to revenge themselves upon all religion for the imposition which they felt had been practiced upon them. 'You need not talk to us about your religious experiences, your obtaining hopes, your finding peace, and all that. We have been through it all and have found out by experience that it is all humbug. It is a delusion, mere animal feeling and ex- citement.' However, the cases were by no means uncommon of persons who became 'Re- vival Christians,' just as there are some men among Catholics who become 'Mission Chris- tians,' and as these latter always make it a point to attend the mission and go to Confes- sion and Communion and pledge themselves to EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 53 a new life, so tliese poor Protestants, whenever there was a religious excitement, would always make it a point to be on hand, apparently wide awake, with all the old earnestness, enquiring what they must do to be saved. Sometimes, no doubt, there was a motive for this far removed from anxiety for the salvation of the soul. This was more particularly the case among the Methodist brethren, who were perfectly au fait in this work of religious excitement, and to whom regular seasons of dissipation seemed to be as spiritually necessary as a good spree to the man of cups. Methodist meetings in time of revival, and often times without the machinery of the revival, were a curiosity, in fact, a study for the philosopher. I remember the impression made on my own mind at a meeting when I was a boy. There was an al- ternation of prayers and excited exhortations and thrilling music. I felt a strong unearthly feeling stealing over me, and if I had not had the presence of mind to retire from the room, I think very likely I should have become ex- cited, perhaps should have swooned and gone into hysterics, as many were in the habit of doing. . . . The scenes enacted by the enthu- siastic people were sometimes disgusting. How often have I seen boys and girls, nay, young men and women, gathered into a promiscuous crowd, and as the excitement increased, sway- 54 A LOYAL LIFE ing from side to side, embracing one another, sighing, groaning, singing, langhing, shouting Glory! Glory! throwing themselves upon the floor, while the elder brethren and sisters stood around encouraging them and joining in the melee at the top of their voices. Beelzebub let loose was the only adequate description of the scene. Yet in the West the class of religionists who tolerated and encouraged these strange and unnatural eccentricities under the sacred name of religion constituted an overwhelming majority of the professedly religious com- munity. Latterly our Methodist brethren, here in the East at least, seem to have taken to com- bining religion with the world by making their camp meeting grounds fashionable places of summer resort. In some respects this is no doubt an improvement upon the old practice, though I fear the result will be disastrous to the cause of true Methodism, whose prestige has heretofore lain in the fact that it was sup- posed to be the advocate par excellence of spiritual religion, that which appeals to the feelings and affects the heart. "There are two grand tendencies in Protes- tantism, the one to a cold, worldly, philosoph- ical skepticism, the other to a vague, wild, unreasoning, blind fanaticism. "Worldly pros- perity, wealth, luxury, tend to the former. Fanaticism finds its victims more frequently EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 55 among* the comparatively ignorant masses. From both these classes, however, God chooses His own and calls them to Himself. When they hear His voice and follow the Good Shepherd into the fold, the first great lesson they have to learn is that religion does not consist in feeling. Faith is a firm and undoubting belief of all truth that God has revealed, and it neces- sarily implies a life corresponding with the pre- cepts which it enjoins. It is the intention that God looks at. I have known this ever since I have been a Catholic, but it has been about the hardest lesson to learn practically that I ever undertook. It is so hard to get rid of the leaven of Calvinistic theology in which I was raised. "After my conversion, as heretofore related, I became entirely changed. I was now a man of prayer, a 'professing' Christian. The first important question that arose was to what church should I belong. Think of it ! To what church? as if there could be more than one true Christian church! My father had been orig- inally a Connecticut Congregationalist, accord- ing to the Saybrook platform of 1708, I be- lieve, but had become disgusted with the society in Granville on account of a scandal arising out of a quarrel of the congregation with their min- ister, Eev. Mr. Jinks." The history of this disagreement throws too much light upon re- ligious conditions and sentiments of the time 56 A LOYAL LIFE to be passed over in silence. The Rev. Aliab Jinks, born of a Quaker family, followed suc- cessively the avocations of farmer, merchant, preacher, justice of the peace, and judge. As preacher, he is said to have been Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational and Episcopal, finally returning to the jurisdiction of the Pres- bytery, but al)andoning the ministry for the judicial post to which he was elected by the people. In the autumn of 1823, his pastoral residence, the contract for the erection of which had been taken by Mr. Richards' uncle, Lucius D. Mower, was approaching completion. As the masons were anxious to begin work on an- other contract before the coming of severe frost, they proposed to lay on Sunday the few courses of brick still wanting. To this, as a violation of the Sabbath, there was decided op- position ; but Mr. Jinks, being appealed to, gave it as his opinion that as a matter of necessity, the labor was justifiable on that day. When the congregation gathered for service, they were horrified to see the work going busily on. Warm protests were immediately made, parties were formed, and although the offending min- ister was dismissed by an almost unanimous vote, the ensuing troubles rent the little church into four distinct parts. Dr. Richards, who was constitutionally a conservative, having no sympathy with radicalism in any form, was EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 57 repelled by what seemed to him fanaticism and the spectacle of helpless disorder in these dis- sensions. He had already become acqnainted with the writings of some Church of England divines, and the result of his alienation from his Congregational brethren was that he sought association with the Episcopalian body. The influence of his upright and thoroughly unself- ish character and his many modest good deeds, served to gather about him a small number of the best members of the community, who looked upon him, in a measure, as a religious guide. Dr. Richards became a lay-reader. Episcopalian services were held regularly on Sunday even- ings in his own house, or at the homes of others, and the nucleus of a church organization was finally formed, with Dr. Richards as Senior Warden. For a time, the redoubtable Mr. Jinks consented to officiate for his Episcopalian brethren, and visiting clerg^^Ilen aided at inter- vals in fanning the nascent flame. ''I generally went with Father," says Mr. Richards, continuing his narrative, "but on ac- count of my conversion in the old church, there being no immediate prospect of the creation of a regular Episcopal organization in the town, I concluded to join the established church. The scene at the time of the reception made a strong impression on my mind. We sat in the old high-backed pews, and Parson Little, sitting 58 A LOYAL LIFE in the chancel, asked us questions, to which we gave answers acx2ording to our knowledge. Of course we were obliged to profess cordial ac- ceptance of the Westminster platform, election, reprobation and all. One of the questions of the astute Parson I shall never forget. It was, I think, a kind of test question with him. * Sup- pose it should be made known to you that it was the will of God that you should go to hell, do you think you would be willing to go?' Of course we were expected to answer that we would, else it would argue a want of confidence in the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, whose holy will must be supreme in all things. I believe I replied that I hoped I should. . . . "Having joined the churcli, I became very ac- tive in all the works and duties required of the most zealous. I led in prayer at the meetings, exhorted, taught Sunday School, belonged to the choir and Bible Class, took the N. Y. Ob- server and the Missionary Herald, and was generally reckoned one of the fervent, zealous young Christians. Some half dozen of the saints of the church, if I may so designate them, including Uncle Leonard Bushnoll, old Uncle Sereno Wright, and his son, Dudley, who had been converted from a very wild, reckless young scapegrace to a most devout, conscien- tious, earnest Christian, Deacon Gerard Ban- croft and perhaps one or two others whose EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 59 names I do not now recall, invited me to join them in a Aveekly Sunday evening meeting to offer special prayers for the conversion of Mr. Elias Fassett, one of the most upright and re- spected citizens, who for some reason unknown to me had been selected as a fit and imj)ortant subject for prayer. How long and patiently and earnestly we prayed! And the answer never came ! He died as he had lived ; but long before that event, I had become a Catholic, and by his personal kindness to me, I found employ- ment in his bank in New York when I had been thro^vn out of business and did not know which way to turn. Who can say that this was not in some measure a recompense for sincere and good intentions in praying for him, brought about by God without his knowledge?" Not long after his formal admission to mem- bership in the church, Henry Richards' sin- cerity was put to a severe test in an incident which finally became the occasion of a complete change in his career, sending him back to col- lege in preparation for the ministry. This oc- curred in connection with the great movement for Temperance and Total Abstinence from in- toxicating drinks, which at that time began to take definite shape in the country. Through- out the eighteenth century and in earlier years of the nineteenth, the vice of drunkenness had certainly attained overwhelming pro- 60 A LOYAL LIFE portions in English speaking and indeed all northern countries. All classes of people in- dulged freely and very often to excess, appar- ently with little sense of impropriety. The stories with which English literature of the period abounds indicate that conduct which would now meet no toleration in decent society was then looked upon without serious disap- proval. It has been asserted that for the first half century after the Declaration of Independ- ence, the United States were hardly equaled in the prevalence of intoxication even by the Brit- ish and Scandinavian kingdoms, and were un- approached by any other nation. Mr. Richards says simply that every])ody drank. It was said that clerg^^nen not infrequently took liquor into the pulpit, with which to refresh themselves at intervals from the exhausting labors of preach- ing. According to the History of Granville, the little township of seventeen hundred inhabit- ants, supported, at the beginning of the year 1827, no less than six distilleries, and consumed an estimated amount of ten thousand gallons of whisky annually. The morals of the people in other respects were no doubt what might have been expected from these facts and from the general neglect of religion which had super- seded the first fervor of the colonists. There were in existence four separate and opposed congregations, each claiming a right to the EARLY LIFE IN OHIO 61 meeting house, in addition to the Methodist and Baptists, the latter body meeting in the Masonic hall. Meantime, attendance at religious wor- ship was generally neglected, and the boys of the village had in sport broken a great propor- tion of the glass in the meeting house windows. If this were the state of things in the little vil- lage which from its inception had been such a stronghold of Puritan doctrine and practice, it may easily be imagined to what a level piety and morals had fallen in other regions of the West, nearer to the principal highways of travel, into which a promiscuous multitude of adventurers was daily pouring. Some few years previously to this date, it was commonly said in New England that west of the Ohio River the Sabbath had no existence. A com- mittee of Congregationalists, sent to report upon the religious conditions and needs of the West, gave a mournful account of the preva- lence of irreligion, drunkenness, blasphemy, lewdness and every disorder. It was at this time that the Rev. Mr. Little appeared at Gran- ville, and began the laborious career described above. One of his earliest steps was to take up with great zeal the Temperance Movement which had recently been inaugurated. His Total Abstinence Society, begun in 1828, was the first organized west of the Alleghany Moun- tains. When Henry Richards underwent his 62 A LOYAL LIFE religious conversion, about the year 1832, the reform movement was in full swing. A public sentiment was created which for a time seemed to bear down all before it. Yet there were always some who held aloof. Not only the hard drinkers, who refused to be divorced from their vicious habits, but many persons of high char- acter deprecated what they thought to be the excesses of the movement. One of these was Plenry's father. Dr. Richards, and with him stood a number of leading citizens who looked up to him and over whom he exerted great in- fluence. Doctor Eichards would never sanction the principle of ''total abstinence from all that can intoxicate," as of universal and necessary application. He was willing to forego and con- demn the use of distilled liquors as a beverage. But wine he would not banish, and he cited the example of our Lord, who not only made use of the juice of the grape, but performed a miracle to remedy its deficiency at a wedding party. Henry however, as a zealous member of the Church, joined with the Pastor in the extrem- est view. ''Touch not, taste not, handle not!" was the motto upon which the changes were rung so constantly that the very thought of hav- ing anything to do with the "vile thing" became distasteful and even terrifying. Yet in his capacity as clerk in his uncle's store, he was expected to sell liquors of all kinds and in any EAKLY LIFE IN OHIO 63 quantity to all comers. Naturally his con- science took alarm. At tirst lie justified him- self on the ground that his employer was re- sponsible, not himself. But this was too weak a defense. He was finally decided by a course of reasoning- substantially as follows: "To sell butcher knives, for instance, is not in itself a sin. But if people should get into the habit of cutting and killing themselves with butcher knives, and if you had good reason to believe that to be the use to which they intended to put them when they purchased them of you, it would be wrong for you to sell them or to be in any way instrumental in furnishing them." The conviction took strong hold of his mind that he could not conscientiously have anything to do with the liquor department of the store. From that time, when he saw customers approaching who would presumably desire to be served with the obnoxious article, he would slip out of the way and leave the unwelcome office to others. Curious and amusing were the shifts to which he was sometimes obliged to resort. But this could not last forever, and the day finally came for an open declaration of principles. One winter evening, when his uncle, Lucius Mower, was sitting comfortably by the stove, and Henry was at the counter, a customer well known for his bibulous propensities entered and demanded a quart of whisky. ''Wait a moment," was 64 A LOYAL LIFE the answer, ' ' and I will go and call Uncle Sher- lock (who was in the back room) to draw it for you. ' ' Lucins Mower, who was a stern man on occasion and a hearty hater of Presbyte- rianism, tunied a look of surprise on his nephew and thundered "Draw it yourself!" "I can- not," replied the youth. "I have made up my mind that it is wrong for me to have anything to do with it. " ' ' Ha ! ' ' rejoined his Uncle, with an oath, ''those Presbyterians have been tam- pering with you, I suppose! Well, Sir, you may as well understand that if you cannot do as I wish in this store, you and I must dissolve partnership!" ''Very well," was the firm re- ply; "if the handling of liquors is an indispen- sable part of my duty here, then I must leave ! ' ' After a time, the Mower brothers gave Henry to understand that they were anxious that he should not leave them and that he might remain on his own conditions. But Dr. Richards had always desired a liberal education for his sons, and the thought of a vocation to the Ministry had already taken root in Henry's mind. He therefore persisted in cutting loose from his uncle's employ, and after serious consultation with his father and friends, recommenced his classical studies. But before following him in this new period of his career, we must say a word as to the effect of his example on his uncle's mind. EAELY LIFE IN OHIO 65 Shortly after the incident detailed above, Lucius Mower was advised by his physician to seek a warmer climate, in the hope of reestablishing* his health, seriously impaired by consumption. He accordingly made the journey to St. Augus- tine, Florida. Thoroughly worldly as he was, he had hitherto given his whole mind and atten- tion to business affairs. In these he was highly successful, and throughout life was looked upon as the leading business man of the little com- munity. Almost every considerable enterprise in the village was either initiated or brought to a successful completion by his energy and sagacity. The fortune that he acquired was so large for those days that the historian of Gran- ville records the settlement of his estate after his death as one of the disturbing elements bringing on a period of financial embarrassment in the village. But now, away from home and free from the distractions of commerce, with death staring him in the face, he was led to re- flect seriously on the weighty problems of ex- istence. Meeting at St. Augustine an excellent Episcopalian clergyman, also an invalid, he was helped by their long conversations on religious subjects to an entire change of conviction and of heart. From an unbeliever, he now pro- fessed faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and sincere repentance for his sins, and finally died in the hope of salvation through Christ, the Re- 66 A LOYAL LIFE deemer. During his illness, Mr. Mower spoke frequently to those about him of a nephew who had lived with him and whom he esteemed very highly. He spoke of this youth as very con- scientious, and regretted deeply having at- tempted to influence him to act against his con- scientious convictions. He expressed a great desire to see him, to ask his forgiveness and to express to him his respect and affection. Doubtless the consistent obedience to the dic- tates of conscience on the part of the boy of eighteen had proved, in the hands of Provi- dence, one means of recalling the hardened man of the world to faith and repentance. Nor did the effect stop with him. Tlie conversion and Christian death of Lucius Mower produced a profound sensation upon his friends at home. His letters written after the change evinced great good sense and entire sincerity. In them he spoke particularly of the danger of a death- bed repentance, of which he seemed very sen- sible, and expressed the deepest sorrow for the sins of his former life and his entire reliance on the infinite mercy of God through Jesus Christ. Mr. Mower's companions and business associ- ates were generally godless men. Many of them had become disgusted with the quarrels alluded to above in connection with the Eev. Mr. Jinks, which had driven Dr. Richards from the Congregational church ; but instead of going EAELY LIFE IN OHIO 67 higher as he did, they took refuge in irreligion. Though few of them eared enough for the sub- ject to give it careful study and reflection, or even to seek arguments in the writings of un- believers to justif}^ their course, yet practically they were godless and in some cases positive scotf ers. In this class of indifferentists and un- believers were the three younger brothers of Lucius Mower, who succeeded to his business and died successively, like him, of consumption. Without exception, they followed the example of their eldest brother and died in the Chris- tian faith. Lucius Mower's biography was written and published by Dr. Richards in pamphlet form. CHAPTER lY COLLEGE — GRADUATIOX ENGAGEMENT 1832—1839 It was probably in the autumn of 1832, after the incident related in the last chapter, that Henry Richards, while continuing, for a time at least, to live at his uncle's house, became a student of the *' Granville Literary and Theological Institution." This ambitious title designated an academy founded in the preced- ing year by the Baptist denomination of Ohio. It has since passed through the successive stages of evolution indicated by the titles of "Granville College" and "Denison Univer- sity," under which last name it remains the chief pride of the little village. Henry's younger brother William had preceded him in the Academy, entering with the first class and beginning immediately, with about a dozen other lads, mostly intimate friends or relatives, his preparation for college. Here the boys en- joyed the advantage of excellent drilling, espe- cially in languages. The Reverend John Pratt, first President of the Institution, was a thor- ough and systematic teacher of the old school. 68 GRADUxVTION— ENGAGEMENT 69 When after two years of diligent study Henry was ready to make a new trial of Kenyon Col- lege, he received from Mr. Pratt a most flat- tering testimonial to his estimable character and manners, tine talents and praiseworthy in- dustry. He was guaranteed as well qualified for the standing of Freshman in the best col- leges. In the autumn of 1834, being then about twenty years of age, Henry Richards again presented himself at the doors of Kenyon Col- lege and claimed admission to the Freshman class. It was characteristic of the young man that he did not present the very favorable tes- timonial received from President Pratt of the Granville Institution, which still remains among his papers, preferring instead to submit him- self to an examination. He was confident of passing with credit and was proud of his teachers, believing with reason that there were few professors more thorough in drilling their pupils in first principles, especially in the gram- mars of the languages, than those in the village academy under Mr. Pratt. His confidence was not disappointed, and he was informed after the examination that his perfect familiarity with the Latin and Greek grammars was con- sidered remarkable. On his return to Kenyon, Henry found great changes effected in the interval of four years.- 70 A LOYAL LIFE The venerable Bishop Chase, founder of the college, had resigned not only the Presidency, but his see as well, and his place had been taken by Bishop Mcllvaine, a young clergyman of jfine address, attractive style of preaching and thoroughly evangelical views. New buildings had been erected, Commons had been abol- ished, the slovenly and disedifying maid serv- ants had been dismissed, and a general improve- ment was visible on all sides in the external appearance and internal arrangements and government of the college. The four years of study that followed were naturally not very eventful. Henry was fond of his books and studied scarcely more from his profound sense of duty and conscience, his characteristic trait throughout life, than from a genuine pleasure in intellectual work. He liked Latin better than Greek, and Mathematics better than either. Geometry, as exercising the reasoning powers, seems to have had an especial attraction for him. He complains of the limitations of his memory and tells how his room mate and most intimate friend, Mun- son of Connecticut, would come in from Greek recitation, lean up against the window casing, look over the lesson for the following day for some fifteen or twenty minutes, then close his book with a bang and throw it on the table, ex- claiming: "There, that lesson is got!" and GRADUATION— ENGAGEMENT 71 forthwith run out of doors to take part in sports, while Richards w^as painfully thumbing his dictionary. Yet in spite of this difference, which was chiefly in memory, Henry took the honors of his class. Towards the end of his first year he writes to his father: ''We are getting along finely in our studies. Have read one book (180 odd chapters) in Herodotus and commenced Homer, which is assigned in the regular course to the Sophomore year. To the 36th chapter of the 3d book of Livy and about half through the 8th book of Legendre. ... I assure you it keeps me very busy. We are required to write compo. every other week, be- sides Society duties." In conduct he was ex- emplary, as became a "professor of religion" and one who even contemplated the ministry, and his name was never connected with any students' scrape or boyish disorder. On the other hand, he was a leader in amusements of a higher kind, as well as in the serious religious life of the student body. His old love of music had not deserted him. During his stay in his uncle's employ, he had purchased a flute, and learned, without a teacher, to play upon it with taste and some degree of skill. Once while he was thus engaged, his uncle impatiently ex- claimed: "Put up that flute and don't let me hear you play it any more. I never knew a musician who was good for anything else!" 72 A LOYAL LIFE "With his usual persistence in what he thought to be right and good, Henry declined to discon- tinue his musical efforts or to adopt his uncle's sweeping proposition as universally true, though he admits in his notes that when applied to musical geniuses, it is confirmed by his own lifelong observation. Such persons, he be- lieved, are endowed with so overpowering a development of the musical faculty that it throws the mind out of balance and unfits the man for the sober, every-day duties of life. Some time after his entrance to Kenvon, the college band was organized, and Henry proved a useful member, playing, at successive periods, upon the flute, the bassoon, the trombone and the bass viol, and occasionally trying the flag- eolet. Somewliat later, when his theological course had begun, the ecclesiastical students were assigned rooms in one of the professors' houses, pending the completion of the new seminary buihling, Bexley Hall. Here Mr. Odiorne, the ** Agent" of the institution, lived in bachelorliood, and to amuse himself had pur- chased a parlor organ. Mr. Kichards, popular and beloved of the professors as of all others, was permitted to practice on it at will. In all the religious societies, devotional meet- ings and active works of zeal carried on in the college, Henry took an earnest part from the very beginning. His remarks on one of these GRADUATION— ENGAGEMENT 73 works are, if we mistake not, worth copying in full: "There was one work in which I was engaged during the whole time of my stay in Gambler that I look back upon with pleasure, as it really involved considerable self-denial, though I do not think I was conscious of this at the time. I went about it as a matter of course and followed it up in the most natural manner as the appropriate work of a Christian, whether he contemplated the ministry or not. I allude to the work of Sunday School instruc- tion in the neighborhood of the college. The whole countrv, for from six to ten miles about the college, was looked upon as missionary ground. In every direction, Sunday Schools were established . . . generally in the school districts where there were (public) school- houses, though sometimes they were held in private houses, and log-cabins at that. In fact, the school-houses were generally built of logs in primitive fashion, with thatched walls, shake roofs and puncheon floors. . . . One end of the cabin was appropriated to the fireplace. Ah, those fireplaces were something to remember! . . . Sometimes they had chimneys built of stones gathered from the surface and laid up with more or less regularity and artistic skill, and extending above the roof, sometimes with and sometimes without the adhesive aid of mortar. In some cases, I am compelled to say, 74 A LOYAL LIFE these expansive fireplaces, so suggestive of broad philanthropy and open-hearted warroth of loving charity, were by the shiftlessness of the proprietors changed to symbols of the very op- posite of these virtues. The smoke was left, without a flue, to wander at its own sweet will wherever it listed, to find egress through the interstices of the walls and ceiling. In these cabins, thus variously constructed and equipped, we held our Sunday Schools and often our meetings also, at which the young aspirants to the ministry used to exercise their gifts to the great edification of the simple country folk. Sometimes, however, we succeeded in persuad- ing the regular clerg>^ of the college to come out with us and hold service and preach. It occurs to me as I write, with what pleasure Dr. Sparrow, in particular, was always received by these country congregations. He was a real Irishman, full of the true Irish eloquence, re- fined and cultivated. Though so great, as we all esteemed him, he was yet so humble and bashful that in addressing a country congrega- tion in a log cabin he would commence his ser- mon sitting, on the plea that he did not feel very well, which was always true, and then, as he warmed with his subject, he became emboldened and would rise from his seat and pour forth a stream of impressive, thrilling eloquence that carried his hearers away. ... I was a great GEADUATION— ENGAGEMENT 75 favorite with liim and used to accompany liim frequently on his preaching expeditions. On one occasion, as Ave journeyed, the subject of the inconvenience of excessive modesty came up, and the importance of courage and self- reliance, — in a word, of 'push,' in order to succeed in life. 'Mr. Eichards,' said the Doc- tor, 'I have learned one very important lesson as the result of my experience in life. Gold is precious and silver is precious, but there is nothing like brass!' "Summer and winter we went regularly, faithfully and punctually to our work. Cold or hot, wet or dry, blow high, blow low, under the burning sun of summer, and the piercing blasts of winter, through snow and slush and sleet, we trudged our four, five and six miles, to impart instruction to these poor children and to preach to these, in many instances, be- nighted souls. There Avas some little jealousy among the people of our Prayer Books and our Episcopal notions and customs. But we gen- erally managed to avoid offense in these par- ticulars. In fact, the task was not a difficult one, as we were generally, as our High Church brethren used to say, only Presbyterians and other sectaries, plus the Prayer Book. ''Sometimes, I confess, this work became tedious ; but it was really wonderful with what unflagging zeal, upon the whole, we persevered 76 A LOYAL LIFE in it. In summer it was not so bad ; it mattered not how open and airy our log cabins were. But in winter it made a difference. Not always did the capacious fireplaces, extending from side to side of the cabin, glow with fervent heat . . . not always were the intrusive winds excluded. Insufficient thatch and a super- abundance of green wood, smoldering on the hearth, made our reception decidedly cool. But I think the warmth of our zeal generally made up for all deficiencies of this kind. We were sometimes rewarded by witnessing some fruits of our labors. The children were gen- erally a lioterogeueous agglomeration of all sorts, good, bad and indifferent; but there were some of extraordinary talent and precocious moral development. Sometimes I would be astonished by some child who had been given for lesson a few verses of the Bible going on and reciting the whole chapter. There were some children who would commit chapter after chapter with the greatest ease, giving evidence of the most wonderful memory. But I must not dwell too long upon this subject, though it calls up associations which will never cease to be invested with the charm of highest in- terest to me. Several of my companions be- came clergymen and missionaries, and two at least, Lyle and Graham, went to China. If they had been Catholics, I do not doubt they GKADUATION— ENGAGEMENT 77 would have accomplished great good among the heathen. As it was, being connected with a mere human society calling itself the Church, but not having the grace of the Sacraments or tbe divine authority of Christ's Holy Church, they spent a few laborious but in- effectual years in that great and wonderful field for Christian effort and then returned, a complete failure, much as the celebrated Bishop Southgate returned from Constantinople, to which he had gone with a great flourish of trumpets and loud professions of the grand work of conversion and reconciliation he was to effect among the Greek and Oriental Chris- tians and the heretics, Turks and infidels. How weak and puny are the efforts of all the Protestant denominations to convert the heathen ! ' ' In a letter addressed to his ''Dear Brother and Sisters" at Utica, Ohio, dated Aug. 27th, 1837, therefore toward the close of his Junior year, Henry writes as follows: "This has been a day of uncommon interest with us. We have had a Sunday School jubi- lee. The several schools under the care of our S. S. Association, thirteen in number, assembled to hear a sermon from the Bishop. The result altogether surpassed our most sanguine expec- tations. There was a very large congregation, 78 A LOYAL LIFE parents and scholars both, and we trust an im- pression was made which will not soon be lost, — that an impulse was given to the cause of S. Schools in our vicinity not easily estimated. The Bishop was delighted — talks of the twelve tribes coming up to the temple to worship. There are about eight hundred scholars in our school, and tlie prejudice which has formerly been manifested — and frequently in a most vio- lent degree — is fast vanishing away, if not al- most entirely disappeared. Our congregation was a heterogeneous collection of all denomi- nations. I shall expect to see you at Com- mencement. Good night. "Your affectionate, ''Henry.'' At the close of his college course, in Septem- ber, 1838, Henry received the degree of Bache- lor of Arts, with the liighest standing in a class of only five. His graduation speech was on the somewhat arid subject of Metaphysics. He advocated with great ardor the claims of this science of all sciences to study and considera- tion. But considering how very jejune must have been his acquaintance with any branch of philosophy, a subject most imperfectly treated in non-Catholic American colleges even at the present day, it may be doubted whether his en- thusiasm was to any extent founded on personal GEADUATION— ENGAGEMENT 79 knowledge. Another incident of a more inter- esting- kind marked this commencement clay. This was the first meeting with his future wife, Cj'nthia Cowles. The commencement w^as al- ways a time of excitement and bustle on the Hill of Gambler. The elite of Western society from the surrounding towns, Mt. Vernon, Worthiugton, and even as far as Columbus, graced the scene with their presence and crowded the chapel, while numberless carriages and conveyances of all kinds thronged the ap- proaches. Among these came Miss Cynthia from her home at Worthiugton, escorted by her brother Havens Cowles and her cousin Douglas Case who intended to take home their cousin, Fitch James Matthews, a student. The young couple were introduced; and although Mr. Eichards declares that he did not fall in love at first sight, having now gotten pretty well beyond that stage and having acquired some discretion, still an impression was made on his somewhat susceptible heart. William Eichards, though five years younger than his brother, was graduated in the same class. He remained another year at college, devoting himself to the study of philosophy, history and political science, under the direc- tion principally of Dr. Sparrow, and took the degree of Master of Arts in course before go- ing East to study law at Yale University. 80 A LOYAL LIFE Henry determined to spend the year at home, with the purpose of taking some rest and rec- reation and of traveling to some extent out of the very i)rovincial atmosphere and some- what raw civilization of a new western state before commencing his theological studies. In September of this year, he began a trip to the East, making the journey over the moun- tains by stage as usual, but at Ellicott City, Md., meeting the Baltimore and Ohio railway, the first built in the United States and just completed as far as that point. In after life, Mr. Richards often spoke of the trepidation, almost amounting to terror, with which the travelers looked on the puffing engine and took their seats reluctantly in the cars. Both engine and train were of course trifling affairs, almost toys, when compared witli our modern railway equipment. At several places in the road, where the grades were steep, the engine was replaced by mules. In the course of this journey, Henry visited all the principal cities, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, &c., and paid a visit to his father's relatives at New London. Returning to Granville with a mind presum- ably widened by contact with the great world, Henry Richards accepted an engagement to teach vocal music during the winter to the young ladies of the Seminary, which had just GRADUATION— ENGAGEMENT 81 passed under control of the Episcopal Clmrcli and had been placed in cliarge of a Mr. Mans- field French. In his notes, Mr. Richards mar- vels at his own temerity. He bids us imagine a young gentleman, modest even to bashful- ness, and just out of college, standing before a roomful of young ladies, the mark for a shower of darts from glancing eyes, while with chalk, blackboard and voice, he makes desper- ate efforts to conduct them through the mys- teries of the gamut. One pair of these bright eyes had begun, he confesses, to shed upon his heart a mild, sweet radiance as attractive as it was dangerous to his peace of mind. They be- longed to the same young lady whom he had met at commencement and who had come to the new Episcopal Seminary at Granville to continue her education. But Henry, who had learned prudence, was not going to allow his heart to carry him away rashly. With businesslike deliberation, he made diligent inquiries about the young lady from those who knew her well at home. They testified that she had every good and estimable quality, that she was a sec- ond mother to her younger brothers and sis- ters, who in the frequent illnesses of their mother looked to Cynthia as the eldest daughter for guidance and control, that she was good, kind, amiable, sensible, and in every way cal- culated to make an exemplary clergyman's 82 A LOYAL LIFE wife. His chief confidant and counselor seems to have been his younger sister, Belle, who happened to be CjTithia 's most intimate friend at school. She confirmed fully all that had been said in commendation of her companion, and cheerily bade her brother ''Go ahead!" And go ahead he did without delay, though he declares that to be a rough way of expressing the modest, deliberate manner in which he car- ried on the siege. When the girls of the Sem- inary attended a party, he invariably saw her home. When they were taken for a sleigh-ride or a drive on some holidav, he was at her side. He put up a swing in the grove on the hill, and took no interest in swinging anyone but his sister or her friend. School closed in the spring and Cynthia departed for her home at Worthington, only to receive very shortly a letter which took her by surprise. It contained a declaration of love and a proposition of mar- riage when circumstances should permit. That letter was a remarkable specimen of composi- tion, costing its writer much thought and labor, but it brought only a refusal. The girl's par- ents were not willing. The mother particularly was not satisfied to see her favorite daughter exposed to the inconveniences, discomforts and comparative poverty to which the wife of a young and struggling clergyman would prob- ably be subject. But the young lover, though GEADUATION— ENGAGEMENT 83 disappointed, was not discouraged. He saw plainly, reading between the lines of the re- fusal, that the daughter's affections were his, while through obedience and submissiveness she wrote according to the decision of her more worldly-minded parents. He refused to give up, and was finally rewarded by a reversal of the unfavorable decision. From that time he corresponded regularly with Miss Cowles, and awaited only the completion of his studies to make her his wife. CHAPTER V BEGINNINGS OF THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT Before attempting to trace the path on which his unflinching loyalty to truth and reason led our young seminarian until it ultimately brought him home to the great Dwelling Place of all religious truth, we must go back to give some idea of the state of religious belief in his day and the intellectual forces that were at work around him. There exists a popular impression that the great movement of return to the Catholic Church which has been so marked a feature of the nineteenth century began Avitli the Trac- tarians in England and owed to them almost exclusively its origin and development, not only in England, but in all English-speaking coun- tries, and even throughout the world. But a very slight degree of reading and study, espe- cially now that the first impetus of the move- ment has spent itself, will suffice to show that this view is quite erroneous. The Oxford Move- ment is now seen to have been only an incident, though a most important incident, in a far more widespread drama; it was only one current, 84 THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 85 though a very powerful current, in the great stream which was slowly but surely setting back toward the sea from which it had come. The reaction was evident in several countries of Europe, particularly Germany and France, even before the French Revolution had fairly exhausted itself. The first movers in the re- action were not always Catholics, nor scarcely even Christians. In Germany, much may be attributed to Herder and Goethe, and a little later, Schiller. They were poets, lovers of beauty. True religion is always poetical; for poetry is the language of emotion and of the ideal clothed in concrete forms. In Protestant- ism these men found neither poetry nor beauty ; they discovered them in the Catholic Church. They expressed their admiration freely, and made use in their works of the noble and ele- vated ideas thus gained, and so contributed to the spread of Catholic sentiments while them- selves remaining Eationalists or Pantheists. The study of mediaeval art — poetry, sculpture and painting, but above all, of the Gothic archi- tecture, with the monuments of which Germany is so abundantly supplied — led minds insensi- bly to the great Church which had been the in- spiration and the guardian of these master- pieces. Added to these elements, was a more impartial study of the history of the middle ages. The distinguished historian, Leopold 86 A LOYAL LIFE Friedrich, Count Stolberg, came into the Church in 1800 and by his History of the Reli- gion of Jesus Christ was mainly instrumental in the conversion of Prince Adolphus of Mecklen- berg. In 1805 came the conversion of Fried- rich von Schlegel and his gifted wife. Schle- gel's influence was veiy great, and he has been called the Messiah of the German Eomantic School of literature. His works on the History of Literature and the Philosophy of History are still of great value. Overbeck the artist, with a number of friends, came in about 1814 and founded a new Cliristian school of painting. The two brothers Veit (painters) were con- verted Jews. Klinkowstrone, Wilhelm and Ru- dolf Schadow (the latter a sculptor), Vogelstein, Schnorr, Platner, and Miiller, were members of this remarkable aggregation. Joseph Gorres and Clemens Brentano, though born and bap- tized Catholics, were practically converts to the Faith, as was also the Princess Gallit- zin, a German lady married in Russia. The poet Werner, the poetess Luise Hensel, many members of sovereign houses and of the nobil- ity and aristocracy, jurists and historians, swelled the ranks and even ministers of reli- gion were not wanting. In the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, the conversion in 1820 of Karl Ludwig von Haller, a Councilor of State of Berne, and a political writer of Euro- THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 87 pean fame, followed by the publication of his letter to his family giving an account of his step, caused a great sensation, though it did not give rise to any definite local movement of return. Mohler's Symholik, one of the great- est works of the nineteenth century, though rather a fruit than a cause of the movement, yet contributed most powerfully after its ap- pearance to sustaining and spreading the truth. The conversion of the historians Hurter, Gfrorer, Onno Klopp and others, was also one of the later fruits of the reaction. In France, the Faith had never been extin- guished. It only remained quiescent under the ashes heaped upon it by the Revolution and the Terror. As soon as partial freedom was re- stored under Napoleon, it flamed forth again. Churches were opened, seminaries reestab- lished, religious congregations founded, and — ■ best sign of all of the presence of an ardent faith — colleges for the training of priests for foreign missions were put in operation. Al- though compelled to struggle with revolutionary hate on one side and bureaucratic oppression, scarcely less atheistic and fatal, on the other, the Church showed wonderful vitality, and the result was a powerful reaction in favor of re- ligion. To give anything like a list of* the converts would be impossible. Rendered at- tractive to the i^opular mind by the genius of 88 A LOYAL LIFE Chateaubriand (himself a returned wanderer from the fold) in the graceful and fervid imag- ery of his Geiiiiis of Christianiti/, The Martyrs, and Atala, the movement was also commended to the philosophic and doctrinaire spirit of the times by the scholarly discussions of Joseph de Maistre and Bonald, while it was carried into the field of sociology' and politics by Lamennais, Montalembert, Lacordaire, and their brilliant associates in the founding and conducting of L'Avenir. Frederick Ozanam, in his eloquent lectures at the Sorbonne, replete with Catholic views of history, philosophy and art, and still more in his charitable Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which soon spread throughout the world,, exercised an influence which hitherto perhaps has not been sufficiently appreciated. The re- establishment of the Jesuits and the return of other religious orders, with their enormous labors in missions and Catholic education, were of course a most powerful factor. In England, the great reaction was less felt. Still, the way was prepared. Thoreau-Dangin, in his recent work, La Renaissance Catholique en Angleterre au XIX Siecle, describes the vari- ous phases of religious thought in England after Waterloo. ''Some," he says, "felt the need of a return to Christianity; a certain num- ber of writers seconded this reaction or felt its influence and accomplished in England a task THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 89 analogous to that of Chateaubriand in France, and Gorres in Germany. Such under different aspects were Walter Scott, Coleridge, Words- worth, Southey. " The American Colonies, settled as they were so largely by Presbyterians, Independents, and representatives of all the Dissenting bodies that had waged such violent wars in England, were slow to be aifected by the new tendency. Up to the time of the Revolutionary War, a spirit of fierce bigotry and hatred of the Church seems to have been almost universal. Even in Mary- land, originally settled by Catholics imder royal protection and designed as a refuge for Chris- tians of every denomination, the Mother Church had been reduced to a state of permanent legal persecution. No sooner, in fact, had the Puri- tans of New England accepted the brotherly in- vitation of the Lord Proprietor to settle in the regions subject to his government, under the segis of civil and religious liberty, than they seized the first opportunity to arrogate to them- selves supreme power and to place their late generous hosts under the ban of oppression. Priests were unable to remain in the colony, and the missionaries of the Society of Jesus were compelled to take refuge on the further side of the Potomac, in Virginia, where they remained in close hiding, making only stealthy 90 A LOYAL LIFE visits to their flocks to sustain them in the faith. At a later date, after the Restoration in England, the Anglican authorities in the colony showed themselves almost as full of hatred as the Puritans, and exercised continual acts of repression and persecution. Shortly prior to the American Revolution, the letters of the elder Charles Carroll to his son, the Signer of the Declaration of Independence, are full of complaints of the double taxation and other disabilities to which Catholics were subject in their own home. This injustice, with the abso- lute prohibition of separate public churches or chapels for Catholics, persisted to the end of the Colonial era. In the other colonies, with the exception of Pennsylvania, the state of popular feeling was in general no better. Prejudice against the Church was so bitter that it extended to every- thing remotely connected with her doctrines or ceremonial. So general, for instance, was the Puritan hatred of Prelacy, that even the Angli- cans were fain to yield to it. Dr. Tiffany, in his History of the Protestant Eplscoiml Church in the United States, says (p. 274) : ''The intense dread of Puritans and Presby- terians (in regard to the introduction of Bishops in the Anglican Church in America) we learn from their own statements. In 1768, the Massa- chusetts House of Representatives, addressing THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 91 its London agent, wrote by tlie hand of Samuel Adams as follows: 'The establishment of a Protestant episcopate in America is very zeal- ously contended for. . . . We hope in God such an establishment may never take place in Amer- ica ; we desire you would strenuously oppose it. The revenue raised in America, for aught wo can tell, may be as constitutionally applied to- ward the sujDport of prelacy as of soldiers or pensioners.' " It was only in 1784, after the revolution, that the first Anglican Bishop, Dr. Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, was consecrated for the United States, and this irregularly by the nonjuring Bishops of Scotland. "White and Provoost, more regailarly presented, received their orders from the English church in 1787. In spite of the two centuries of Anglican domination in Virginia, the first Bishop of that diocese, Dr. Madison, received his office simultaneously with the Catholic Bishop, John Carroll, in 1790, both going to England for consecration and return- ing in the same ship. The resolution of Congress in 1774, protesting against the Quebec Act (or the continuance by the British government of the existing condition of the Catholic Church in French Canada) and its two addresses on the subject, one to the In- habitants of the Colonies and the other to The 92 A LOYAL LIFE People of Great Britain, undoubtedly had a powerful effect in alienating the inhabitants of that colony from the cause of the American Eevolution. But that war effected a great change. The French nation, then at least nom- inally Catholic, gave to the revolted colonies most effective aid, without which it is douljtful whether thev would ever have achieved their in- dependence. Catholic officers of French origin volunteered for service in the Continental Army, like the lamented and skillful artillery Captain, Dohickey Arundel, who was killed in his first battle. A considerable number of Irish Catholics were also enrolled and were found, as always and everj^where, to be heroic fighters. This phase of Revolutionary histoiy has been carefully chronicled by Martin J. Griffin, in his three volumes on Catholics and the American Revolution. Among the most prominent of these heroes was Stephen Moylan, of Philadel- phia, brother of the Catholic Bishop of Cork, who became Commissary General of the Ameri- can forces and was an intimate friend of Wash- ington. The old Catholic families of Maryland were all, it would seem, heartily in accord with the other colonists in their struggle for freedom. One of the most conspicuous of their members, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, signed the Dec- laration of Independence, thereby risking, as THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 93 was said, the most ample estates owned by any one proprietor in the colony. His relative, John Carroll, a member of the Society of Jesus until its suppression and destined in after years to be the first Catholic Bishop in the United States, accompanied Charles Carroll and the other two Commissioners, Samuel Chase and Benjamin Franklin, to Canada, for the purpose of doing away with the unfavorable effect of the Congressional protests of 1774 and inducing the Canadian people to join with the revolted Colonies. In the Northwest, a Catholic priest of French descent, the Rev. Peter Gibault, by his prompt and bold action and commanding personal in- fluence, won to the American cause, almost sin- gle handed, an extensive and important terri- tory, populated in great part by Catholics. All these facts dictated to the new Eepublic, both from policy and gratitude, a laying aside of the old prejudice and hatred. Washington's reproof to his soldiers, near Boston in 1775, for- bidding the usual insulting celebration of Guy Fawkes ' day, and his gracious reply to the Ad- dress of his Roman Catholic fellow citizens in 1790, were the keynote of the new policy of fair- ness and friendliness. At the close of the war, the few and scattered professors of the Catholic religion found their situation vastly improved. On the adoption of the constitution, they were 94 A LOYAL LIFE guaranteed equal rights, so far as concerned the central government, though long and persistent efforts, not ended until our own day, were needed in order to remove the disabilities im- posed by individual States. But the process of enlightenment and soften- ing was necessarily very slow. Here and there throughout the States, a few noble and faithful souls were led by some special grace of God to break througli tlie crust of ignorance and inborn prejudice and to emerge into the full light of Faith and Truth. Lionel Brittain, a church warden of Philadelphia, was received into the Church, with his son and several other persons, as early as 1707. The Eev. John Thayer, a minister of Boston, was converted and received into the Church in Rome in the year 1783. Be- coming a priest, he served efficiently in his native city and elsewhere. Early in the eight- eenth century, Thomas Willcox, a manufac- turer of paper at Ivy Mills, Pennsylvania, came into the Church. His descendants, and espe- cially his son, Mark Willcox, and the latter 's saintly convert wife, exercised a powerful and almost patriarchal influence in building up Catholicity in Philadelphia and the surrounding region. Judge James Twyman of Kentucky yielded to the zeal of Father Badin about the year 1800. Mrs. Elizabeth A. Seton, who made her submission in 1805, became the Foundress THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 95 of tlie Sisters of Charity in the United States. The famous Barber family of New Hampshire, which included two ministers, father and son, made their way to the Truth in 1816 and 1818, in spite of the complete isolation from every Cath- olic influence in which they lived. This family gave to the Church prelates, priests and nuns, including the Et. Eev. John Tyler, first Bishop of Hartford, and Samuel Barber, S. J., Rector of Georgetown College, both of whom were grandsons of Daniel Barber. In 1807, the Rev. John Richards of Alexandria, Virginia, prob- ably a distant relative of the subject of this memoir, made a journey to Canada, with the purpose, as tradition asserts, of attempting to convert to Protestantism the Sulpitian Fathers of Montreal. But matters fell out contrariwise to his intention. He was converted by them and received into the Church on October 31st of the same year. Entering the Sulpitian community, he was ordained priest in 1813 and was ap- pointed Econome (bursar) of the establishment. In 1817, he gathered together the few and scat- tered Irish Catholics in Montreal and estab- lished the first English-speaking congregation in that city. His death occurred July 23d, 1847, and was due to typhus fever contracted in at- tending the sick among the famine-stricken Irish emigrants. He was the fourth victim among the Sulpitians engaged in the same heroic work 96 A LOYAL LIFE of charity. It may be stated here that accord- ing to Shea, another priest of the same family name, the Very Rev. B. Richards, presumably a convert, was one of the two Vicars General of New Orleans in 1832, and died of cholera in the same year. Major Noble, of Brownsville, Pa., with his wife and family (1807), Dr. Henry Clarke Bowen Greene, of Saco, Me. (1824), and the Rev. Calvin White, of Derby, Conn, (about 1828), are among the most noted of these early converts. Col. Dodge, of Pompey, N. Y., was received, together with his wife, in 1836, and by the year 1839 there were no less than nine- teen converts at that point brought in by his influence and example. James Frederick Wood, a banker, destined to be the Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia, made his submis- sion in 1836. The Rev. Maximiliam Oertel, a Lutheran Minister sent to this country to in- vestigate the sjjiritual condition of the German inunigrants, found here the gift of Catholic Faith and was received March 15th, 1840, in St. Marv's Church, New York Citv. These conversions, and many more like them, were mostly isolated and could not be said to consti- tute any movement. But meantime many forces were beginning to operate to bring to the American people in general a clearer knowledge of that Mother Church whom they so blindly hated. The THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 97 exiled French priests who came to our shores contributed largely by their exalted virtues, learning and refinement of manners to modify the views of those who had been brought up to believe all priests monsters. Matignon, Chev- erus, Brute, Flaget, Dubois, the Sulpitians of Baltimore, and many others won not only the devoted affection of their Catholic flocks, but the profound respect and esteem of reputable Protestants. ImmigTation, especially from Catholic Ireland, increased rapidly; and the victims of English injustice, poor in all else, brought with them a profound knowledge of their faith and a devoted zeal for its defense and propagation. Moreover, the general European movement toward Catholic ideas could not be without its effect and its counter- part in America. As yet this was scarcely more than a groping or a blind yearning for something higher and more in conformity with human feelings than the stern and narrow severity of Calvinistic Protestantism. As the furious fanaticism of their fathers began to be forgotten, sectaries were pleased with the fuller and statelier service of the Episcopalian Prayer Book, and accepted readily the frag- ments of Catholic Truth preserved in the An- glican system. Even to the present day, this influx from Presbyterianism and other Evan- gelical sects to the Episcopalian body has not 98 A LOYAL LIFE ceased but seems to be steadily increasing; and it doubtless constitutes one step in the general progress toward Catholicity. Instances were Mr. Eichards' own father and his associates in Granville, Bishop Chase, and hosts of others. Meantime, the Episcopalians themselves were obe^dng the same impulse and were almost in- sensibly moving upward. No doubt in many cases this tendency was more a matter of senti- ment than of positive doctrine. The great Catholic system corresponds closely in its de- votional practices to the needs of the human heart and fulfills the spiritual demands of man's whole nature. Hence, when the centrifugal force of prejudice is removed, religious-minded souls tend naturally, by a sort of spiritual gravitation, to this center of Truth and Holi- ness. It is a remarkal)le fact that this tendency toward the resumption of Catholic ideas and feelings is now very general among those most widely separated from the Church in doctrine. Lights and flowers and stained glass windows are found in Presbyterian and Congregational churches, while Unitarians are among the read- iest to appreciate the aesthetic and to some ex- tent even the devotional side of Catholicity. Presbyterians, as the writer knows from ob- servation, will attend the service of the Way of the Cross and find nothing but what is touch- ing and attractive in that which their ancestors THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 99 would have pursued Avitli savage scorn. Prayers for the dead appeal to their tenderest feelings, and even the Invocation of the Saints and the honor rendered to the Blessed Aargin are losing their terrors, thanks in part no donht to the revival of popular interest in Art, which was frozen and stifled by the Reforma- tion. But almost all of this amelioration was as yet in the future. Indeed even at the present day this process is by no means complete, and Catholics are still often disheartened, in public and social life, by the load of unreasoning and bitter dislike which they are compelled to bear. Particularly is this the case in smaller towns and villages, where Protestantism still main- tains something of its old positiveness and vigor. Decadent religions are at all times found to retain most persistently their vigor and characteristics in localities far from the great centers of life and discussion, just as the pagani, in early Christian centuries, were the last survivors, in the pagi or villages, of the worshipers of these heathen gods who had been driven with laughter and scorn from the cities. That this principle is verified in the present history of Protestantism in the United States must be plain to anyone who has had experience of both city and country life. Naturally therefore the atmosphere of the 100 A LOYAL LIFE country districts of Ohio in the early days was not favorable to the acquirement of truth con- cerning the Church. Ignorance more dense or prejudice more fanatical it would probably be difficult to find. As in most agricultural dis- tricts, the influx of Catholic immigrants and the consequent spread of Catholic ideas were comparatively slow. When the saintly Domin- ican Father, Edward Fenwick, afterward Bishop of Cincinnati, established the missions of his order in Ohio and built the first perma- nent Catholic church in that State in 1818, the number of Catholics was so insignificant as to be almost unnoticeable. The first church in Columbus was not erected until 1838, the very year of Mr. Eichards' graduation from Ken- yon, and even then was not supplied with a resident i^astor. Mass was said occasionally by a priest who came from a distance, probably from Chillicothe. But the congregation was too few in number, too poor and despised, to attract any great attention; and the Protestant public continued to be weighed down by the inherited ignorance and prejudice in regard to the Church, which later broke out in the famous "Know Nothing" movement. About the year 1826, began in England that remarkable ferment of minds and consciences, afterward known as the Tractarian Movement. THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 101 It commenced no one knew how and came no one knew whence. It was as though the Crea- tive Spirit again brooded over the face of the deep, bringing order and beauty into what was formless and void, and quickening into germi- nation the seeds of life there latent. As an in- tellectual and spiritual agitation, it cannot be said to have originated with those who became its leading champions, Hurrell Froude, Keble, Ward, Newman and Pusey, nor was it confined to their immediate associates and followers. Dean Church, in his Oxford Movement, has the following remarks on the general movement for reform of the Church of England at this period: ''Doubtless many thought and felt like them about the perils which beset the Church and religion. . . . Others besides Keble and Froude and Newman were seriously con- sidering what could best be done to arrest the current which was running strong against the Church, and discussing schemes of resistance and defense. Others were stirring up them-, selves and their brethren to meet new emer- gencies, to respond to the new call. Some of these were in communication with the Oriel men and ultimately took part with them in or- ganizing vigorous measures. But it was not until Mr. Newman made up his mind to force on the public mind, in a way which could not be 102 A LOYAL LIFE evaded, the great article of the Creed — 'I be- lieve in one Catholic and Apostolic Church' — that the movement began." ^ The Rev. J. H. Overton, D. D., in his work, The Anglican Revival, points out that Dean Hook "was firmly established in his theologi- cal position, which was in the main the same as that of the early Tractarians, long before and quite independently of, the Oxford Move- ment, and when all the prime movers except Keble were either yet in a state of flux or be- longed to quite a different school of thought." Newman himself, writing to Froude, says: "I do verily believe a spirit is abroad at pres- ent, and we are but blind tools, not knowing whither we are going. I mean a flame seems arising in so many places at once as to show no mortal incendiary is at work, though this man or that may have more influence in shaping the course or modifying the nature of the flame. "2 Li another place, he speaks of the "Unseen Agitator" who is at work. The movement took on definite shape and plan in the famous meeting or "congress" of its half-dozen foremost leaders in the Hadleigh Eectory in the year 1833. It culminated in the reception into the Catholic Church of John Henry Newman and several of his companions 1 Church. — The Oxford Movement, pp. 32, 33. ^ Hurrell Froude, by Louise Imogen Guiney, p. 115. THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 103 in 1845. In the submission to Rome of Dr. Newman, the Anglican establishment received a blow from which, by the confession of its friends, it has never entirely recovered. The stream of conversions due directly or indirectly to his influence has not even now ceased. Yet almost numberless as are the individuals brought to the Church in this way, it may per- haps be doubted if the fruit of the movement in advancing the whole body of Protestantism may not result, in the long run, in still greater good. No man of sense and upright judgment can indeed approve of the recent course of those highest of high "Anglo-Catholics" who, while admitting the power and jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff over the whole Church, as the successor of St. Peter, yet refuse to sub- mit to that jurisdiction, and while proclaiming his supreme teaching authority, yet decline to receive his decisions, persistently remaining in schism and rebellion in the hope of ultimately bringing back the whole body to the unity of faith and government. Yet the gradual famil- iarizing of the Protestant mind with Catholic ideas and the leavening of society in general with the Catholic spirit, a process which is go- ing on very generally and rapidly in conse- quence of the movement, must ultimately re- sult, it would seem, in wholesale conversions to which those we have already seen are trifling. 104 A LOYAL LIFE In America, tlie publications of the Tracta- rians were eagerly read, and those who here and there, by their own reading and reflection, had been attracted to a greater or less extent toward the Catholic ideal, were now canght up by the advancing flood. John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York from 1811 to 1830, was a leader in High Churchmanship of the old school, and maintained its principles with great vigor in his published addresses and charges. Bishop Whittingham of Maryland, Doane of New Jersey, Ives of North Carolina, and others, not only followed his lead but went far beyond him. His successor in the see of New York, Benjamin T. Onderdoiik, though only moderately high in his own views, afforded pro- tection to the Catholicizing students at the General Theological Seminary, of which he was ex officio the head, and he came to be looked 111)011 as a champion of the party. Bishop Ives established in his diocese of North Carolina, at a spot called Valle Crucis, a monastic society named the Brothers of the Holy Cross, the first organization of the kind in the Episcopal Church of America. So marked were Bishop Ives' Catholic tendencies that his own clergj^ were alarmed and he was arraigned before the Convention. Although his statement of faith and explanations were judged satisfactory, the brotherhood was dis- THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 105 solved. Another effort in the same direction was made at Nashotah, in the lake district of Wisconsin, by James Lloyd Breck, a graduate of the General Theological Seminary of New York in 1841. Associated with him were two of his classmates, John Henry Hobart (a son of the former bishop) and William Adams. Their purpose was to practice celibacy and community of goods, to teach Catholic princi- ples and to preach from place to place — in a word, to found a religious order on explicitly Catholic lines. The institution grew and pros- pered, but was gradually diverted from its monastic purpose. Hobart, a very admirable young man, soon left to take a wife. Adams married the daughter of his own bishop. Bishop Kemper favored the scheme as a valu- able accession to his diocese in the shape of an ecclesiastical seminary and college; but play- ing at monk lost its interest for most of the participants. Breck left in disappointment and founded another similar institution in Faribault, Michigan ; but finally he also married and ended his career, as a highly respected mis- sionary and pioneer, in California. George Richards, a half-brother of Henry, studied for the ministry at Nashotah, but was not in sym- pathy with the ardent Catholic spirit of the founders. The seminary has in later years fur- nished many distinguished converts to the Cath- 106 A LOYAL LIFE olic Church; but it is said at present to have sunk in doctrinal matters to a decidedly Low Church level. But Kenyon College and Seminary, as may be inferred from what has already been said, were not the place in which the seeds of Catho- lic doctrine and practice could find congenial soil. Indeed, the troubles that drove Bishop Chase from the Presidency and the diocese seem to have arisen in part from the aversion of his Low Church faculty to what appeared to them his ultra-Catholic tendencies, mild and restricted as these were. A brief allusion to these discussions finds a more logical place here than if it had been introduced in strict chronological order. The complexion of the Convention is described by the Eev. Henry Caswall, a young Englishman who was a stu- dent with Mr. Richards in 1829 and who in after years returned to his native land and became Vicar of Figheldean in Wiltshire. In his ''America and the Americans," Dr. Caswall writes: ''Once a year the General Convention of the diocese assembled at Gambier, on which occasions the thirty or forty congregations then existing in the diocese were represented by their lay delegates ; and most of the clergy, then twenty in number, attended in person. . . . It was easy to see that even in that little band opposite principles were at work which could THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 107 hardly fail to produce a disastrous result. The Bishop, for example, like the other American prelates, rested his prerogative on Apostolic succession and firmly believed in the efiQcacy of the Sacraments as means by which grace is conveyed. The professors generally were good men, but inclined to low views of the Church, and were disposed to show great deference to the spirit of the age. . . . Their desire was to render the college popular among all classes of the community, and this object could only be affected by sinking in some measure its distinc- tive features as a Church institution. In these and similar plans, a large portion of the clergy and laity in the Diocesan Convention were ready to support them, believing that Episco- pacy in Ohio was practicable only in the mildest and most liberal form." Bishop Chase himself, in his "Eeminis- cences," speaks on this head even more strongly. ^ When Charles Pettit Mcllvaine, a brilliant young minister of Brooklyn, N. Y., was elected in 1832 to take the place of Bishop Chase, his theological principles were low enough to satisfy even the Faculty and Trustees of Ken- yon. What these principles were may perhaps be inferred from the fact that he was educated at Princeton, the stronghold of thoroughgoing 3 Vol. II, p. 89. 108 A LOYAL LIFE Presbyterianism, not only graduating at the college but also attending the theological school for two years, as there was then no ecclesiastical seminary of the Episcopal Church in the United States. In later life he wrote that during the two years spent in this Presby- terian theological course, he heard nothing taught which was distinctive of that church ! But in regard to Episcopal authority, the re- calcitrant Faculty found that it had made little improvement upon Bishop Chase, perhaps rather the reverse. The new prelate was no less positive than his predecessor as to the prerogatives of his office and the necessity of keeping supreme power in his own hands; and his methods of enforcing his claims were more systematic and effective. By his energy^ and ability, as well as his commanding personal character, he soon brought order and prosper- ity to the affairs of the college. After a time, some of the Professors ventured to oppose him. He writes to his mother in 1839: '*I caused certain matters at the college, which have given me trouble for three years, somewhat of the kind that drove Bishop Chase away, to be brought before the Convention, and had them well settled by the diocese, who have no idea of letting two or three men disturb the peace of their Bishop." The following appreciation of Bishop Mc- THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 109 Ilvaine's character and religious attitude is taken from Father Walworth 's ' ' Oxford Move- ment in America": ''In his whole life and doctrine, I can find nothing characteristic of Episcopalianism except that he used the Book of Common Prayer and attached some impor- tance to Apostolical Succession. Baptismal re- generation he scouted, while he was in no re- spect behind Calvin in maintaining the doctrine of 'total depravity' or behind Luther in his ex- travagant presentation of the great Protestant heresy of 'justification by faith only.' "While a student in the seminary, I went one Sunday morning to hear him preach on this last doctrine, which was his favorite theme. I think it was at St. Mark's on Eighth Street. It made the blood fairly creep in my veins to listen to him. . . . Amongst all evan- gelical enthusiasts, especially ladies. Bishop Mcllvaine was a hero, a sort of apostolic divin- ity. I remember well the worshipful words of an excellent Presbyterian lady of New York City. . . . Anything clerical was to her some- thing angelic ; even I, boy that I was, stood in her regard as something like Raphael's round- cheeked cherubs, with very little wings put on to atone for cheeks and eyes extraordinarily human. But Bishop Mcllvaine, though most violently and bitterly evangelical, with his high talents and fine elocution, was something super- 110 A LOYAL LIFE human. 'Isn't lie perfectly wonderful!' slie would say to me. 'Isn't he lovely T I could not enter into her enthusiasm at all, though I would willingly have done so, for she was very dear to me and I was always glad to please her. I acknowledged that he was wonderful enough. I wondered at him myself, but I thought him altogether unlovely. I could very well have used the terms applied by the celebrated Rufus Choate in praise of a Massachusetts judge: 'We look upon him as a heathen looks upon his idol. We know that he is ugly, but we feel that he is great.' " CHAPTER VI SEMINARY ORDINATION MARRIAGE 1839—1840 In the autumn of 1839, under the circum- stances imperfectly outlined in the preceding chapter, Henry Richards returned to Kenyon and began his theological studies in prepara- tion for the ministry. We have purposely left to this place all account of his transition from Presbyterianism to the Episcopalian faith. This change had been gradual. Before en- tering college the second time in 1834, he had been somewhat indoctrinated with Epis- copal views. The fact that his venerated father had embraced that faith and was the leading spirit in organizing its congre- gation in Granville, naturally had its weight with the son. The services held in his father's house, the books that came under his notice, the intercourse with Episcopal clergj^men who offi- ciated occasionally in the village, all these as- sociations molded his opinions and prepared his mind gradually and almost insensibly for the full acceptance of the new faith. More- 111 112 A LOYAL LIFE over, the transition was by no means violent; for the prevalent character of Episcopalianism differed very little in matters of belief from the most decided Calvinism. The precise date of his confirmation and formal reception into the Episcopal Church cannot now be ascertained; but he was an adherent of that body in heart before he returned to Kenyon, and every day of his four years of college life strengthened him in his devotion to it. Mr. Richards' ''style of churchmanship" (a phrase which he considers allowable without discourtesy toward his old associates) was naturally the ''Extreme Low." If Episcopa- lian churchmen may be divided (we should not venture to use the classification were it not for the example of a respected minister among their own number), into "Low and lazy, Broad and hazy, High and crazy," Mr. Richards would fall into the first class, except for the laziness. He was always most energetic, ac- tive, and intensely in earnest in carrying his principles into practice, and most zealous in every religious work that came within his reach. Nor can it be said, we think, that in this spirit he was altogether exceptional among his Episcopalian brethren. No doubt many pastors and parishes in the East and South may have shared in the apathy and stagnation which in the Anglican body roused the in- ORDINATION— MARRIAGE 113 dignation of Froucle, Ward and Newman. But such men as Bishops Chase and Mcllvaine, however fundamentally mistaken in their be- liefs, were overflowing with zeal and energy, and were always ready to undertake heroic labors for the service of God, while at the same time striving to keep up habits of intense prayer. The new President of Kenyon had already acquired much of that distinction wliich made him not long afterward the ac- knowledged leader of the Low Church party in the United States, a position which he filled with vigor and distinction to the day of his death. Low churchmen, such as he, professed to hold strictly evangelical views and were ardent advocates of the doctrines of the Ref- ormation. In other words, they held Calvin- istic principles of total depravity, conversion, justification by faith only, «fec. That which dis- tinguished them from their brethren of other denominations was their belief in the Apostolic Succession and the threefold Order of the Ministry, Bishops, Priests and Deacons. If it be asked how even Low Churchmen could hold to the Apostolic constitution of the Anglican Ministry, and yet recognize the validity and lawfulness of the ministrations of clergymen of other denominations, Mr. Richards attributes it to the same practical inconsistency with which the numerous sects into which Protes- 114 A LOYAL LIFE tantism is divided hold to essentially contra- dictory beliefs in the most fundamentally im- portant matters and at the same time recognize one another as brethren in the household of faith. He remarks it as a curious fact, throw- ing a strong light upon the thoroughly illogical and confused state of the Protestant mind, that these Low Church Evangelical members of the Episcopalian body, while claiming brotherhood with the other Protestant sects of the Refor- mation and insisting upon the privilege of fraternizing with them even to the extent of joining in the same religious worship and some- times exchanging pulpits, yet advocated most strenuously the distinguishing principles al- luded to, the Apostolic constitution and suc- cession of the threefold order of the ministry. This, as was very natural, gave them a double character in the eyes of those outside their own pale. So long as they confined themselves to the more common doctrines of the Reforma- tion, there was no objection; but the moment they began to insist upon the authority of their bishops and the Apostolic Succession, they were classed with the Romanizing party in the church. "I remember" goes on Mr. Rich- ards, ''that not long after our new Bishop came into the diocese, he felt constrained by the wild vagaries and religious excesses of the revival- ists who at that time, as he said, were sweep- ORDINATION— MARRIAGE 115 ing over the fair face of God's heritage as a desolating fire, destroying all true spiritual life and verdure in its way, to preach a sermon on the 'Order' of the Church and the necessity of keeping uip the fences and adhering to the old landmarks. It was a very well written dis- course, presenting his subject in a strong and attractive light. It made a powerful impres- sion and was extensively quoted on the one hand with approval by the High Churchmen, who maintained that he had become one of themselves without knowing it, and on the other with condemnation by his brethren of other de- nominations, who accused him of abandoning his Low Church ground. There is really noth- ing more astonishing and unaccountable than the fact that so many otherwise sensible and good men remain all their lives in a position so thoroughly illogical and contradictory as that, I may well say, not merely of Low Churchmen, but of Protestants of every name. They all hold to some truths, some more, some less, but they are all compelled, by the very necessity of their position, to hold other views entirely in- consistent and contradictory to the former. I think I may say with truth that I was never satisfied with an illogical position. I always had a decided tendency to develop principles to their legitimate consequences." ■TheologjM" writes he with some feeling, Ul 116 A LOYAL LIFE ''"What do Protestants know of the wonderful science of TheologjM Dr. Sparrow was the only man who in a theological point of view redeemed our institution from contempt. He was really an able man and had given the sub- ject of systematic theology considerable atten- tion. That is, he had read most of the Prot- estant writers on the subject and constructed a system for himself. This was contained in a manuscript book of questions, with refer- ences, which we all copied and thought very wonderful. Of course he was his own final au- tliority in the decision of important theological questions, though he referred to the leading Protestant writers, taking the German Dr. Dick's work for his principal gniide and text- book. What else can any Protestant professor do! And what can theological students among Protestants do but take their professor for a guide (if he inspire confidence enough), and pin their faith to his sleeve, or else assume to judge for themselves between the various opinions of conflicting autliorities, each man thus becoming his own guide, his own supreme authority? True, in matters of opinion, Catho- lics do the same, except that generally, in points where differences of opinion are tolerated, they decide according to the weight of authorities. But the grand difference between Catholics and Protestants is this, that the former have an ORDINATION— MAERIAGE 117 infallible guide, who decides matters of faith and morals, so that they possess a body of fixed law, a system composed of ruled cases, which all are obliged to accept. To the Protes- tant, on the other hand, everything is a matter of opinion; there is no dogma in the proper sense of that word. The consequence is that the theological student who undertakes to think for himself, who is not content to remain in leading strings, is necessarily cast loose on a wild sea of doubt and uncertainty. ''But we were quite content to jog along in humble obedience to our teacher, reserving any cases upon which we were not quite satisfied for future more thorough investigation. As for the rest of our course, I must confess to the greatest astonishment in looking back at the entirely unsatisfactory, imperfect and even ephemeral nature of our instruction ! The Rev. Dr. Joseph Muenscher was Professor of Hebrew and Hermeneutics. He was hauled up, as we used to say, for German rationalistic views. Professor Marcus Tullius Cicero Wing had the chair of Ecclesiastical History. I do not remember that he ever gave a fact or a comment outside of the text of Mosheim. The Bishop — I forget the title of his chair, but I remember very well the nature of his instruc- tions. He had w^ritten two books called forth by the Oxford Controversy, one large, the other 118 A LOYAL LIFE small. The former was a large octavo entitled Oxford Divinity, and designed to show that that Divinity tended to Eome. The latter, a small duodecimo, was on the subject of Justi- fication hy Faith Only. These two ephemeral controversial works were made our textbooks in our recitations to the Bisho])! "I must not neglect to state that there were two textbooks referred to in our course from which I got some Catliolic ideas, though I am not sure that I saw them in that light until after I had finished my theological course. I mean Pierson on the Creed and Barrow on the Pope's Supremacy. Pierson has a considerable amount of sound divinity in his treatise. Among other things, he uses very strong lan- guage in regard to the degree of honor proper to bo paid to the Blessed Virgin — 'Only less than that which is paid to Almighty God,' or words to that effect. Barrow first gave me the idea that St. Peter was the head of the College of the Apostles and the numerous evidences from Scripture of his being first and foremost, in fact that he had a primacy, if not a suprem- acy, in the government of the early Church. Yet, strange to say, that very author tries to prove, what has so often been attempted since his day, that it is not at all certain that Peter ever was in Eome! *'The fact is, our professors all, from the ORDINATION— MAREIAGE 119 Bishop down, seemed to attach more impor- tance to 'views,' or what may be called the 'com- plexion' of our theological teaching, than to any- consistent, compact, unique system of dogma. So that we were all right on justification by faith and generally on the so-called evangelical views of depravity, conversion and religious experience, we were considered quite safe, and they seemed to think all other things necessary would be added to us. I had adopted the views thoroughly. I had learned them not only the- oretically, but experimentally and practically. I was consequently a great favorite with the Bishop. I think he was delighted with the first sermon I ever wrote. It was on the text (such a favorite with the evangelicals), 'God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' It was so thoroughly — I might perhaps say so hyper-evangelical that even the good Bishop had to modify and tone it down a little, at least in some few expres- sions." After Mr. Richards had continued his studies for some time, he was licensed by Bishop Mc- Ilvaine as a lay reader to officiate in neighbor- ing parishes. Instead, however, of indicating to him some book of sermons to be read to the congregation, as was and is still the custom in the Episcopalian Church, lay readers being pro- hibited from venturing on sermons of their 120 A LOYAL LIFE own, tlie Bishop read over Mr. Richards' com- positions, approved of them and recommended him to read them to the people. This excep- tional proof of confidence was supplemented by every other mark of favor, which continued until Mr. Richards, as an ordained minister and pastor, began thinking for himself and showed a leaning toward High Church doctrines and practices. As often happens, Mr. Richards' mind was quickened in its interest in living religious questions and its grasp of the principles in- volved more by discussions among the students themselves than by the instruction of his pro- fessors. He records that among the theological stu- dents there were two of decidedly High Church proclivities. One, whose name has not been re- called, came from New York. He was a very excellent young man, very intelligent, very sin- cere, quiet and retiring in his habits. He al- ways insisted, in opposition to his Low Church friends, that no incompatibility existed between High Church principles and truly evangelical views of religious life and experience. He was himself in fact, as Mr. Richards testifies, a good example of his own principles, for he was truly devout and conscientious. He was looked upon, however, with a certain degree of pity that so good a man should be deluded with false prin- OEDINATION— MARRIAGE 121 ciples. He was accustomed to read the New York Churchman, at that time conducted by Dr. Seabury, the coryphaeus of the High Church party. By the body of the students and the professors the Churchman was looked upon as only the more dangerous for being so ably con- ducted. This young man died at Gambler be- fore finishing his course. As an evidence that his principles would not stand the test of the deathbed, it was whispered about that some days before his end he requested a file of the obnoxious paper, which hung at the foot of his bed, to be removed out of his sight. The other student who was sufficiently advanced to ad- vocate Tractarian doctrines in this stronghold of old-fashioned Protestantism was Joseph S. Large, a young man of fine talents, and an able disputant. He found a foeman though not al- together worthy of his steel, yet able enough to worry him with the inconsistencies of the High Church system, in Robert Elder, a par- ticular friend of Henry Richards, and after- ward Rector of the church in Worthington. The discussions between Large and Elder were frequent, prolonged and animated, sometimes to great heat. Large was the more learned and more acute of the two and often got the better of his opponent. But the latter learned by ex- perience the weak points in his antagonist's armor, and in answer to the charge that his 122 A LOYAL LIFE principles tended to sectarianism, and finally to scepticism and infidelity, he threw back upon him the no less terrible accusation of a tendency to Eomanism. These two were one year in advance of their friend Eichards in the course. It was impos- sible for him to listen to such discussions with- out acquiring new points of view and receiving seeds of thought which in later years and under favorable circumstances would be sure to ger- minate and bring forth fruit. The point most fiercely contested by the theological athletes was Baptismal Regenera- tion. Henry Richards soon came to recognize this as a fundamental question, on the answer to which one's whole theory of Christianity must rest. It will therefore be worth while to copy his acute and solid remarks on it. "That is undoubtedly a test principle," he says, ''as the question lies between a 'Corporate Chris- tianity,' involving a settled, fixed, authorita- tive organization, designed to impart the new life of Faith to those who shall be incorporated into the system, and, on the other hand, the idea of a voluntary agglomeration of separate individuals who have received their life from previous direct contact with the Spirit inde- pendently of church organization, and to whom church organization is rather a matter of con- venient arrangement than of imjoerative obliga- ORDINATION— MARRIAGE 123 tion. In this view, the life of the organization, instead of being the fountain and source from which individuals derive their life, ... is rather the aggregate of the life contributed by the individuals composing the voluntary as- sociation, and possessed by them independently of it. Here the individual is everything, the organization nothing, or at least of secondary importance. The right of (unlimited) private judgment is a cardinal principle in the system, and it makes a man his own guide, his own law, and finally his own God and Master. ''Baptismal regeneration implies a divine ejfficacy attached to a sacrament instituted by Almighty God for the special purpose of im- parting the divine life which was lost by the fall. It implies a system, an organization, a divine arrangement for nourishing and carry- ing on this divine life to its completion. It implies a hierarchy, a teaching and governing body, a settled, fixed body of dogma, in short all that is included in the Catholic sys- tem. These ideas began to dawn upon me as the result of these discussions in the Seminary ; the seeds were planted, though I fear the soil was too unpropitious, too preoccupied, to allow of any sudden or very rapid growth. ' ' The first article published to the world from Mr. Richards' pen was an essay on preaching, written during his theological course. It was 124 A LOYAL LIFE an exercise in the class of Sacred Eloquence, presided over by tlie Rev. Dr. C. Colton, brother-in-law of Bishop Mcllvaine. This professor was also editor of the Gambler Ob- server, and he complimented the young stu- dent by requesting permission to print so ex- cellent a production in his paper. During his seminary course, Mr. Richards kept up a correspondence with his brother William, who had entered the Law School of Yale University. AVilliam Richards was a man of great ability, with a strong taste for philo- sophical and political speculation. The letters between the two continued to be frequent in later life, covering a period of fifty years. In them, besides personal and family matters, cur- rent questions of j^olitics, philosophy, and re- ligion are discussed with great interest. As the brothers came to be on opposite sides in politics while closely united in religion and in the bonds of a most tender affection, the corre- spondence becomes at times animated. Could it be published in full, it would afford a cu- rious panorama of the progress of events in the United States as seen day by day by actual ob- servers. Another correspondence, certainly no less in- teresting and encouraging to the young semi- narian at this period, was that which he carried on with the young lady to whom he was en- ORDINATION— MARRIAGE 125 gaged. A passage in one of her letters has a curious interest in reference to clerical celibacy : ''Last Sunday, Mr. Lacock, assistant minister of Bishop Otey, preached for us. ... I was somewhat amused with some of his remarks. He and Mr. Helfenstein were speaking of the hardships of ministers in the West. Mr. L. said : ' Oh, it is nothing for them ! It is their families. Indeed it is a very great inconven- ience for a Western clergyman to have a wife. I believe we shall be obliged to adopt the creed of the Roman Priests and live in a state of celibacy!' "I think all would not agree with him. Think you they would? I am half inclined to think we should find fewer willing to endure the privations of the West, if they were obliged to go alone. Would not their situation be far more unpleasant without the company, the as- sistance and the attention of an affectionate companion? So it seems to me." In looking forward to matrimony at no dis- tant date after ordination, Mr. Richards was not alone among his fellow-students. There was a favorite saying current in those days among Episcopalians, attributed to the vener- able Bishop Moore of New York, to the effect that the first thing a young clergj^man does after getting his go^vn is to secure a petti- 126 A LOYAL LIFE coat. ''Truth compels me to acknowledge that there was no subject in the whole range of theology that was discussed with so much zest by our seminarians as that same petticoat, involving, as it usually did, vis- ions of 'love in a cottage,' that cottage a parsonage, with a beautiful church, a nice con- gregation, a comfortable salary and all the et ceteras of a respectable position." To the anxiety for a respectable and comfortable position, Mr. Richards was not subject. He understood far better the true ecclesiastical spirit, and he was already anxious to spend himself and be spent for his brethren in Christ. Mr. Richards is of course far from blaming his companions or himself for matrimonial as- pirations, considering the circumstances of their position and that of every Protestant min- ister. But he remarks that his purpose is to point out to his children the contrast between theological education, as it exists in the semi- naries of the Catholic Church and the novitiates of her religious orders, and that of theological schools of the Protestant sects. The latter are on a lower spiritual plane. The Reformation, he declares, originated in an uxorious disposi- tion. Luther married a nun and set an example to all his followers. Henry TOI apostatized and caused the Church in England to cut itself off from the Head, because that Head w^ould not ORDINATION— MAEBIAGE 127 allow him full liberty to marry as many wives as lie liked. The fittest tools he called around him to aid in his nefarious work were such men as the "illustrious" Cranmer, who married secretly (if indeed he married at all) and lived in constant violation of his vow of chastity, while continuing to officiate as a priest of the Catholic Church. The priests who apostatize and become the weeds which are ''thrown over the walls of the Pope's garden," are generally those who through temptation have fallen from virtue. It is a remarkable fact, he adds, that when a young Episcopal clergjanan is dis- covered to have a decided leaning towards Rome, the knowing ones among the older clergy make haste to get him married, knowing there is no more effectual way of extinguishing all such dangerous aspirations. Mr. Richards' manuscript notes contain an account of that most extraordinary political agitation preceding the Presidential election of 1840, which placed General William Henry Harrison in the executive chair of the United States. Although not connected in any way with his religious history, his graphic descrip- tions are no doubt of sufficient interest, as pic- tures of the times, to find a place here. It is said that then for the first time in this country political processions and mass meetings came into vogue as part of the machinery of the can- 128 A LOYAL LIFE vass. This was called the "Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign," and its war cry was "Tippecanoe, and Tyler too!" As it had been said of General Harrison in depreciation that he had lived in a log cabin with nothing to drink but hard cider, his friends turned these features to his advantage. The General's brilliant vic- tory at Tippecanoe, Indiana, over the Indian tribes under the famous chieftain Tecumseh, and his successes against the British in Canada in the war of 1812, had given him an immense popularity with his countrjinen, a popularity which his affable manners and his simplicity in retiring, like Cincinnatus, to his farm had done much to strengthen. Dissatisfaction with the administration of President Van Buren ran high, and the result was a wave of popular ex- citement and enthusiasm until then unknown in the country. Mr. Eichards descril^es a great meeting at Chillicothe in which he took part. The Hero of Tippecanoe was to appear and make a speech to the as- sembled thousands of his countrjTQen. The houses of the citizens were thrown open, long tables were set and kept constantly sup- plied with provisions. Although the campaign was then, according to Mr. Richards' recollec- tion, just beginning, some fifty thousand non- residents must have been in the little city that day. As time went on, the excitement grew ORDINATION— MARRIAGE 129 until the whole community seemed to be seized with an extraordinary rage for demonstrating in favor of the military hero and plain farmer. Log cabins abounded and became a prominent feature of the contest. They were built for halls and clubrooms, they were made in minia- ture and worn as ornaments. They were drawn in procession by endless trains of oxen to mass meetings and conventions. The procession of the Granville voters who attended the conven- tion at Newark made a particularly vivid im- pression on the young clergyman's imagina- tion. They had a cabin large enough for a small family, with all its furnishings. This was drawn by a long procession of oxen, driven by the venerable deacons and the most sober, conservative sages of the town, all in smocks and frocks, wielding long whips and shouting excitedly at the top of their voices, while hard cider was lavishly dispensed from barrels in the cabin. During that campaign, two noted char- acters, Tom Corwin, the Wagon Boy, as he was familiarly called, and Tow Ewing, the Salt Boiler, were at the zenith of their power and popularity as public speakers. They were pres- ent on the occasion alluded to. It is sometimes difficult for us to judge of the merit of orators of former times. Would the estimate of their contemporaries be ratified by that of our own more cultivated taste? After many years of 130 A LOYAL LIFE experience and observation, Mr. Eichards gives it as his judgment that these two men were really speakers of exceptional power, each in his own way. Corwin he describes as a com- bination of Cicero and Chrysostom. His eloquence was truly golden-mouthed. His style was polished and sparkling with wit and humor, his figure was commanding and his action graceful, while the power of expression in his mobile face was wonderful. Altogether Mr. Richards declares that he has never listened to any other who impressed him so strongly as an orator. The eloquence of Ewing was of a different order, but very effective. It was not so ornate and pleasing, but more labored, more logical, with more of sledge hammer strength. The speaker was by no means so graceful as Cor- win ; indeed he was rather awkward in manner, of large frame and rather fleshy. In his de- livery he labored like a man mauling rails. But his logic and earnestness carried all before them. Mr. Richards remarks reflectively upon the widely different end of these two eminent Americans. Corwin, from the time he accepted the post of Secretary of the Treasury, for which he was not at all fitted and in which he was charged, whether truly or falsely, with transactions which would not bear the light, ORDINATION— MAERIAGE 131 seemed to go down in public estimation until he died almost unlionored and unsung. ''Thomas Ewing was always the high-toned, honorable man. He had the inestimable ad- vantage of having a good Catholic wife and Catholic children trained by her in the old paths, who prayed for their father and husband. He lived to an advanced age. . . . God gave him time for reflection, and at last he sent for his good friend, the Archbishop of Cincinnati, (Purcell) and made his submission to Holy Church. ' ' It may be remarked here of General Ewing 's numerous descendants, that they have proved the champions of Catholicity, not only in word but by their devout lives, in many States of the Union. Foremost among these have been his daughter, wife of General Wil- liam Tecumseh Sherman, and her children. Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, two other leading politicians of the period, are spoken of with great respect by Mr. Richards as thoroughly honorable men who served their country faithfully and well. Though by no means distinguished for piety during the active portion of their careers, they both had the grace to make a professedly Christian death. This is no doubt as good a place as any to introduce Mr. Richards' recollections of another distinguished public man, with whom he was 132 A LOYAL LIFE for a number of years on terms of friendship, Justice Salmon P. Chase. As a young student, Mr. Chase lived for some time in the family of Mrs. Cowles at Worthington. When Mr. Rich- ards was officiating as Pastor of St. Paul's Church in Columbus, Mr. Chase was living in Cincinnati and gradually acquiring there the reputation that afterwards carried him into the Governor's chair of the State and later into the Cabinet of President Lincoln during the Civil War, resulting ultimately in his promotion to the position of Chief Justice on the Supreme Bench. Whenever he came to Columbus, as not infrequently happened, Mr. Chase attended the church of his old friend, for whom he pro- fessed a warm personal regard, and whose preaching seemed to be entirely to his taste. The two men were in many respects opposed to each other. Chase being very Low Church in reli- gion and radical in politics, while Richards, at all times very conservative in his political con- victions, had at this time become High Church in religion. Still they found points of contact and sjTupathy which brought them together on terms of mutual admiration. "He was in some respects," writes Mr. Richards, ''a truly great man ; but he had his weak points. He was too ambitious to be satisfied with simply doing his duty to his country for duty and for conscience' sake. He is thought by those who knew him ORDINATION— MAEEIAGE 133 intimately to have early fixed his eye on the Presidency and he never ceased to strive for the goal to the day of his death. . . . Like most of our distinguished men, he either never gave his special attention to the great questions of religion, or if he did bestow on them more or less attention, it was of a superficial, desultory character, which resulted in the adoption of crude and unsatisfactory views. He professed to be a member of the Episcopal Church, but I think he had more sympathy with some of the denominations which showed more life and zeal and more sympathy with the masses. He saw some of the good points of the Catholic Church; and if he had given his attention to the subject would no doubt have adopted Catho- lic principles, as furnishing just what he was longing for, a reconciliation of order and liberty, a sympathy with the masses and a ten- der care for the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden on the part of the rich and pros- perous. It is melancholy to observe how slightly the great men of the country, especially the politicians, pass over the greatest of all questions, those which pertain to the life to come. ' ' The ordination of Mr. Richards as a Minis- ter of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, took place sometime in the spring of 134 A LOYAL LIFE 1842. He was dispensed from a portion of the theological course, which then embraced three years. Had he gained any idea of the true science of theology, as he remarks, he would have been unwilling to accept any such dispensa- tion. But his excellence as a student, together with his high jDersonal character, active zeal and profound piety, made his Superiors quite ready to advance him to orders before the ex- piration of the regular period. Moreover, they considered his ''views" eminently sound, some- thing which in their estimation was of more im- portance than profound attainments in the "dry technicalities of dogmatic theology." He con- jectures too that a kindly desire to hasten his marriage and thus contribute to the happiness of two congenial souls had some share in limit- ing the duration of his studies. The ceremony of ordination was performed by Bishop Mc- Ilvaine in the little Episcopal church at Gran- ville, of which Henry's father was the founder and Senior Warden. His first sermon in public was preached inmiediately after ordination. He was disappointed in his own effort and be- lieved he would have done much better to de- liver the first sermon he had ever written, which had been so highly recommended by his Bishop. This he did give, some time after, in Trinity Church, Columbus, with great effect. The Trinity congregation was very Low Church, and ORDINATION— MARKIAGE 135 exiat particular sermon suited their views per- fectly. The new clergj^man had his work already marked out for him. As soon as his engage- ment to Miss Cowles had become known, friends of both families living in Columbus had deter- mined that he should go to that capital and take charge of the new missionary church of St. Paul which had been commenced in the lower part of the city. This was an offshoot from the older parish of the Holy Trinity, and was situated on the corner of Third and Mound Streets. While still in Deacon's orders, Mr. Richards was elected its first Rector. Preparations were on foot for an elaborate wedding, an object no doubt of very special in- terest not only to the numerous relatives and friends, but also to all devout adherents of the church, when an event occurred that disar- ranged all plans and led to a marriage more hasty and far less joyous than had been con- templated. Mr. Cowles, the father of Miss Cynthia, fell dangerously ill at his home in Wor- thingtou, and as it became plain to himself as well as others that his end was at hand, he de- sired to see his oldest and favorite daughter married before his death. The wedding was performed on the first day of May, at the bed- side of the dying man. Robert Elder, the warm college friend of Mr. Richards, and then Rector 136 A LOYAL LIFE of the church in Worthington, officiated. It was a sad and solemn scene, attended rather by sobs and tears than rejoicing. But it was not ominous of a sad future ; for no marriage was ever blessed in after life with greater happiness and more perfect unity of minds and hearts. "When it was over, Mr. Cowles fell back upon his pillow with an expression of great satisfaction, and not long after breathed his last. Mrs. Eichards was the second of twelve children of Rensselaer Watson Cowles and his wife, Laura Kilbourne. The Cowles family, identical originally with the branch spelling the name Coles, are first found in this country at New Britain, Conn., where several members were active in the cause of the Colonies during the Revolutionary War. The grandfather of Cynthia, the Rev. Whitfield Cowles, was a Pres- byterian Minister of East Granby, Connecticut. He married Gloriana Havens of Shelter Island, a marriage which brought him into relationship with the Nicoll and Van Rensselaer families. His son, Rensselaer Watson Cowles, emigrated to Worthington, Ohio, in 1814 and there mar- ried Laura Kilbourne. On the mother's side, Cynthia was the granddaughter of James Kil- bourne, one of the most active, successful and universally respected men in the early history of the West. He was successively or simul- taneously, farmer, merchant and mill-owner, ORDINATION— MAERIAGE 137 cloth manufacturer, minister of the Episcopal Church, explorer, United States surveyor, founder of the town of Worthington and of Sandusky City, Civil Magistrate, Colonel of Militia, member of the Legislature and of Con- gress, and President of the Corporation of Worthington College. The compiler of the Kilbourne genealogy gives the following incident in the life of James Kilbourne, throwing a curious light on the early history of that protective policy in regard to the customs tariff which has been so important a feature of American politics in recent years : ^' About the commencement of the last war with Great Britain (1812), it being extensively known that he had a knowledge of manufactur- ing and some spare capital, he was requested by his friends in New York, and urged by the President and his Cabinet and members of Congress, to embark in the manufacture of woolen goods for clothing the Army and Navy. He well remembered the total ruin of all who were engaged in similar enterprises during the war of the Revolution ; still the promises were now so fair, and the non-protectionists admit- ting their errors and agreeing to change their policy, he was induced to join a company for that purpose, in which he invested ten thousand dollars, and incurred liabilities to the amount of fifty-seven thousand more. He prosecuted 138 A LOYAL LIFE his new enterprise with his accustomed energy, and during the continuance of the war accom- plished much. Peace came in 1815, but with it no protection of woolens. He sustained the whole establishment with immense losses, until 1820, when, all hope from government failing, the factories at Worthington and Steubenville were crushed." Colonel Kilbourne's first wife, the grand- mother of Cynthia Cowles, was Lucy Fitch, the only daughter of John Fitch, inventor and builder of the first steamboat in America. CHAPTEE A^II THE MINISTRY HIGH CHUECH TENDENCIES THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN HIGH AND LOW CHURCH PARTIES CONVENTION OP 1844 REBAPTISM Arriving in Columbus to take charge of the new parish that he was expected to build up, the Reverend Mr. Richards found only the base- ment of the little church in existence ; but it was roofed over, and equipped for services. On the first day of December, 1842, the parish was formally organized according to the rules of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, with twenty-one communicants. The Sunday School numbered fifty scholars. Mr. Richards held the first full and regular services on the first Sun- day of Advent of that year. The young couple took up their quarters for a time at the house of an aunt of the bride, named Harriet Buttles. The two families to which the organization of the new mission was chiefly due were those of Aurora Buttles and Isaac N. Whiting, two gentlemen who had married sisters, Harriet and Orrel Kilbourne. They were grave, conscientious men, each after his own manner, highly respectable and of great 139 140 A LOYAL LIFE weight in the community. ' ' Aunt Buttles ' ' was a woman of remarkable ability, very sound in her views, as soundness was then estimated, and with an unusual facility of explaining and ad- vocating her convictions. She possessed a mas- culine mind with feminine tenderness ; she was well balanced and very wise and prudent. *'Aunt AMiiting" was equally large hearted, but not so staid and conservative as her elder sister. She was enthusiastic, excitable, and impulsive, but capable of great and sustained labor in any good cause. She entered heartily into all plans of parish effort and enterprise, was fertile in expedients, and supplied abun- dant enthusiasm to inspire the most languid workers and to surmount the most formidable obstacles. So great was her ascendancy that the church was sometimes facetiously known as St. Orrell's. The two families were influential, and around them gathered a few other people of standing. Tliey gave tone to the congrega- tion and settled the shade of teaching and ritual which would prove acceptable. As it happened, the preference of these families, in contrast with the great majority of the Trinity congregation, was for the High Church variety, though it was too early as yet for the extremely advanced practices that afterward became com- mon. One chief motive for the foundation of the new mission was to preach the gospel ac- THE MINISTRY 141 cording to the Episcopal doctrine as understood by high churchmen to the poor of the lower dis- trict of the city. It was no doubt due in part to this intention that from the beginning it was stipulated by the founders that the church should be free, i, e., that no charge should be made for sittings. To spiritual work for the poor, Mr. Richards was by nature particularly well adapted. Him- self endowed with an unaffected dignity and refinement of manner and a bright, kindly, good humor that made him the centre of every gathering at which he was present, he was yet extremely democratic in his views and sym- pathies. Never throughout life did he show the slightest trace of social ambition or of that esteem for mere wealth that infests so much of modern society. Not only did he sympathize keenly with the poor in their sufferings and trials, but in his dealings with them there was no element of condescension or patronage. They were his equals, his suffering brothers in Christ, and he felt it to be a privilege as well as his plain duty to spend himself and be spent in their service. With his active, energetic nature and his intense piety, born of his strict religious training and his practice of frequent and fervent prayer, it may easily be imagined that he threw himself into the duties of his new position with the most ardent zeal and enthusi- 142 A LOYAL LIFE asm. In one instance, liis zeal in the service of the poor may perhaps be judged to have been excessive. There were a few respectable persons of this class in the limits of the parish, among whom, as Mr. Eichards remarks, a cer- tain Mrs. Morningstar shone resplendent. Her memory constituted a bright spot in his recollections throughout life. She was a widow with one son, a mere boy, and quite without means of support. To this dear and gentle old lady someone had given a load of slabs, the refuse of the sawmill, to be used as fire- wood. But there was no one to saw them to proper lengths for use; so the minister shoul- dered his saw and buck, marched to her little house, and performed the laborious task. In this there was not only no ostentation, but he was not even conscious of making an act of ex- traordinary mortification or self-conquest. He simply saw that the poor woman needed the work done and that there was no one to do it but himself, and to him it seemed natural and proper that he should undertake it. This was by no means the only occasion on which he showed himself singularly free from human respect. But the same view of their minister's action seems not to have been taken by all his parishioners. Unfavorable remarks were made; and Mr. Eichards was led to think that it might perhaps have been wiser, on the whole. THE MINISTRY 143 to hire a man, even from his scanty salary, to do the work. He soon learned a discouraging lesson as to the adaptability of the Episcopa- lian system to the needs of the poor. In his work among the humbler classes, Mr. Richards met with a number of Catholic fami- lies, and in the first fervor of his zeal, en- deavored to pervert them. But he met only cold rebuffs. Not only did his reasonings fail to convince any of them that they should attend his church, but he soon found that even the children, particularly some of those of German parentage, with their knowledge of the Catholic catechism, were better theologians than he, though he had spent several years in the study of what was ostensibly theology and in prepa- ration for the work of the ministry. The task of building up the new parish met with many discouragements, and progress was slower than the ardent young Rector had hoped. By the aid of fairs, subscriptions, and strenuous etforts of various kinds, he succeeded, by the year 1845, in completing the upper portion of the church, a fact which he reported to the Con- vention of that year with the expression of a hope that it might soon be consecrated as a free church to the worship of Almighty God. The structure was of brick, in a simple but dignified Gothic style, and was capable of ac- commodating some two hundred and fifty per- 144 A LOYAL LIFE sous. The congregation, though made up of very heterogeneous elements, was singularly united and harmonious, owing no doubt in great measure to the enthusiasm and unselfish devotion of their young Rector. He visited both rich and i)Oor at their houses ; talked with them earnestly on religious subjects, explained to them his views and endeavored in every way to influence their minds and hearts. In return, they loved and respected him sincerely. In spite of the gradual change that took place from this time forward in his views, the members of his flock in general placed the utmost confidence in their pastor and pinned their faith very much to liis sleeve, at least for the time. "And here," he writes, " I cannot refrain from an expression of astonishment at the temerity with which I undertook the serious and awful responsibility of directing souls and educating them for eternity with the crude, half-fledged notions in which I had been educated. I was zealous, earnest, and in a manner pious. I had what were called clear views and positive no- tions, such as were prevalent and as constituted the shibboleths of the school of churchman ship in which I had been trained. But as to any comprehensive knowledge of theology, as a beautiful and glorious system, unique, harmoni- ous, consistent with itself, especially of what is called Moral Theologj^ including Casuistry, THE MINISTRY 145 such as I have since discovered in the Catholic Church, I really had no conception." In an- other place he writes: ^'I felt very sensibly, as a result of my parish labors among the peo- ple, the necessity of something like Confession in order to complete success in the work of my ministry. There were members of my flock whom I knew to have peculiar trials ; there were conscientious women who were trying to lead good and pious lives in the midst of obstacles, temptations and peculiar difficulties. These I felt certain I could relieve, if I could only get them to open their hearts to me. The questions involved were often of a delicate nature, and such as the persons shrank from making known. I saw that they were worried, that they longed for advice and comfort and direction ; but there was an impassable barrier between us. They had to bear their burden alone and weep in silence and in solitude over evils for which they could find no cure. What a merciful provision is Confession in Holy Church! How utterly impossible it is for Christian people to direct themselves, to enjoy spiritual comfort and con- solation, and to attain to any degree of real sanctity without the spiritual direction which the Church so beautifully and so compassion- ately furnishes in the holy tribunal of Pen- ance ! ' ' Among the duties of the young minister, that 146 A LOYAL LIFE of preaching held of course an important, per- haps the most important, place. In this Mr. Richards had excelled from his student days. It was then an almost universal custom for preachers not only to write their sermons care- fully but to read them from the manuscript. The effect was oftentimes most dreary. Mr. Richards followed the custom so far as the care- ful preparation was concerned; but he made himself so familiar with his composition that his delivery was free and unrestrained. Some of his sermons were left purposely unfinished, in order that he might add extempore exhorta- tions and applications. His great earnestness and ardor of character, with his intense realiza- tion of spiritual truths and needs, gave vigor and effectiveness to all that he said; while his pleasant and flexible voice, endowed with a peculiar sweetness and sympathy and a consid- erable range of tone, and his action, which, if not always entirely graceful, was natural and earnest, combined to produce a deep impression and to stir the hearts of his audience and sway their wills as he pleased. Mr. Richards' repu- tation as a preacher increased steadily; and even at the time of his conversion, when he be- came the mark for much hostile criticism and some abuse from his old friends and associates, all his critics seem to have borne testimony to his remarkable talents in this direction. It THE MINISTRY 147 was intimated to him that the church of St. Paul in Cincinnati, then very flourishing and aristo- cratic and of High Church complexion, was pre- pared to give him a call. But any such change, had he contemplated it, was effectually pre- vented by a cause that had already proved a serious drawback to many of his undertakings and which was destined to exercise a still more important influence on his life. This was an obstinate chronic dyspepsia from which he had suffered more or less continuously from youth, and which at times produced a very depressing effect upon his mind and feelings. His ill health ultimately led, as we shall see in the sequel, to his resigning his charge and seeking restoration in a more favorable climate, and thus was indirectly a powerful agent in leading him to the Catholic Church. Mr. Richards' estimate of his own powers as a preacher was very modest, and his account of his methods and difficulties in the composition of his discourses is interesting enough to jus- tify transcription: ''I never could force my- self to write, and I had not the gift of extempore speaking sufficiently to enable me to preach ac- ceptably without writing. I never had the faculty which some men have of sitting down and deliberately planning a discourse and then going to work and elaborating the various heads, like the poor Israelites, who had to pro- 148 A LOYAL LIFE duce their tale of brick whether they had straw or not. I wrote rather from impulse and under an afflatus. When I was in good spirits, my mind was free and active, and I wrote with facility and with considerable vigor. My ideas flowed freel}^, indeed faster than I could record them, I threw my whole soul into the task, and generally my only safety was to write while the inspiration was on and finish up the work in hand. But dyspepsia and consequent depres- sion, stagnation and aridity were the general nile, and the consequence was my sermons were unequal, and generally, I fear, poor specimens of either literary or theological culture. I think they were only redeemed from unmitigated mediocrity by the zeal and earnestness with which they were delivered and the extempore exhortations and personal applications with which they were sometimes finished. I some- times laugh now to think how as Sunday approached without the favor of that happy concurrence of circumstances necessary to the inspiration, I used to tremble at the prospect of being compelled to appear before my congrega- tion with a crude preparation as unsatisfactory and even mortifying to myself as it would be unwelcome to them. It was 'pump or drown,' as Brother Elder used to say; and so I would sit down with pen in hand and paper before me. I would write my text in clear and bold lines, THE MINISTRY 149 and tlien I would dip my pen in ink and wait and think, and again dip my pen and keep up the thinking, waiting for the inspiration, till perhaps in desperation I would make the begin- ning with some conmionplace observation, and then stick fast in the slough of despond. It was no laughing matter then! But when the inspiration came, oh, how swimmingly we did get on! We were wafted before the gentle breeze, the mind expanded, thought flowed freely, I became identified with my subject, apt illustrations flashed upon my mind, new and curious phases of thought were suggested, the whole theme seemed so mapped out and com- pletely at command that I was surprised at myself, and wondered why it should ever be a task to write." Shortly after the commencement of his labors in Columbus, began that change and upward tendency in Mr. Richards' convictions which ultimately led him into the bosom of the Catho- lic Church. At first he found himself in the embarrassing position of a Low Church minis- ter called upon to officiate for a High Church congregation. Moreover, he soon found that his sheep, or at least the bellwethers of the flock, were rather better informed on the intri- cate questions of sheepfolds and pathways than their young shepherd. Mr. Whiting was a bookseller, and kept for many years the largest 150 A LOYAL LIFE and best supplied establishment of this kind in Columbus. He was a constant reader and a very thoughtful and religious man. He there- fore naturally kept pace very closely with the progress of the Oxford Movement, and he placed in his pastor's hands every publication of interest and importance as it appeared. "My intellectual history from this time on," writes Mr. Richards, **is curious and interest- ing. I did not change my ^iews at once, but there was a silent and very effective influence, arising out of my new circumstances, always present and operating upon me. The effect was what might have been expected in a reflect- ing mind. No matter what phase of Protes- tantism you assume as a basis or starting pomt, there are always two tendencies operating upon different minds according to circumstances — one conservative, leading back to the old paths of the Catholic Cliurch, the other radical, lead- ing forward in the direction of scepticism and infidelity. There is no consistent half-way house, no logical standpoint between Catholicity and absolute infidelity. The good Providence of Almighty God (for which I shall ever have cause to j^raise and adore Him) placed me in a position where the bias of circum- stances led me in the back track to the good old paths. The process was the most gradual possible ; and it is deeply interesting THE MINISTRY 151 to me now, from my higli post of observa- tion, to contemplate, in the retrospection of the past, the clear and distinct manifesta- tions of the goodness of God in opening my mind to the truth, and gradually revealing to me the lineaments of that beautiful and glorious system, which, as time went on, became more and more clearly and distinctly mirrored to my consciousness in all its simple and consistent beauty and grandeur. I recall with wondering pleasure the peculiar sweetness with which I oftentimes sat down to write sermons upon cer- tain subjects which naturally suggested the sacramental system, and how, as I reflected and wrote, the dim shadow of the mighty figure seemed to float before my mind, prophetically revealing itself, lineament by lineament, until in time, with the opportunities of reading and reflection which naturally came in my way, I came to comprehend the system in its entirety as a unique and comprehensive and consistent whole. I commenced reading The Churchman, still under the editorial conduct of Dr. Seabury. This divine developed, to a certain point, strong and decided Catholic tendencies, following, as he did, the Oxford movement in England, and reproducing on this side of the ocean the reasonings and discussions which then agitated the established church." Having attained to a conviction of the super- 152 A LOYAL LIFE natural character of the Church, as an organ- ized body founded by Christ on the Apostles, commissioned by Him to teach all nations to the end of time and to fulfill His mission to men, possessing too in the sacraments the means of conferring grace, it was natural that Mr. Rich- ards' mind should advert to the necessity for Unity and Authority in the Church of Christ. "Starting," he writes, "with the doctrines of Apostolic Succession, Baptismal Regeneration, and generally the principles which characterized the sacramental system, the Tractarian leaders, about the time I am speaking of, had come to realize the importance of having some consistent and satisfactory theory of Unity. The prin- ciples of the Catholic Church are so simple, so natural, so easily proved both by reason and Scripture, and so evidently the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, that when one is started on the road of sincere and honest investigation, progress is not only easy but deeply interesting and delightful. On the supposition that you are really a Catholic (though in a Protestant sect), with no difficulties ab extra to be reconciled, a man with any logic at all, to say nothing of aesthetic taste or pious inclination, will naturally drink in the system as a thirsty man drinks in water. I remember with what satisfaction I wrote a sermon on Unity. "What strong ground I took! There could in the nature of THE MINISTRY 153 things be but one true Cliurcli; it would be an absurd contradiction to assert that our Lord established more than one body. And then how easily it was proved from Scripture and reason! There is 'one body and one Spirit,' &c. 'Be ye perfectly joined together in the same mind and the same judgment,' &c. 'Mark those who cause schisms among you and avoid them,' &c. I illustrated the absurdity of schismatics calling themselves the true Church by the case of the Masonic Fraternity, who con- stitute a compact body throughout the world, but who would not be likely to recognize a schism from their body, however respectable it might be, and however much of the spirit and teaching and ceremonial of the order it might retain. The schism might spread into all coun- tries and in some places it might almost super- sede the regular order, the mass of the people might be more acquainted with the schism than with the parent body. Their prejudices against the parent body might be so strong and they might be so accustomed to the assertion that it was corrupt and unworthy of confidence and that the schismatical body was the only true representative, the only real Masonic Frater- nity, that they would have no doubt of its genu- ineness. Yet it would be schismatical still. The old original Fraternity of Masons would not recognize the separatists, and they never 154 A LOYAL LIFE could have a legitimate title to be called Masons without abandoning their schism and connect- ing themselves formally with the original body." The only fair inference from this reasoning, in one occupying Mr. Richards' position, was that the Episcopal Church was the original and only Catholic Church. This, however, he did not venture to assert. He did what others at the time did and are still doing, he avoided the difficulty and slurred it over with some general remarks as to the misery and sin of schism and the duty and desirability of unity among all who call themselves Christians. Mr. Eichards' account of the mental process by which he and his fellow seekers after Catholic truth in the Protestant Episcopal haystack reconciled them- selves to their anomalous position is not unin- teresting. ''The Via Media theory, in its day, was very popular. Truth, they said, lay in a middle way between Romanism on the one hand and Sectarianism on the other. Indeed, I know of nothing in the whole histor}^ of literature more wonderful than the pertinacity with which the very able leaders of the Oxford Movement both in England and this country adhered to their illogical position, and the extraordinary ingenuity displayed in trjdng to reconcile them- selves to that position. The Thirty Nine Articles were the greatest difficulty. They, THE MINISTRY 155 if anything, must be taken as the true exponent of the (English) Reformation, that great move- ment by which the Anglican branch of the Church Catholic was severed from the Head and Centre of Unity. Strange to say, these men now advocated every doctrine that the Ar- ticles denounced. Tract Number Ninety, writ- ten by Dr. Newman, took the ground that the Articles were not a confession of faith, but articles of peace, drawn up for the special pur- pose of compromise between contending parties, and hence worded in an ambiguous way which admitted of an interpretation wide enough to embrace all parties. A striking illustration of this feature of the Articles is furnished by the twentieth of the series, on the Authority of the Church: 'The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies and authority in contro- versies of faith. And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God's written word, neither may it so ex- plain one place of Scripture that it be repug- nant to another. Wherefore, though the Church be a witness and keeper of Holy Writ, yet as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation. ' Here you see the first declaration is quite Catholic : ' The Church hath authority in controversies of faith. ' . . . But then it goes 156 A LOYAL LIFE on: 'It is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything contrary to God's word written,' &c. Here the question naturally suggests itself, who is to decide whether what the Church ordains is contrary to God's word written. There must be an authority somewhere, a final court of ap- peal. If the Church is that court, then why say the court must not decide, &c.'? If the Church is not that final authority, then it be- comes a very grave question who or what is. This question the article notoriously leaves en- tirely in the dark. It is vague, uncertain, am- biguous. So of the twenty-second Article, 'Of Purgatory, ' which says : * The Romish doctrine of Purgatory Pardons, worshiping and adora- tion as well of images as of relics and also of invocation of Saints, is a fond thing, vainly in- vented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the word of God.' Now how could Dr. Newman and his advanced confreres reconcile their advocacy of the doctrine of Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, &c., with what seems to be the plain declaration of the Article? Nothing easier! It is the Romish doctrine against which the Article is aimed, not the true doctrine. Possibly the Ar- ticle may err in charging the Eomish Church with teaching error in regard to these doctrines. That is not our lookout. It is however gener- ally admitted that superstition was encour- THE MINISTRY 157 aged by the Church of Rome. That is what the Article is aimed at. We can still hold con- sistently to the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, &c. *'I mention these as specimens of the reason- ings of learned and able men to justify them- selves in holding Catholic doctrine while re- maining in a professedly Protestant church. Of course, one of the first discoveries that these men made was that the true Church was prop- erly and necessarily Catholic, that the Anglican establishment had made a great mistake in pro- fessing to be Protestant. They hastened to re- pair that evil by insisting that they were the true Catholics, that the Romanists were not the true Catholics and should not be permitted to monopolize the name. I learned at a pretty early period of my ministry to repeat this lan- guage and tried heartily to adopt the theory. I rang the changes on the theme. It was a favorite idea. There was a charm, a sort of fas- cination in boldly assuming that high vantage ground, in spite of the apparent inconsistency involved in it. Rather an amusing incident oc- curred, illustrating the absurdity of maintain- ing a false position. I had been preaching in Trinity Church for 'Brother' Tyng, who was absent from town. After the close of service, as I was passing out through the vestibule of the church, two or three Irishmen, evidently 158 A LOYAL LIFE greenliorns just landed and seeking employ- ment in the West, came np the steps and meet- ing me in the vestibule tipped their hats re- spectfully. 'Please yer honor,' said one, 'is this the Catholic Church?' In the unso- phisticated simplicity of my nature, I re- plied: 'No, this is not the Catholic Church. It is over there, where you see the big cross,' at the same time pointing in the direction of the Catholic Church on Fifth Street. Think of my chagrin and mortification, when I became con- scious of this sudden and spontaneous betrayal of my new principles! The power of self- delusion in human nature is simply wonderful." This was a literal verification in modern times of an assertion of St. Augustme in the fourth century, that a stranger going into any town and inquiring for the Catholic Church would never be directed to a schismatical conventicle but to the place of worship of the real old Cath- olic Church, universally recognized as such and existing throughout the world. At this stage of our young minister's mental development, it was most providential that, in the year 1844, he happened to become ac- quainted with Brownson's Review. Orestes A. Brownson, perhaps the most vigorous thinker and powerful writer that has yet adorned the Catholic Church in America, had begun life, like Mr. Eichards himself, under the strictest THE MINISTRY 159 Calvinistic training. Eepelled by the doctrines of unconditional election and reprobation, of predestination to sin and damnation, and the other unlovely features of that system, he had at first taken refuge in unbelief and a warfare on the most sacred institutions of society, mar- riage, property and religion. But seeing the absolute necessity, both logically and ethically of some religion, he worked his way by the sheer force of his own vigorous reasoning powers, through Humanitarianism, Universal- ism and Unitarianism, and finally, after con- sidering seriously the claims and professions of Anglicanism, up to the Catholic Church, into which he was received by Bishop Fitzpatrick of Boston in 1844. Throughout his whole career, he had been a prolific and most powerful writer on all social, religious and political sub- jects. Many of his articles had appeared in a publication of his own, the Boston Quarterly Revietv. Shortly before his conversion, this was revived under the title of Broivnson's Quarterly Revieiv, and almost to the time of his death in 1876 it was the means of immense benefit to the Church, particularly in giving to his old co-religionists outside of her fold a statement and defense of her doctrines which they would with difficulty have attained from any other source. With a mind as fearless and logical, if not so penetrating, as Brownson's 160 A LOYAL LIFE own and with the same nnfaltering love for truth above all, the young minister read the first numbers with the deepest interest. The topics at first discussed indicated the transitional state of the Doctor's mind. They had reference principally to the nature of the Church itself as an organized Society, the Body of Christ, with the notes of Unity, Sanctity, Catholicity and Apostolicity. The ability and freshness with which the subjects were handled, the lumi- nous and exhaustive character of the discus- sions, had a powerful influence on the reader's mind, just then struggling with the same prob- lems. This was particularly true of a dispute between Dr. Brownson in his Review and the celebrated Dr. Samuel Seabury in the columns of The Churchman. Brownson had reviewed the letters of Bishop Hopkins of Vermont ''On the Novelties which Disturb our Peace/' and in doing so had advanced serious objections to Anglicanism. Dr. Seabury, in the hope of in- ducing Brownson to join the Episcopal Church, attempted to reply. He admitted, with the Ox- ford divines, that the Church was truly a cor- poration. But to escape from the obvious con- sequences of this admission, Seabury seemed to think he had raised an effectual guard by as- serting that a visible centre and a visible head were not essential to the existence of a corpo- rate body. He even seemed to hold that the cor- THE MINISTRY 161 poration as such is invisible. To this Brown- son answered in substance that while the right of a number of persons to act collectively as a corporation is invisible, yet the corporation itself is as visible a body as an army. In like manner, the authoritv of the Church is invis- ible; for it is the authority of Christ, who is its invisible head. But the Church itself is vis- ible, like any other corporation, and it must be possessed of visible organs, and chiefly a visible head, through which it can act officially. He went on to show that, admitting the Church to be a corporation, it must needs be one in the unity of the corporation and one in its corporate authority, as well as one in the unity of faith and charity. "Now if the Church be a single corporation, that is, a single body corporate or politic, as it must be if it is one corporation and not an assembly of corporations, the Angli- cans, in breaking the unity of the corporation and declaring their church an independent cor- poration, as we all know they did, were guilty of schism." At the end of his article. Brown- son makes that profession of faith in Catholic- ity which came probably as a surprise to many even of those who had followed his career. '*We confess that the more closely we examine the claims of the Church of England, the more untenable we find them. We had almost worked ourselves into the desire to connect ourselves 162 A LOYAL LIFE with that cliurcli; and we are not certain but we should have done so, had it not been for the Letters of Bishop Hopkins, which we found ourselves unable to refute on Anglican princi- ples. We confess that Bishop Hopkins appears to us to be true to his church and to interpret her constitution and doctrines according to the genuine principles of its founders. His brethren who differ from him have more with which we sympathize than he has ; but they are, in our judgment, less faithful to Anglicanism. They would fain have us receive tlieir church as Catholic, and disingenuously, in their publi- cations, call it Catholic; but it is a Protestant church, Protestant in spirit, in doctrine, in position, and in name, and we cannot reconcile it to our sense of honesty and frankness to call it by any other name. It seems to us ridiculous to call it Catholic. "Even The Churchman itself calls its church 'the reformed Catholic Church,' which admits its fallibility ; for if it had not been fallible, it could never have needed reforming; and being fallible, who shall assure us that it may not need reforming again? This is enough for us. "We have been forced by our own errors, mis- takes, misapprehensions, self-contradictions and frequent changes of opinion on all subjects, even the most vital, to admit that our own rea- son alone is not adequate to settle the great THE MINISTRY 163 questions which concern our peace and salva- tion. We must have a guide, but do not mock us with a fallible guide. Talk not to us of a church, unless you have an infallible church to offer us. We have followed a fallible guide long enough. We believe Christ did found an infallible church, rendered infallible by his per- petual presence and supervision. To that church we willingly yield obedience. But your church is not it, for yours, by your confession, is fallible. We have therefore been obliged to look beyond Anglicanism, to a church which at least claims to be infallible and which demands our obedience only on the ground that it is in- fallible. ' ' Nor have we any sympathy with the war of The Churchman against the Papacy. . . . We find Anglicanism more objectionable in its re- jection of the papacy than in anything else. This was its primal sin, its mother error, from which has come, as a natural progeny, its whole brood of errors. Had it not been for the Papacy, the Church, humanly speaking, had failed long ere this. In the institution and preservation of the Papacy, we see the especial providence of God. We shrink not from the abused name of Papist ; and we only regret that the ambition and wickedness of civil rulers have been able to prevent the Papacy from doing all the good it has attempted. No man must think 164 A LOYAL LIFE to frighten us by the cry of 'Popery.' Happy are we to acknowledge the authority of the Holy Father; more happy shall we be, if we can so live as to secure his blessing." To Brownson's arraig-nment, Seabury made no reply, in spite of the explicit request and demand for an answer contained in the article. His Pligh Church partisans waited long and anxiously for their champion's response; but it never came, and the subject was not alluded to again in the columns of The Churchman. This incident had a powerful effect in clarify- ing Mr. Richards' mind. He had become heartily sick of the endless divisions of Protes- tantism and the uncertainty and confusion of doctrine in the Episcopal Church. He longed for unity and for certainty of faith. He found himself, by this time, possessed, on his own judgment, of a certain number of Catholic doc- trines, or rather opinions; but he saw around him every conceivable variety of belief, the Bishops themselves hopelessly at variance, and no authority competent, or even claiming to be competent, to settle these disputes with final and unerring certainty. He was rapidly com- ing to realize that the Roman Catholic Church possessed not only a definite, fixed system of doctrine, Unity of Faith, but also an organ for the preservation of that unity. The Branch Theory, that spurious makeshift THE MINISTRY 165 devised to retain anxious souls in heresy and schism, and actually to this day retaining so many hundreds who would otherwise find refuge in the true Fold, had no attractions for his frank and straightforward mind. He thus writes con- cerning it: ''I shall never forget the surprise with which I first read a full and able statement of the Branch Theory. The true Church is composed of all w^ho retain the Apostolic Suc- cession, and is divided into three great branches, the Eastern or Greek, the Western or Roman, and the Anglican. 'Anglo-Catholic' was a favorite designation at this time. These great branches had become 'temporarily alien- ated' from one another. It was a useless task to undertake to determine where the principal fault of the alienation lay. There was undoubt- edly fault on all sides. The true policy now was to cease quarreling, to let by-gones be by- gones, and all unite in a grand etfort for union. The tone of controversialists in the 'Anglo- Catholic' party toward the Catholic Church was entirely changed. The Romanists were no longer the horrible monsters they had uniformly been represented to be by the old Iconoclasts and Fathers of the Reformation. The Roman was a true branch, a Sister Church, having law- ful jurisdiction in her own territory. Some- times they even spoke of wooing their Ro- man Sister to a more fraternal intercourse. 166 A LOYAL LIFE Said Keble, the sweet singer, the poet of the party : " 'And oh ! by all the pangs and fears Fraternal spirits know, \\'hen for an elder's shame the tears Of wakeful anguish flow, Speak gently of our Sister's fall; Who knows but gentle love May win her at our patient call The surer way to prove!' "The question naturally arose, admitting the Branch Theory, when was it probable that the alienation would cease! The Greek Schism occurred about one thousand years ago, the Anglican three hundred. What new ground of hope had they that the obstacles which had so long stood in the way of reconciliation would be removed? The greatest obstacle of all was the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Supremacy of the Pope and the essential headship of the See of Peter. The Anglicans were ready to admit the Primacy of Peter, but denied the Supremacy, or in other words, the divine in- stitution of the Papacy and its consequent necessity to the very constitution of the Church. "What reason had they to suppose Catholics would yield this principle, which they have held from the very beginning and which is to them the very bulwark of orthodoxy? They made very earnest attempts at fraternizing with the Greek Church, but were given the cold shoulder THE MINISTRY 167 by the Greek ecclesiastics. Still with wonder- ful pertinacity they adhered to their favorite theory and displayed the most remarkable in- genuity in sustaining it. It did not satisfy me. I had at a quite early period of my upward progress got a glimpse of the Catholic idea of the Unity of the Church, with a Head and Cen- tre of Unity in the Papacy, and of the argu- ments from reason and scripture in support of it, and it made a permanent lodgment in my mind. I could not get rid of it. It staid with me. It haunted me. I could see no satisfac- tory answer to it, and the more I reflected on the subject, the more I was convinced that that was just what Protestantism lacked, just what we all needed and must have in order to attain to Unity of Faith or Unity of Organization. I came to despise Protestantism as such and to deplore the so-called Reformation. I was haunted by the idea that the See of Peter was the Rock on which the Church was built and which had the promise of our Lord that the gates of hell should never prevail against it. For a wonder, I had never been much of an Anti-Popery man. With my antecedents and surroundings, I should have been a good Popery hater and should have had much to say against the abominations of Sodom and all that. But I am thankful that the mercy of God preserved me from that species of fanaticism, so that I 168 A LOYAL LIFE seldom made allusion to the doctrines of Eome." In the autumn of 1844, Mr. Eicliards attended the Convention of the Episcopal Church which was held in Philadelphia. The occasion was made memorable for him by his rebaptism. The controversies concerning the nature of this sacrament and its effect upon the soul had aroused in the minds of many members of the advancing High Church party, particularly clergymen, doubts and scruples as to the valid- ity of their own baptism. They did not see how a minister who had no faith in the spiritual re- generation effected by baptism could in fact be the channel or instrument of that grace. They would seem, so far as is known to the writer of these pages, not to have been familiar with the doctrine of Catholic theologians as to the intention of the minister of the sacrament, viz., that any one, even a pagan, who has the intention of doing what the Church does, really confers the sacrament, provided the proper form and matter are employed. Mr. Eichards, who had been baptized in infancy as a Presbj^- terian, had esjoecial reason for doubt. In meet- ing with large numbers of his fellow clerg^Tnen during the time of the Convention, the subject was fully discussed. The result is told in the following passage from a letter to his wife under date of October 9, 1844 : THE MINISTRY 169 ''Bishop "Whittingham is a noble man. And what will you say if I tell you that yesterday morning at Matins he baptized your humble servant! Oh, what a blessed privilege! That one thing is worth my whole journey. That great question is settled. My mind is relieved. I am now a member of Christ's Holy Church. God be praised. Mr. Giles, formerly a Kenyon student, now at Alexandria Seminary, was re- baptized on Sunday by Bishop Otey. . . . Re- baptization is becoming quite common. Messrs. Davis and Bonner have both relieved their minds in that way and Bishop Whitting- ham tells me he has rebaptized some seven- teen. ..." But rebaptism was probably not the chief reason for Mr. Richards' attendance at the Convention. This was rather the expectation of a strenuous conflict on the general question of Catholic doctrines and practices in the Prot- estant Episcopal Church in the United States. We have described in an earlier chapter the progress of these tendencies, in general accord with the Tractarian movement in England. It was not to be expected that the innovators should meet with no opposition. They were in fact opposed and denounced as Romanizers, and the church was divided into factions show- ing at times bitter hostility. ''Church news- papers" says Dr. Tiffany, "multiplied. The 170 A LOYAL LIFE Churchman, the Protestant Churchman, the Banner of the Cross, the Episcopal Reader, and many more evinced growth of church in- terest, but also increase of church strife, which they did nothing to allay but everything to inflame. . . . Even in its missionary depart- ment, the Church seemed to rise against itself (pp. 458, 459)." *'The publication of Tract 90 produced a ferment in America, as in England. . . . The Roman Catholic Bishop, Dr. Kenrick, jiub- licly appealed to the bishops to sul)mit to the Church of Rome, on the ground that the Ox- ford tracts had yielded almost every ground of dispute between the two communions; and Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, always ready for controversy and delighting in it, made an in- dignant reply, and in American fashion chal- lenged Bishop Kenrick to an oral discussion. But it was the Carey ordination in New York which sounded a note of alarm, which sent a shudder through the church and stirred Bishop PTopkins to write his celebrated 'Letters on the Novelties which Disturb our Peace,' which pub- lication later on somewhat disturbed his own. The ordination of Arthur Carev, involving as it did the ofiacial recognition of the views of Tract 90 as legitimate in the (American) Church, created an impression altogether out of keeping with the importance of the candi- THE MINISTRY 171 date. He was indeed a j^oung man of marked ability and singular sanctity of character, a graduate of the General Theological Seminary, forced into premature notice ; for he graduated in 1842, too young for ordination. When he came up for examination in 1843, it was found that he accepted the teaching of Tract 90, and believed in the reconciliation of the Decrees of the Council of Trent with the Thirty-nine Articles, though it is said that he suggested that it was the Decrees which required explana- tion and not the Articles (pp. 473, 474)." Father Walworth, who spent a year with Carey at the New York General Seminary, pre- ceding the latter 's ordination, speaks of his fellow student with the greatest reverence and affection. It is somewhat remarkable that both in New York and at Kenyon, the first prophet of the Catholic movement was a young student of extremely gentle and devout character, tenderly beloved by his companions, and sim- ilar in many respects to Hurrell Froude of Ox- ford, and that all three died before their work seemed to be in any considerable degree accom- plished. "His life was holy and lovely. For one year, during which our chamber doors faced each other, I saw him constantly and closely, but for all that sight or sound could tell, to me his character was faultless. ... It could not be difficult for such a young man to 172 A LOYAL LIFE secure permission from the faculty of the seminary to keep his room there for yet another year after his graduation, when he would arrive at the canonical age for ordination. This en- abled him to use the library of the institution while he pursued his studies in private. Dur- ing this time, apparently so quiet for him, that great storm was brewing which broke upon his solitary habits and gentle heart like a thunderbolt (p. 59)." Carey's ordination was objected to on the ground of Eomanizing tend- encies. He was subjected to a special ex- amination by a board which was to have tried J. B. McMaster also on the same charge. The faculty decided that McMaster should remain in the seminary another year, and the Board, composed of Doctors Berrian, McVickar, Sea- bury, Anthon and Smith, and the Rev. Messrs. Haight, Higbee and Price, and presided over by Bishop Benjamin T. Onderdonk, devoted their entire attention to Carey. "It was well understood by all parties present at this trial that Drs. Smith and Anthon appeared not only as judges but as accusers." All the examiners but these two were satisfied" by the cautious and well considered, but perfectly frank answers of Carey, though these revealed that he either ac- cepted or inclined to Catholic doctrine in re- gard to the Holy Eucharist, Purgatory, the In- vocation of the Saints, &c. At his ordination THE MINISTRY 173 in St. Stephen's Church on the following Sun- day, the Rev. Hugh Smith and the Rev. Dr. Antlion, habited in their canonicals, arose suc- cessively from a pew in the middle aisle and read their solemn protests against the ordina- tion, on the ground that the candidate held doc- trines adverse to those of his church and too nearly bordering on Popery, and referring for proof to statements and circumstances within the Bishop's knowledge. Bishop Onderdonk rose and made a dignified and emphatic reply and went on with the ordination, while the pro- testing divines left the church. The immediate effect of these events was a storm of controversy and recrimination throughout the country. Every one of the ex- amining committee was obliged by public ex- citement to account for himself by some pub- lished statement. Pamphlets and editorials abounded, and a new publication, The Protes- tant Churchman, was founded to counteract the influence of Dr. Seabury's Churchman. At the Diocesan Convention of Ohio in October of the same year. Bishop Mcllvaine, in his charge to the clergy, uttered a solemn protest against the ordination of candidates entertaining Carey's beliefs. As the General Convention of 1844 approached, it was generally understood that the Ohio delegation would introduce a resolution condemning the Catholic movement 174 A LOYAL LIFE and that a vigorous contest would result. Mr. Richards, standing almost alone among the Ohio clergy in his sympathy with the Tracta- rians, could not expect to be elected a delegate ; but he went as a spectator. **As was antici- pated," he writes in the letter above quoted, "the Ohio delegation have lugged in the Ox- ford hobby. Several resolutions, substitutes and amendments have been offered and dis- cussed with much courtesy and dignity and Christian feeling. There are some few rad- icals besides the 'lesser lights' which revolve around the 'lone star' of the West." The following letter, dated Oct. 15th, gives some personal details of interest concerning some of the leading churchmen of the day: — "Phil.u)elphia, Oct. 15, 1844. "My dear Cynthia: "If there ever was a poor home-sick fellow, I am he. . . . The convention is right in the midst of its most important business, and ap- parently of its session. Not one single great question has yet been decided. The consecra- tion will not take place till no one knows when. But I can not wait longer. I must go home and see my wife and little one and attend to the duties of my parish. "On Sunday last we had a most delightful time in St. Peter's. And here let me say how THE MINISTRY 175 exceedingly fortunate I have been in getting a berth at Mr. Davis's. It has brought me in contact with a large circle of the very cream of the Church. I have had the pleasure of an in- troduction and frequent meetings in the vestry with Bishops Whittingham, Onderdonk, Otey, De San, Ives, as well as many D.D.s and clergy of inferior grade though of high standing in the Church. St. Peter's is a kind of focus of Church influence, and the daily prayers as well as . the Sunday services bring together num- bers of the very best, the most substantial and thoroughgoing churchmen in the country. Last Sunday was indeed a 'high day,' a feast of fat things. There w^ere fourteen surpliced clergy; not a black gown appeared on the oc- casion; four or five Bishops were present. In the morning Bishop Onderdonk preached an ad- mirable, sound, thorough Church sermon on Church Education. He is very much such a man as I had imagined him, short, thick, rather corpulent in personal appearance, a real Dutch- man, — full of vigor and energy, prompt and decided, kind, gentlemanly and rather playful, a word for everyone. *'In the afternoon. Bishop Ives preached. I have spoken of him before ; he is a noble man, a beautiful writer and a very attractive preacher. But the lion of the day was Bishop Whittingham. He preached in the evening, and 176 A LOYAL LIFE such a sermon! He is a tall, graceful figure, large bead, long face, good looking but not handsome, a man of great energy, what we call a go-ahead man, of enlarged and compre- hensive views, great learning and most pro- foundly respected by all who know him. The subject of his sermon was the contrast between the piety of the present age and that which the scriptures enjoin and which was developed in the life of primitive Christians. 'I beseech you that ye walk not as other Gentiles walk.' It was a noble effort, a most powerful thrilling discourse and fearless, faithful protest against modern worldliness. His eloquence is not that of graceful gesture, musical voice and melting persuasion, but the eloquence of a great mind, laboring intensely with great thoughts. It is commanding, like the rushing of a mighty tor- rent; he soars above this world and seems to live and breathe in a higher, purer atmosphere and long to strive to draw up others to the same high dignity and privilege. Would to God we had such a man at the head of the Church in Ohio; surely then the Church would arise and shine, and become a glory and a blessing in the land. . . . '*My rebaptism is attracting some attention here. I presume the news will precede me, and beat me home. I care not; I have done my duty. I leave the result in the hands of God. THE MINISTRY 177' * ' I long to be in the midst of my little parish at work. Do remember me most affectionately to every member of the little flock and may God bless them all — with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and may He bring me to you again in the fullness of the blessings of the gospel of peace. ''Hoping soon to see you, I remain as ever, "Your affectionate, ''Heney." On the following day, he writes as follows: ''I have just returned from the Convention. After considerable debate, the house proceeded at half past nine o'clock to vote upon the Ox- ford subject. I cannot stop to describe the process. There were so many resolutions, amendments and substitutes. . . . Suffice it now that the Church is safe, sound to the core. Praised be God! The enemies of her peace (I say not the willful, intentional enemies) have met with a signal defeat. . . . Oh, if you could have seen the Ohio delegation! . . . Poor Bro. D hung on to Dr. Brooks' tail to the last. Indeed the whole delegation just followed his beck. They were, or seemed to be, a perfect nose of wax which the Dr. twisted to suit him- self. . . . Good night! God bless you and the little one!" The long debates on the Oxford Movement 178 A LOYAL LIFE had resulted in no definite action, save a resolu- tion declaring "the liturgy, offices and articles of the church sufficient exponents of her sense of the essential doctrines of Holy Scripture; and that the canons of the church aiford ample means of discipline and correction for all who depart from her standards; and further that the General Convention is not a suitable tribu- nal for the trial and censure of, and that the church is not responsible for, the errors of in- dividuals, whether they are members of the church or otherwise." The storm passed with less violence than had been anticipated. It was soon to gather in condensed form in the trial of Bishop B. T. Onderdonk of New York. Already before the Convention assembled, Bishop Henry U. On- derdonk of Pennsylvania had been charged in his own diocese with habits of intemperance, with a view to bringing him to trial before his peers, and on resigning his office and asking for sentence from the House of Bishops, he was suspended from all public exercise of the functions of the ministry. He had explained his delinquencies as due in the first place to ill- ness and great pain. * * This sentence, excelling in severity and declared by the distinguished legal authority of Horace Binney to be not only unjust, but uncanonical and illegal, was submitted to without protest by the Bishop, THE MINISTRY 179 who, if he had shown frailty, had displayed a noble manliness of acknowledgment and sin- cere repentance. He forthwith gave up all use of stimulants ; and such was the subsequent unsullied sanctity of his life that in 1856 his sentence was revoked. It is unpossible to avoid the conclusion that the heated state of party feeling had unconsciously much to do with the whole course of the affair, ' ' ^ But this was unimportant compared with the trial and condemnation of Bishop Benjamin T. On- derdonk of New York. "With great ability and success, this prelate had withstood attacks made in the Convention of his own diocese up- on his course in favoring Tractarianism and ordaining Carey. In the General Convention, as we have seen, his success and that of his supporters had been equally complete. His opponents now had recourse to other tactics. Charges of immorality were brought against him by four ministers and a layman, and the Bishops were forced to take them up. He was brought to trial, on December 10th, 1844, be- fore a court of seventeen bishops, and after a trial of three weeks, found guilty by a majority of eleven to six. The accused never flinched from the assertion of his innocence, which he maintained to the day of his death. ''No at- tempt to commit any criminal act," says Wal- 1 Tiffany, p. 476. 180 A LOYAL LIFE worth, "was either proved or alleged. . . . None of the instances (of indiscreet and im- proper conduct) alleged against him had oc- curred within two years and a half of the trial." ''It has been surmised," writes Tif- fany, "that had there been an acknowledgment by the accused, before the trial, of indiscretions which had been misinterpreted as improprie- ties, no trial would have occurred. The treat- ment of his brother of Pennsylvania does not seem to warrant such a conclusion. There was generally a stern determination to vindicate the moral status of the episcopate in the face of high ecclesiastical claims, and the rumors of gross fault were such as to furnish an oppor- tunity which seemed to involve an obliga- tion. . . . Bishop Onderdonk was in conse- quence suspended and never restored, though efforts in that direction were made by the New York diocese. ... It is as impossible here as in tlie case of his brother of Pennsylvania to avoid the conclusion that the court could not escape the influence of theological and ecclesias- tical discussions. "2 Though it belongs to a somewhat later date, we may mention here the third of the series of trials of bishops which marked this epoch. Bishop G. W. Doane of New Jersey, a prelate of exalted character, "had been forced into bankruptcy in his at- 2 Tiffany, pp. 478, 479. THE MINISTRY 181 tempt to found Burlington College for the sons and St. Mary's School for the daughters of the church. Like many a man of noble ideas, he lacked the financial skill to embody them in a isuccessful institution." In the preceding trials, Bishop Mcllvaine had apparently taken no part ; but he was now one of three bishops who presented Doane for investigation for financial irregularities. The trial was insisted on, in spite of the fact that the bishop's own diocese had exonerated and sustained him in two conventions. The court dismissed the charges on this ground in October, 1852. On a third presentment, a court of twenty-one bishops was assembled in Camden, in Septem- ber, 1853; but such legal points were raised that the presentment was dismissed and the respondent discharged without a formal trial. ''The trial of Bishop Smith of Kentucky, in his own diocese, on a charge of inveracity, resulted yet more grotesquely than the fiasco in New Jersey. The court, chosen by the diocese, re- turned the verdict, 'Guilty, but without the least criminality.' "^ The disgrace of Bishop Onderdonk was a substantial victory for the Evangelical party in the Protestant Episcopal Church. His sup- porters felt humiliated. The students of the General Seminary were deprived of their prin- 3 Tiffany, p. 481, note. 182 A LOYAL LIFE cipal protector. The result was a temporary cheek to Tractarianism as a general movement in that church. Some of its adherents made their submission very shortly to the Catholic Church, as Walworth in 1845 and McMaster shortly after. These two, in company with Isaac Hecker, who, like Brownson, had made his way into the Church on independent lines, sailed for Belgium on August 2nd, 1845, to enter the Redemptorist novitiate at St. Trond. Another of this set of students was Edgar P. Wadhams, afterward the first Catholic Bishop of Ogdensburg. He was received in June, 1846. This year saw also the submission of the Rev. Nathaniel Augustine liewit, afterward Superior General of the Paulists and one of the greatest priests that this countiy has pro- duced ; of Sylvester H. Eosecrans, afterward first Bishop of Columbus, whose brother, the famous General W. S. Rosecrans, a graduate of Kenyon, had preceded him into the Church by a year; the Rev. Wm. H. Iloyt, of St. Al- bans, Vermont, with his wife, three sons and two daughters; and Peter H. Burnett, who afterward became the first American Governor of California and Justice of the Supreme Court of that State. James Roosevelt Bayley, a nephew of Mrs. Seton, destined in after life to be Bishop of Newark and Archbishop of Balti- more, had been received in 1842. The stream THE MINISTRY 183 of conversions set np at tliis time went on rapidly increasing, helped by the submission of Newman in England in 1845 and tlie uneasiness caused by the famous Hampden case in 1847 and the Gorham case in 1849 and 1850. Not- able instances were those of Robert Armytage Bakewell (1848), a student of the General Seminary of New York, who attained high dis- tinction as a Judge in St. Louis ; the Rev. John Engelbert Snyder, a Lutheran Minister of Col- umbus (1848) ; the Rev. Doctor Porter of Mt. Vernon, Ohio (1849), who for twenty years had been a minister of the Reformed Church; Rev. George Lamb Roberts, an Episcopal min- ister of Vincennes, Indiana (1850) ; William Everett, afterward the saintly pastor of the Church of the Nativity, New York; and many others. Commodore Benjamin Franklin Bache, M.D., U. S. N., who was for a time Pro- fessor of Chemistry at Kenyon, became a Catholic in 1849. During the Civil War, he rendered great service to the Union cause by maintaining at his own expense a laboratory in connection with the Department of the Navy. Jedediah V. Huntington, one of the most highly cultivated of Anglican clergymen in America, was received, together with his wife, in 1849. He was afterward a prominent figure in Catholic literary circles. Finally, in the year 1852, Levi Silliman Ives, Bishop of North 184 A LOYAL LIFE Carolina, one of the most universally respected prelates of the Anglican commnnion, made his submission. Sailing for Europe with his wife, ostensibly for a vacation of six toionths, he placed his abjuration in the hands of Arch- bishop Hughes of New York. His resignation of his office and coming reception into the Catholic Church were made known to his diocesans in a letter from Eome, dated Dec. 22nd, 1852. This was the culminating point of the Tractarian Movement in America. From that time, the two parties in the Episcopal Church seemed to moderate gradually their bitterness of feeling and to be more inclined to tolerate differences of belief and practice, fundamental and mutually destructive as these differences plainly were. At this period, Dr. Tiffany estimates the number of Episcopal clergymen received into the Catholic Church in the United States, as ''hardly more than fifty." In the year 1846, Bishop Mcllvaine, in an address made to his diocesan con- vention in explanation of his refusal to consecrate Mr. Eichards' new church so long as it had an altar (an episode which we must recount later), spoke with horror of the fact that ''nearly one hundred clergymen of our Mother Church in Great Britain and several from our own church" had gone over to Rome in the space of five or six years. THE MINISTRY 185 Hence it would appear that almost all of the fifty mentioned by Tiffany made their submis- sion between the years 18-1:6 and 1852, — a rate of progress not at all inferior, probably, to that of the movement in England, if we take note of the comparative fewness of the mem- bers and clergy of the Anglican Church in the United States. But this is to anticipate the course of our history. In the midst of these exciting events, Henry Richards found himself unexpectedly forced into a position of prominence in the pre- vailing controversies and compelled to feel the weight of Bishop Mcllvaine's opposition to Catholicizing tendencies. In 1815, his new church, St. Paul's, was completed and ready for consecration. Mr. Richards had been a great favorite with the Bishop, and his wife enjoyed the same distinction. When a young lady, she had nursed back to health the Bish- op's son, who had been taken seriously ill at Mrs. Whiting's. The Bishop, who was really a large hearted man, never forgot it, and his esteem for the fair nurse was not lessened by her becoming the wife of his favorite pupil. But after it became understood that Mr. Rich- ards had taken the upward track, the Bishop, who was most keen sighted in detecting tend- encies to Rome, took the alarm and became very suspicious. Now it happened that the 186 A LOYAL LIFE architect, in designing the interior fittings of the church, had provided as communion table an altar with Gothic panels, corresponding with the style of the building, and covered with a marble slab. There was no intention on Mr. Richards' part to conform in this to any theory of sacrifice and priesthood; indeed the design seems to have originated with the architect without suggestion. Other altars of the same kind in several churches of the diocese had never attracted condemnation or even remark. Nevertheless, to his great surprise, the Pastor received a letter from the Bishop saying that he understood there was a Romish altar in the church, and unless it were removed and a good honest table substituted for it, he could not per- form the consecration. On enquiry, it was learned that it was not the fact that the altar was a fixture against the wall, nor that it was covered mth a marble slab, that constituted the obnoxious feature, but simply that it was an enclosed structure, a box with panels. The Minister, his Wardens and Vestry and the con- gregation, or at least a large portion of it, felt deeply aggrieved. They entertained not the slightest doubt that the position taken by the Bishop was entirely arbitrary, inconsistent, and even ridiculous, and that the principle laid down by him would not be sustained by the general sentiment of the church. This placed Mr. THE MINISTRY 187 Richards in a difficult position and one painful to his conscience. The whole question of the extent and limitations of episcopal authority and of the true doctrine of the Christian Church on sacrifice and priesthood pressed upon him for immediate and practical solution. Neither he nor his supporters desired a con- flict with their Bishop. In this situation, Mr. Richards wrote for advice to Hugh Davey Evans, a lajmian then conducting, with great ability, as was thought, The True CatJiolic of Baltimore, Mr. Evans wrote a sympathetic letter, under date of January 19th, 1846, in which he deplores the misfortune of the Min- ister and Vestry in being under an un-Catholic bishop, but says that it is by the appointment of the Divine Head of the Church. He coun- sels entire submission, not only for the sake of peace, but as a matter of religious obedience, declaring the shape and material of the altar to be, in his opinion, entirely a matter of taste, indifferent in itself so far as its relation to the sacrifice is concerned. Incidentally, he gives a definition of the sacrifice which excludes altogether the Real Presence and reduces it to an offering of bread and wine, as mere symbols of the Body and Blood of Christ, ^Ho be re- turned to the worshipers in a spiritual and mysterious manner, to the strengthening and refreshing of their souls thereby, as their 188 A LOYAL LIFE bodies are by the bread and wine. ' ' Referring to a decision by the Court of Arches in Eng- land, he says : "Nor should I attach any great importance to any decision of an English Ec- clesiastical Court in any matter connected with our church (in the United States). I consider them Erastian institutions, blots on the Eng- lish Church, and know that they administer rather the secular laws of England than the true ecclesiastical law." It was determined by the Rector and Vestry to submit entirely in fact, but to enter a protest against the right of the Bishop to impose his will in a matter not forbidden by any rubric or custom, thus leaving the question of principle open for future determination. On March 15th, 1846, the Vestry met and passed the following Reso- lutions, kindly copied for the present work by Mrs. A. Newton Whiting, daughter-in-law of the Senior Warden, with permission of the Rev. John Hewitt, the present Rector of St. Paul's Church : — **Wliereas the Right Revd. the Bishop of the Diocese has addressed a communication to the AYardens and Vestrymen of this Parish in which he maintains that the structure erected in St. Paul's Church for the administration of the Lord's Supper is a 'Romish Altar,' and whereas he requests that that structure be re- THE MINISTRY 189 moved and a 'table with legs' substituted in its place — and Whereas he has intimated that he will make the substitution a condition of the consecration of the church, and that he will make it a rule of conduct in the consecration of all churches in the diocese for the future — Therefore: Resolved that in causing the said structure to be erected the Wardens and Ves- trjTiien of St. Paul's Church have not adopted anything new or contrary to the custom of the Protestant Episcopal Church — Resolved 2dly — That so far from having any intention or desire to bring into our church the errours and corruptions of the Church of Rome, either in doctrine or practice, whether covertly or openly, we do most heartily detest those errours and corruptions and do most cordially assent to and maintain the Protest of our Church against them — Resolved 3dly — That as the Church of Rome has, by the confession of all candid men, retained many things truly Catholic both in doctrine and practice, we cannot sympathize with those who profess to see danger in every, even the minutest, conformity to that Church, knowing full well that such a sentiment would deprive us, not only of everything that identi- fies us with the Holy Catholic Church, but also, as a consequence, of every peculiarity that dis- tinguishes us from the various sects by which we are surrounded — Resolved 4thly, that with 190 A LOYAL LIFE reference to the 'Altar' or 'Holy Table' in par- ticular we esteem it as simply a matter indiffer- ent what its form shall be, so that it be not inappropriate to the sacred use for which it is designed, and therefore we cannot but deem it inexpedient, to say the least, that the minds of the members of our churches should be dis- turbed by any question in relation to it. Re- solved 5thly, That although we do not recog- nize the right of the Bishop of the Diocese to interfere in the matter under consideration and although we feel deeply aggrieved by the reso- lution he has adopted, yet, as he has intimated that he has conscientious scruples about the consecration of a church which has such a struc- ture as ours for the administration of the Lord's Supper, and as we feel disposed at all times duly to respect the conscientious scruples of our Bishop — when they do not involve any sacrifice of principle — and as we believe that it will conduce most to the peace of the Church and the glory of God to jdeld to the wishes of the Bishop in this case, we do therefore hereby direct the building committee to make the change requested." Another letter from Hugh Davey Evans, written April 6th, seems to show that Bishop Mcllvaine, as was natural, was not disposed to accept this submission under protest as entirely THE MINISTEY 191 satisfactory and that he insisted upon uncon- ditional surrender. Meantime the recalci- trants, to show their sincerity, sawed out the Gothic panels on three sides of their altar (someone suggested so that the Bishop could see whether there were any Eomish relics or not) and finished up the two corners as pillars, thus transforming it into a massive table, and the Bishop concluded not to push his authority further. The church was duly consecrated on Augiist 11th, 1846. The second letter of Mr. Evans throws some interesting sidelights on the relations of Bish- ops and clergy in the High and Low sections of the Episcopal Church. He says : "You will oblige me by sending me a copy of the instru- ment which the Bp. requires your Vestry to sign, if you can conscientiously do so. The words 'spiritual jurisdiction' are regarded as a great bugbear by our Low Church friends in this diocese. A church in this city remains un- consecrated although ready for that solemnity two or three years ago, because the vestry re- fuse to sign an instrument containing these words. The same words constituted a topic of attack upon a canon proposed at our last diocesan convention. The orthodox doctrine among our said friends here is that a bishop has no authority except what he can prove by a canon of the American Church, construed 192 A LOYAL LIFE with all the strictness which we lawyers apply to the construction of a penal law. In Ohio, it seems that a very dilferent doctrine prevails." Again: "It is clear that his present claim is one of absolute and unlimited power in every- thing connected with the church, and that based upon infallibility. It is as much contrary to the principles of the Church to attribute infalli- bility to the Bp. of Ohio as to the Bp. of Rome." The Reverend Pastor of St. Paul's Church and his vestry were again on friendly terms of cere- mony with the Episcopal authority of the diocese. But in the next Diocesan Convention, Bishop Mcllvaine devoted a large portion of his annual address to a defense of his action in the matter of the altar and of the new posi- tion he had taken up. He proved with great clearness that Altar, Sacrifice and Priesthood were strictly correlative terms, and that, as there was neither sacrifice nor priesthood in the Protestant Episcopal Church nor its pro- genitor, the Church of England, so there ought to be no altar. He brought a formidable array of authorities from the early iVnglican divines, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley and numerous others, showing with what zeal the ancient altars had been pulled down for this precise reason, and an "honest table with legs" substituted. "As it was only a supper," Mr. Richards writes, " (albeit the Supper of the Lord), they only re- THE MINISTRY 193 quired a table. To be thoroughly consistent, they insisted that an Altar, though it might in one sense be called and serve the purpose of a table, was a dangerous thing because it tended to keep up the idea of sacrifice. Altar is the correlative of Sacrifice, therefore do away with your altars and substitute honest tables with legs. Table is the correlative of Supper. Of course, if I had chosen to contest the point with the Bishop, I could have proved my view of the case as clearly as he did his, and could have fortified it with a Catena Patrum quite as voluminous and respectable as his. That is really what is the matter with the Episcopal Church, not to say Protestantism generally, and at the time I am speaking of I was making the discovery. You can prove she teaches almost anything you like. I also began to realize in a most convincing way that the power of the Bishops of that church was extremely arbitrary, and that those very men who were most bitter against what they characterized as the tyranny of the hierarchy of Rome, were those who were ever ready, when occasion seemed to offer, to come down with a heavy hand upon those who op- posed them." That portion of the Bishop's address refer- ring to the controversy was ordered by the Con- vention to be printed in five hundred copies. 194 A LOYAL LIFE The pamphlet is still extant under the title: ^'Eeasons for Refusing to Consecrate a Chnrcli with an Altar." It is an interesting and somewhat amusing commentary on Bishop Mcllvaine's zealous crusade that, in the second St. Paul's Church, on the corner of Broad St. and Monroe Ave., which in 1889 replaced (without improving upon) the structure erected by Mr. Richards, an uncompromising altar occupied the chancel. In the present or third church, beg-un in 1903 under the direction of the present energetic Rector, Rev. John Hewitt, the altar is made the central and dominating idea of the whole struc- ture, is called the Altar of the Divine Presence, and is in every respect as elaborate and thoroughly Catholic in design, except for the apparent absence of a tabernacle, as the altar of anv Catholic Church in the world. CHAPTER VIII CONVEESION 1848—1852 Mr. Ricliards' continued ill health had given cause for serious solicitude to himself and his friends. From youth he had been subject to a severe and obstinate dyspepsia, which was in- creased by any prolonged mental application. During the year 1847, his sister Isabella, to whom he was deeply attached and who had mar- ried Mr. James Howell of Keokuk, Iowa, died at her home there and Henry went on with the in- tention of bringing her children to their grand- parents in Granville. This journey of a few weeks made with the primitive means of travel- ing then available, the saddle and the stage- coach, had the effect of restoring his vigor to such an extent that it was hoped he might be able to go on with his work. But he soon fell back and felt it necessary to insist that his resignation should be accepted by the Vestry and congregation, in spite of their great un- willingness to let him go. This persistent ill- ness, breaking up a career that had begun so favorably, seemed a great misfortune; but as 195 196 A LOYAL LIFE the event proved, it was in truth the greatest of blessings. By it, the pilgrim on the road to Catholic Truth was led to scenes where he could observe that Faith in practical operation, and this just at the time when his mind had been prepared by a long course of reading, thought and discussion to understand and appreciate its supernatural efficacy. By the month of November, 1848, he had decided upon a jour- ney to New Orleans and a somewhat extended stay in that city, with a view to transferring his family thither later and taking up his perma- nent residence in the South in case circum- stances should seem to justify the step. His prospects were not indeed very bright, but his courage did not fail. He was naturally of- a very cheery disposition, in spite of the fits of depression due to illness, and it was particularly characteristic of him not to worry over tem- poral needs or worldly interests. His simple confidence in God's tender providence never de- serted him throughout life, and the words ^'Deus providehit, God wUl provide," were frequently on his lips. Two relatives, Levi Buttles and Hamilton Smith, entrusted to him the task of introducing into New Orleans an invention which they confidently expected to prove a commercial success. Hamilton Smith was afterward for many years Professor of Physics at Hobart College, where he gained a CONVERSION 197 higli reputation in the scientific world, especially for his discoveries and inventions in photog- raphy. Another friend, Charles Scott, pro- prietor of the Ohio State Journal, desired Mr. Eichards to look np a section of land in Arkan- sas, to which Scott held an original patent, and if possible sell it for him. Arrived at Cincinnati, where he was to take the steamboat that was to convey him down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, Mr. Richards found that the diocesan Synod of the Catholic Clergy was in session under Bishop Purcell, and that on the following day, which was Sun- day, strangers would be admitted as usual to the services in the Cathedral. He had made such progress in Catholic principles, in spite of his stout disclaimers of Romeward tend- encies, that a strong curiosity had been awakened in him to know something of the Catholic Church. He therefore attended the Solemn Vespers. The gathering of Bishops and priests was large for those days, for the clergy had just finished their annual retreat, under Bishop Whelan of Richmond, followed by a synod of the diocese. According to Mr. Richards' notes, the venerable Archbishop of Baltimore was also present; but this is prob- ably a mistake. The general impression made upon his mind by this, his first experience of a Catholic service, was, as he records, very 198 A LOYAL LIFE favorable, tliongli lie could not help remarking, in his letter to his wife, on the "mummery" and "the idolatrous action of the adoration of the host." In those days, the great means of travel southward was the sternwheel steamboats on the Mississippi River. Rivalry ran very high between the various lines and individual boats, the most reckless racing was incessantly in- dulged in, and frequent disasters occurred from fires, explosions and contact with hidden snags in the river bed. But the voyage seems at least to have been full of incident and interest. Mr. Richards notes with gratitude that the kindly Captain of the Moro Castle gave him passage at half rates, as a clergyman. Coming to Mem- phis, Tenn., our traveler landed and made prep- arations for a journey of fifty miles into the interior of Arkansas, in search of the land of his friend Scott. His account illustrates so well the difficulties of travel at the time, that it is perhaps worth transcribing. "I went on horseback, as there was no public conveyance of any kind. Having crossed the Mississippi on a flat ferry boat, I struck into what was called the old military road, which had been projected and partly built across the lowlands west of the river by' an appropriation of the general gov- ernment. For a few miles the 'pike' was completed. That is, the trees had been cut CONVERSION 199 away and the earth thrown np to the depth of two or three feet. It was then midwmter, and what a mudhole it did make! As I journeyed on, I found this road in all stages of completion, gradually tapering otf, if I may use the ex- pression, till there was actually no road at all. The reason lay in the fact that the ap- propriation of Congress had given out and no more could be got. I at last found myself in the midst of a swampy forest, with scarcely a 'blazed' tree to show where the road had been surveyed. There was nothing to guide the uncertain way of the stranger but the tracks of wagons and horses which had been over the ground before and which seemed spread out for miles in width. In answer to an anxious en- quiry put to a stranger whom I fortunately met on the road, I was told to go ahead and follow the tracks and I would be sure to come out right in the end. I waded for miles through water knee-deep to my horse and finally came plump up against a large lake. Then I observed that some had taken the right, some the left, around the lake. I took the right, and after riding some distance crossed a stream leading into the lake, almost swimming the horse, and so passing around and picking my way as well as I could, I finally emerged into the open country with something like a road. ... I came to a little settlement towards even- 200 A LOYAL LIFE ing, and asked for entertainment for man and beast at a tolerably respectable log cabin. Of course the accommodations were not the best, but I was glad to avail myself of such as were to be had. The next day, I reached the high- lauds and had the pleasure of enjoying the hos- pitality of Col. Cross (I think his name was), who was a planter living in a large frame house, built after the southern fashion with piazza all round and very open. The next day was Sun- day, and I preached to his negroes. The family were present at the services, which took place in one of the large rooms of the house. I do not think I was very happy in my address to the darkies. I fear I said too much about the duties of their position. If I were to perform that duty now, I should take a different line and I have no doubt I should make a much more favorable impression. But I was 'green' then in my knowledge of darkey nature. ''The next day was Christmas and it snowed until the ground was white. I started on my journey, and with such directions as Col. Cross gave me, I was enabled to pick my way through field and wood until I found the farm I was looking for. Lo, there was a squatter on it! He was surprised to see me. He was sick too, and I undertook the negotiation of the sale of the farm under rather unfavorable circum- stances. However, I finally arranged that he CONVERSION 201 was to pay a certain amount to our lawyer in Memphis by a certain time and we would then give him a good deed of the property. I for- get how many miles I rode through the woods to find a lawyer and notary to draw the neces- sary instrument. But I found what I wanted at a small village of quite recent date in the woods on the Black Eiver, composed of log cabins and built mostly on a steep hill-side run- ning down to the river. Having fulfilled my mission satisfactorily, I returned to Memphis by the same road by which I had come, happy in having escaped the Bowie knife and the pis- tol of the reputed fire-eating, jaw breaking Ar- kansian. ... I carried then, as I have always done, no arms of defense but such as nature had provided me with, I hope I may never need them more than I did then." A letter from Memphis to his wife has a num- ber of details illustrating vividly not only the state of his mind at that period, but also the impressions made upon him by the conditions of society in the first town that he had visited in the South. "Memphis, Tenn., Sunday, p. m. "Dec. 17, 1848. "My Dear Wife: "The first thing that occurred to me after I landed at this place, found my quarters and 202 A LOYAL LIFE started out for a little stroll, was the darkey song which I had recently heard sung under very pleasant circumstances: '"Ula, Ala, Ola— ee, Courting down in Tennessee!' ' ' Though I hope you will not suppose I have got along to the courting part yet, here I am in Tennessee. . . . xVrrived here about twelve o'clock to-day. I thought at first it was too late to go to church and started out for a little walk about town, and finally strayed (very naturally to be sure) in the direction of the church, till I found myself quite unintention- ally at the door. ... I thought I might as well drop in, if for nothing more than to gratify curiositv. I did so, when I found before me a good full congregation of very nice respect- able looking people, and up in the pulpit, half way between the floor and the top of the house, jutting from the end wall over the chancel, like an ancient prisoner hung up in a box to be de- voured by the birds, stood a tall, thin, gray- headed man, with his surplice on, declaiming with much energy and animation on the Passion of our Lord, I heard about half his sermon, pronounced it pretty good, and concluded to enter the Revd. Dr. Page on my list of approved priests of the true Catholic Church. . . . **I imagine myself with you in our own snug CONVERSION 203 little cottage, enjoying a pleasant Sunday even- ing. You are just about at tea now, you at the head of the table, Sister Nett on your right — or does Harry occupy that place now and Sister the seat of honor in that old arm-chair? — and Laura Belle on your left. Oh, my dear, sweet ones! all enjoying yourselves, while little Willie, the rogue, lies in the cradle and kicks and paddles and complains that he is not fairly dealt with. And what does Harry say? Does he ask for Pa, and does Laura say, 'I wish he would come home,' and does Mother think in silence, 'He is absent, but not forgotten,' and does even Sister say, ' 'Twere pleasant were he here?' . . . God bless you and keep you! The Father of Mercies watch over us all and in due time bring us together again in health and safety, with a thankful remembrance of his goodness! How pleasant the thought! He is there, he is here. He watches over us with a Father's love. 'He doeth all things well.' In Him we are one. In Him we are not separated but joined in a holy communion. And what- ever betide us, all things, if we love Him, shall work together for our good. . . . "Mr. Gallagher was not at home. . . . His church (St. Paul's) is about as pretty a speci- men of Gothic architecture as I have seen in the Western country. To my great astonishment, I found the tall spire was surmounted by a bona 204 A LOYAL LIFE fide cross, large, bold, prominent, and pic- turesque. I was so pleased that I could almost have crossed myself and made obeisance to it. Oh, when will the ultra-Protestant feeling get its eyes open to the beauty and impressive sig- nificance of that glorious symbol of our faith and realize the absurdity and injustice of al- lowing it to remain a symbol of Romish errour and superstition! . . . "You would be astonished to see the slaves here. Why, they are the very aristocracy of the colored race! The colored ladies flourish in their silks and satins, their cardinals and visites, wliile the colored 'gemmen,' with sleek hat, well-fitted broadcloth, tight boots well tipped and turned up, vie with the 'brighter' race. . . . There are no free blacks here. I asked Mr. Massey if the masters clothed their slaves in the manner I have described. He says they give them holiday money and little patches of ground to cultivate for themselves and other perquisites which they lay iip and then lay out in gratifying their taste for the fine arts,