Searching for Light.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 17, 24 April 1902, Page 29

Searching for Light.

From a report in the ' Catholic Standard and Times ' of Philadelphia, of a ' Pailor Conference,' at which converts told many incidents that led to their conversion, we take the following :—: — Dr. Sundberg, ex-United States* Consul at Bag\da>d, told briefly of his conversion. While dissecting a finger he was struck with its manifold evidence of design, and said, ' Hero was a great Architect.' Other scientific investigations only strengthened this belief, and finally the existence of the Deity was established to his satisfaction. The next step was to find the religion of God. He looked for it among the Hindoos, the Mohammedans, and even among ahorigianl tribes. Polytheism has not so much an existence as is imagined. The names given are rather to tho One Supreme Being under different names, corresponding to the things needed, and asked for, as the God of the Harvest, the God of the Water, etc., etc. He was struck in his investigations with the devotion an,d self-denial ofl the Catholic Sisters in hospitals. Ministers at times buttonholed him, but the priests let him alone. He had made a life study of the diseases of society and judged the tree by its fruit, and he would assert that wherever Catholic doctrine has taken the strongest hold on the people, there he found the least amount of all these evils. In Catholic communities where these evils exi^t it is because the doctrine has; not taken possession of the people.