Chapter 30: The Sexton Smiled

“WILL you accept one of these little books?” said I, offering a Scripture Gift Mission Gospel, as the front door of a house slowly opened in response to my knock. I was engaged in a house-to-house diminution of these attractive little Gospels.
“What’s this?” replied a harsh and unfriendly voice; and I started somewhat when I saw before me the rather ungainly form and features of the Roman Catholic vicar of Jacarehy, an old-fashioned little city near the coast of Brazil, where we had just circulated 1000 portions of God’s Word.
He was attired in his clerical cassock — which did not show off his rather bulky proportions to advantage — and his features had anything but a Christian look about them. I am sorry to draw attention to such personal details; but why is it that so many of these priests have such unlovely and unholy features? Is it the enforced celibacy, the lack of intellectual freedom, or the unwholesome atmosphere of many of their duties, especially those connected with the Confessional, that lies at the root of this phenomenon? I dare not say, but the fact is everywhere remarked on. However, I found this priest far above the average of his class in tolerance and intelligence.
He looked at the beautiful little Gospel in a sour and forbidding way; and then, directing an equally amiable glance at me, he awaited my reply.
“It’s a true copy of the Gospel of John,” I said.
“Ha! nothing of the kind!” he growled. “You had better not circulate any more of this stuff here, for I shall certainly tell my people to destroy them all. They are false and Protestant!”
“No, sir,” I rejoined; “they are neither the one nor the other, but truly apostolic, and just as you may find them in your own Bible, if you have one.”
“Come inside,” said the priest, and in I went.
His sitting-room was sparsely furnished with a few chairs, a desk with a silver crucifix just above it, and a few lithographed prints of “saints” on the walls.
“Your books,” he explained, in rather a lofty tone, “lack the official approval of the Holy Church, and are vitiated translations; besides which the Holy Councils have determined that it is not wise to put such matters into the hands of the common folk, who cannot understand these things except by the infallible interpretation of the Holy Church and its doctors, who gave us the Bible.”
To this I objected that if the common folk of two thousand years ago heard gladly and understood the teachings of our Lord, why should not the more enlightened people of today be able to do so? The priest’s sacristan (sexton), a pale youth, stood by, trembling at my audacity; but at this juncture I caught his eye, and he smiled. Then I asked the father to show me one of the falsifications. The priest shook his head, and mixed up something about the Council of Trent and the Church’s authorized interpretation, though he could not explain just where that interpretation was to be found — for it does not exist.
“Besides,” he exclaimed, with rather a malicious look and a wicked roll of his eyes, “your Bible is false, for where is the Book of Maccabees?” And he glanced at the sexton as much as to say, “I’ve cornered the heretic this time.” “On this point,” I replied, “I stand with the House of Judah, who reject that book as spurious, and with Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine, who agreed that the Apocryphal books were not canonical.”
“Ah!” he said, evasively; “you Protestants each interpret the Bible as you please; and look at the result — what confusion, what heresy, and how innumerable are the Protestant sects and divisions in consequence! Our Holy Church, governed by the most holy Father, the Pope, is undivided, and we never dispute nor quarrel.”
“Nor do the dead in the cemetery,” said I; “and as for the divisions you speak of, I am no apologist of such, nor do I think of myself as a Protestant, seeing that under that banner you also classify Spiritualists, Masons, Deists, and Anarchists alike. I hold to the simple glorious name of Christian.”
“We are all Catholics here at any rate,” he said; “you waste your time. The people don’t want your religion, and will do what I tell them as the minister of God — of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church.”
“Pardon me,” I interrupted, “you are very much mistaken. I have been in Brazil over twenty years and have not met six true Catholics;” and in answer to an inarticulate exclamation, I added, “for they are nearly all Protestants!”
The priest gasped and stared at me. Then he demanded what I meant; but the sacristan smiled. “Why,” said I, “if a Roman Catholic is one who believes and obeys all that your Church teaches, then most Brazilians are Protestants, for they are always protesting against this doctrine and the other. They never agree among themselves, except when they speak ill of the priest.”
The holy father affected a sigh, and said the end of the world was at hand; things were getting very bad, and apostasy was increasing — to which I heartily agreed, but added that the main cause of so much unbelief and error was that the Bible had been kept from the people. “If you are not satisfied with our books, why do you not publish them yourselves? What has become of the Pope’s approval of the Society of Jerome? If you will not circulate the Gospels, we will.” And again the sacristan smiled.
Here the priest changed the subject, and wanted to involve me in arguments about Purgatory, Confession, and the Supremacy of Peter, parading all the stock arguments of the seminary with distorted and maimed Scripture texts, freely inlaid with doubtful Latin which made him at once feel more at ease, though he was not altogether comfortable about Peter’s supremacy. “Ah!” he said, very self-complacently, “you need only study our theologians to see your error, and to do as so many illustrious countrymen of yours have done, in joining the Holy Catholic Church.”
When I suggested that quite a few had taken the opposite course in leaving Rome, he agreed that that was so, but that it was because they found the Church’s doctrine too rigid — not enough scope being allowed for their vices. Then, in the case of priests who had done so, it was always because the poor creatures wanted to get married, as was the case with Luther, who, he informed me, was a very depraved and immoral young man; and that that was really why he became a Protestant.
“Don’t tell the Germans that,” was my on comment.
Then again he dived into doctrines and dogmas and rusty Latin, till I exclaimed, “What does all this matter? The people need a knowledge of the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ, which offers them eternal life, and why should you oppose it and permit its substitution by these worthless images and pictures of saints?”
“Not worthless,” he replied vehemently. “They are holy helps to devotion, and may be loved and venerated, just as you would the portrait of your mother.”
“But, senhor, they are not even portraits,” I replied. “Convince me that they are and you have a strong point; but as it is, all the world knows that they are purely fictitious and imaginary. Here in this town alone there are over a hundred different conceptions of Christ, and all are utterly false, while. many are actually debasing and blasphemous. All these things only make for materialism and sensuality; whereas the religion of Jesus Christ is a spiritual one.”
I then told him something of the story of my own conversion from mere Protestantism to Christ, and spoke on the need of a knowledge of salvation. This, he said, was morally possible, but practically quite the reverse — one of those subtle distinctions that only the Church of Rome itself understands. I expressed a hope of his conversion; and soon after this our interview, which had lasted about an hour, terminated. He kept the Gospel, and we parted on good terms.
As soon as I had left, to the sacristan’s astonishment, the priest flung himself into a seat, exclaiming, “Oh, but I’m a miserable sinner!” Just what he meant, I cannot say.
The next day the sacristan renounced his faith in the priest and the Church, and started to seek for some secular employment which would enable him to attend our meetings and to follow the Gospel call.
The heathen rage against God’s Holy Word;
The critics count it all but a vain dream;
The priests of Rome condemn its voice, unheard;
Yet fuller, deeper, flows its stream.

As streams which ope to life, embracing wide
The fruitless plains of southern Palestine;
So ever flows this healing, saving tide,
And millions bless the Source of joys divine.

Thus still, while critic, priest, and skeptic rave,
God’s Word, unscathed, maintains its power to save.