Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1889-05-17
A LINGERING AND HORRIBLE
DEA TIL


Jesuits, Macaulay uses the following strong
and touching language: "If his ministry
was needed in some country where his life
was mere insecure than that of wolf,
where it was a crime TO harbor him, where
the heads and quarters of his brethren,
fixed in the public places, showed him
what he had to expect, he went without
remonstrance or hesitation to his doom.
Nor is this heroic spirit yet extinct. When,
in our time, new and terrible pestilence
passed around the globe, when in some
great cities, fear had dissolved all the ties
which hold society together, when the secu-
lar clergy had forsaken their flocks, when
medical succor was not to be purchased by
gold, when the strongest natural affections
had yielded to the love Of life, even then
the Jesuit was found by the pallet which
bishop and curate, physician and nurse,
father and mother had deserted, bending
over infected lips to catch the faint accents
of confession, and holding up to the last,
before the expiring penitent, the image OF
the expiring Redeemcr."
Throughout the civilized world the news
papers have paid eloquent tribute to the
memory of Father Damien in recording the
close of career Of self.sacrifice more than
remarkable, and ranking him among the
great martyrs, although he was not the first
man to dedicate his life TO the service of the
victims OF perhaps the most loathsome and
hopeless Of lingering diseases.
The New York 77S5wne Of Sunday last
pays the following beautiful and pathetic
tribute to Father Damien:
The records of the Middle Ages, when
this disorder, now stamped out from the
earth except in few plague.spots, was u
general scourage covering the face OF Europe
with pest-houses and asylums where its mis-
cradle victims were shut up from contact
with mankind, are full of such evidences OF
heroic unselfishness. But it is safe to say
that in the whole history of the race NO man
ever entered upon the service of the most
abjectly miserable of his fellow creatures
under circumstances involving more COM
plete selfabnegaticn than did Father Da-
mien. There was no gittering ceremonial
to stimulate his purpose. The mission was
absolutely unattended by any element of
the picturesque and spectacular, such as has
often, no doubt, mingled even in the pious
dreams of saints The scene of his labors
was to be narrow strip of sand in the
Pacific Ocean, and his only associates dur
ing exile swarm of wretches, whose bodies
had been rendered hideous by the rayages
Of leprosy, and whose souls had been bru.
ialized by sense of the hopelessness Of
their doom and of their utter isolation from
their fellew-men.
1t was not as man broken either by age
or sorrow that Damien resolved literally to
give his life to these outcasts. He was only
thirty-three, at a period when the pulse OF
healthy man beats highest. He was en-
already attracted the attention of his supe.
riors, and was regarded as man of marked
promise in the priesthood. He knew that
when he had once taken his place among
the lepers OF Molokai he must remain u
prisoner with them till the end of his life,
and that, in all probability, he would die
their death. The brutal indifference of the
Hawaiin Government had thrust these poor
creatures away on barren peninsula from
which escape was impossible. Damien found
them colony of men and women forgetting
God and hating man, utterly wretched in
body and mind, and abandoned in their
desperation 10 every lOTHi vi WiCheuntss.
The task of bringing order out of chaos like
this might well have appalled, even drawer
soul than his, but he set about it promptly
He first endeavored TO improve their physi-
cal condition as the best preparation for
neral amelioration. He worked like slave
with his own hands at everything, from the
building of their houses to the digging of
their graves. A change for the better in
their way'of living, combined with their in
flnence Of his own lofty character and the
constant incubation Of the principles of re-
ligion, in time transformed this nest of dis
ease stricken savages into Christian COM
muDity. Alter eleven years passed in this
work the blight fastened itself upon him
also, and the five years that have elapsed
since that time have been passed in the lin.
gering death of leprosy. Surely few men
who have given their lives for others have
had 20 endure so much and so long.
He was not, however, without disciple.
Some years ago young priest, Father Con-
rardy, joined him, ready to take up his work
when he should lay it down. Revelations
of latter. day heroism such as these kindle a
new faith in humanity.