Part 21

He came to California on his second visit, in 1863, when the war was raging. An incident occurred that gave him a very emphatic reminder that those were troublous times.

He was at a camp-meeting in the San Joaquin Valley, near Linden--a place famous for gatherings of this sort. The Bishop was to preach at eleven o'clock, and a great crowd was there, full of high expectation. A stranger drove up just before the hour of service--a broad shouldered man in blue clothes, and wearing a glazed cap. He asked to see Bishop Kavanaugh privately for a few moments.

They retired to "the preachers' tent," and the stranger said:

"My name is Jackson--Colonel Jackson, of the United States Army. I have a disagreeable duty to perform. By order of General McDowell, I am to place you under arrest, and take you to San Francisco."

"Can you wait until I preach my sermon?" asked the Bishop, good-naturedly; "the people expect it, and I don't want to disappoint them if it can be helped."

"How long will it take you?"

"Well, I am a little uncertain when I get started, but I will try not to be too long."

"Very well; go on with your sermon, and if you have no objection I will be one of your hearers."

The secret was known only to the Bishop and his captor. The sermon was one of his best--the vast crowd of people were mightily moved, and the Colonel's eyes were not dry when it closed. After a prayer, and a song, and a collection, the Bishop stood up again before the people, and said:

"I have just received a message which makes it necessary for me to return to San Francisco immediately. I am sorry that I cannot remain longer, and participate with you in the hallowed enjoyments of the occasion. The blessing of God be with you, my brethren and sisters."

His manner was so bland, and his tone so serene, that nobody had the faintest suspicion as to what it was that called him away so suddenly. When he drove off with the stranger, the popular surmise was that it was a wedding or a funeral that called for such haste. These are two events in human life that admit of no delays: people must be buried, and they will be married.

The Bishop reported to General Mason, Provost-marshal General, and was told to hold himself as in duress until further orders, and to be ready to appear at headquarters at short notice when called for. He was put on parole, as it were. He came down to San Jose and stirred my congregation with several of his powerful discourses. In the meantime the arrest had gotten into the newspapers. Nothing that happens escapes the California journalists, and they have even been known to get hold of things that never happened at all. It seems that someone in the shape of a man had made an affidavit that Bishop Kavanaugh had come to the Pacific Coast as a secret agent of the Southern Confederacy, to intrigue and recruit in its interest! Five minutes' inquiry would have satisfied General McDowell of the silliness of such a charge--but it was in war times, and he did not stop to make the inquiry. In Kentucky the good old Bishop had the freedom of the whole land, coming and going without hinderance; but the fact was, he had not been within the Confederate lines since the war began. To make such an accusation against him was the climax of absurdity.

About three weeks after the date of his arrest, I was with the Bishop one morning on our way to Judge Moore's beautiful country-seat, near San Jose, situated on the far-famed Alameda. The carriage was driven by a black man named Henry. Passing the post-office, I found, addressed to the Bishop in my care, a huge document bearing the official stamp of the provost-marshal's office, San Francisco. He opened and read it as we drove slowly along, and as he did so he brightened up, and turning to Henry, said:

"Henry, were you ever a slave?"

"Yes, sah; in Mizzoory," said Henry, showing his white teeth.

"Did you ever get your free-papers?"

"Yes, sah--got 'em now."

"Well, I have got mine--let's shake hands."

And the Bishop and Henry had quite a handshaking over this mutual experience. Henry enjoyed it greatly, as his frequent chucklings evinced while the Judge's fine bays were trotting along the Alameda.

(I linger on the word Alameda as I write it. It is at least one beneficent trace of the early Jesuit Fathers who founded the San Jose and Santa Clara missions a hundred years ago. They planted an avenue of willows the entire three miles, and in that rich, moist soil the trees have grown until their trunks are of enormous size, and their branches, overarching the highway with their dense shade, make a drive of unequaled beauty and pleasantness. The horse-cars have now taken away much of its romance, but in the early days it was famous for moonlight drives and their concomitants and consequences. A long-limbed four-year-old California colt gave me a romantic touch of a different sort, nearly the last time I was on the Alameda, by running away with the buggy, and breaking it and me--almost--to pieces. I am reminded of it by the pain in my crippled right-shoulder as I write these lines in July, 1881. But still I say, Blessings on the memory of the Fathers who planted the willows on the Alameda!)

An intimation was given the Bishop that if he wanted the name of the false-swearer who had caused him to be arrested he could have it.

"No, I don't want to know his name," said he; "it will do me no good to know it. May God pardon his sin, as I do most heartily!"

A really strong preacher preaches a great many sermons, each of which the hearers claim to be the greatest sermon of his life. I have heard of at least a half dozen "greatest" sermons by Bascom and Pierce, and other noted pulpit orators. But I heard one sermon by Kavanaugh that was probably indeed his master-effort. It had a history. When the Bishop started to Oregon, in 1863, I placed in his hands Bascom's Lectures, which, strange to say, he had never read. Of these Lectures the elder Dr. Bond said "they would be the colossal pillars of Bascom's fame when his printed sermons were forgotten." Those Lectures wonderfully anticipated the changing phases of the materialistic infidelity developed since his day, and applied to them the reductio ad absurdum with relentless and resistless power. On his return from Oregon, Kavanaugh met and presided over the Annual Conference at San Jose. One of his old friends, who was troubled with skeptical thoughts of the materialistic sort, requested him to preach a sermon for his special benefit. This request, and the previous reading of the Lectures, directed his mind to the topic suggested with intense earnestness. The result was, as I shall always think, the sermon of a lifetime. The text was, There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. (Job xxxii. 8.) That mighty discourse was a demonstration of the truth of the affirmation of the text. I will not attempt to reproduce it here, though many of its passages are still vivid in my memory. It tore to shreds the sophistries by which it was sought to sink immortal man to the level of the brutes that perish; it appealed to the consciousness of his hearers in red-hot logic that burned its way to the inmost depths of the coldest and hardest hearts; it scintillated now and then sparkles of wit like the illuminated edges of an advancing thundercloud; borne, on the wings of his imagination, whose mighty sweep took him beyond the bounds of earth, through whirling worlds and burning suns, he found the culmination of human destiny, in the bosom of eternity, infinity, and God. The peroration was indescribable. The rapt audience reeled under it. Inspiration! the man of God was himself its demonstration, for the power of his word was not his own.

"O I thank God that be sent me here this day to hear that sermon! I never heard any thing like it, and I shall never forget it, or cease to be thankful that I heard it," said the Rev. Dr. Charles Wadsworth, of Philadelphia, the great Presbyterian preacher--a man of genius, and a true prose-poet, as any one will concede after reading his published sermons. As he spoke, the tears were in his eyes, the muscles of his face quivering, and his chest heaving with irrepressible emotion. Nobody who heard that discourse will accuse me of too high coloring in this brief description of it.

"Don't you wish you were a Kentuckian?" was the enthusiastic exclamation of a lady who brought from Kentucky a matchless wit and the culture of Science Hill Academy, which has blessed and brightened so many homes from the Ohio to the Sacramento.

I think the Bishop was present on another occasion when the compliment he received was a left-handed one. It was at the Stone Church in Suisun Valley. The Bishop and a number of the most prominent ministers of the Pacific Conference were present at a Saturday-morning preaching appointment. They had all been engaged in protracted labors, and, beginning with the Bishop, one after another declined to preach. The lot fell at last upon a boyish-looking brother of very small stature, who labored under the double disadvantage of being a very young preacher, and of having been reared in the immediate vicinity. The people were disappointed and indignant when they saw the little fellow go into the pulpit. None showed their displeasure more plainly than Uncle Ben Brown, a somewhat eccentric old brother, who was one of the founders of that Society, and one of its best official members. He sat as usual on a front seat, his thick eyebrows fiercely knit, and his face wearing a heavy frown. He had expected to hear the Bishop, and this was what it had come to! He drew his shoulders sullenly down, and, with his eyes bent upon the floor, nursed his wrath. The little preacher began his sermon, and soon astonished everybody by the energy with which he spoke. As he proceeded, the frown on Uncle Ben's face relaxed a little; at length he lifted his eyes and glanced at the speaker in surprise. He did not think it was in him. With abnormal fluency and force, the little preacher went on with the increasing sympathy of his audience, who were feeling the effects of a generous reaction in his favor. Uncle Ben, touched a little with honest obstinacy as he was, gradually relaxed in the sternness of his looks, straightening up by degrees until he sat upright facing the speaker in a sort of half-reluctant, pleased wonder. Just at the close of a specially vigorous burst of declamation, the old man exclaimed, in a loud voice:

"Bless God! he uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty!" casting around a triumphant glance at the Bishop and other preachers.

This impromptu remark was more amusing to the hearers than helpful to the preacher, I fear; but it was away the dear old brother had of speaking out in meeting.