THE EXPERIENCES OF A CONVERT

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 35, 27 August 1903, Page 2

THE EXPERIENCES OF A CONVERT

A WOMAN'S 'APOLOGIA' In ' The City of Peace,' published by the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, seven converts relate their experiences. Of these one is anonymous, three are wellKnown priests— Dom Bede Camm, 0.5.8., Father Darlington, S.J., and Father Henry Browne, S.J., and three are ladies— Miss Chetwode, translator of Pastor's ' Lives of the Popes,' Mrs. Bar tie Teeling, author of ' Roman Violets,' etc., and Miss Susie Teresa Swift, formerly of the Salvation Army, but now of the Dominican Order. All seven narntives are full of interest, but more especially so the ' Apologia 'of Miss Swift. 'It was in 1884 (writes Miss Swift) that I ' knelt at the penitent form of the Salvation Army in Glasgow, and ga\e myself wholly up to the service of whatever God theie might be, on condition that He should give me the power to do right. I will here give shortly my spiritual history up to that point. A child of great natural devotion and quick logical powers, the desultory scraps of religion I picked up at home and in various' evangelistic meetings had disgusted me at first with what I called Christianity. Clever sceptical teachers told me that all religions were equally true and equally false. At 18 I had, however, "decided that I ' believed more than I disbelieved ' in Christianity, aDd had found an accommodating Episcopal clergyman who was willing to baptise and present me for confirmation, without insisting on my belief in anything more than ' the Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man ' He had said, ' That is all I suppose you to be assenting to when you answer, 'I do,' to my question, 'Do you believe all the articles of the Christian faith as contained in the Apostles Creed ? " ' And I thought he ought to know his own duties, accepted what he offered, and strove with his help to explain away all those sentences in the prayer botk which spoke of sin, and an atonement, and the Blood. But it was fatiguing. ' 1 really can't stick here,' I said to my friends. ' I must go on into the Catholic Church or go back into nothingism.' Just here the Salvation Army presented itself. I was too thoroughly Grounded in Newman's Works — read for their marvellous rhetoric and logic — for Anglican fallacies or Unitarian sentimentalities to attract me But the army boldly threw aside all that the sects travestied, and took its ground on Quakerism, which Dr Moehler says is the only thoroughly, logical form of Protestantism, answering, piece for piece, to the well-knit body of dogma presented by the Church Moreover, it offered the fullest scope for sacrifice. Its people dared ; they suffered.

I had no thought then of joining the Salvation Army. I felt I had a clue which might, in time, make me useful to souls in one Episcopal sisterhood, for I had always said that if ever I came to believe in Christianity, Christ should be everything.

An analysis of the mental processes which led me soon afterwards into the Salvation Army as an officer would be too personal to be of use to others. One strong motive was a desire to encourage my sister, who was suddenly converted through its means from a life of the most intense worldliness, and who is a prominent officer in its ranks to-day. The personal ' magnetism ' some people claim for the Booths never existed for me. The beautiful lives of obscure officers whose names are never known to ' The Family,' who have no recognition to hope for, and no prizes to play for in Army politics, won me. Such lives, woven of prayer, hold the Army together. My seven months as a cadet have always looked like a bad dream. My one idea was to live through them and get at-fny life work. Never was there more pliable novice than I. In those days we suffered real hardship. That was, perhaps, the best feature of our training. I was always cold, always exhausted and overstrained, generally hungry, and I blindly but steadily offered all up to our Lord for the sins of what we called ' great, dark London.' I gained immensely in indifference to externals, in habits of unquestioning obedience and outward humility. So far as I can learn the life of a Poor Clare or a Trappistine is comfortable compared to that of a cadet in my day. Spiritually I learned nothing. But a soul which has surrendered all, however mistakenly, gains some grace ; and I clung to God. Outside the homes, Army life can be healthy enough, mentally and spiritually. It is as the individual makes it. After finishing my training, I spent three months in my own home, applying Salvation Army tactics to the habits of American villagers, then returned to London as member of the Training Staff, as well as editor of the international monthly, ' All the World.' For several years I worked steadily on the ' War Cry,' also visiting nearly every Continental country As Preacher and Journalist, spending a great deal of time in the slums, helping in rescue and social work at every possible leisure moment, picking up stray children who needed caring for, rushing off into the provinces when wanted for lectures on Darkest England or at the General's great meetings, and getting from my own work and through the loving intimacy accorded me by the Booth family, as round a knowledge of the Salvation Army as it is possible for a woman to have. The General has ever been generous enough to say that 1 gave him the germ of his great social scheme. Lives so crowded as mine was leave little scope for theological questionings, and the readiness with which much contact with human nature and facile familiarity with my Bible enabled me to answer queries and objections, kept my ignorance from what George Eliot calls ♦ a painful sense of limpness. 1 During the years up to 1890, I never remember a shadow of doubt that I was doing God's will. Sorrows were many, difficulties thick. I agonised often over my lapses- from Salvation Army standards of perfection. I toiled to conquer my hot temper, I strove to crush the ♦ worldliness of the intellect ' which wearied of Wesley and Fletcher and Finney and Mrs. Booth, and longed even for a mathematical work to let my mind out on. But I believed all wrong was in myself. Father Faber's ' Growth in Holiness and Spiritual Conferences ' came into my hands at this time, and I have no words for the help they were to me. I told my superior officer, who, to a faithful Salvationist, takes the place of a director, that they helped me more than my Bible, and he solemnly warned me against drawing either comfort or help from 'a tainted source.' Next came a Catholic sermon— the second one 1 had ever heard— preached in the Church of the Holy Name, Manchester, in which city I was lecturing and collecting for the Darkest England Fund. In it, the three-fold power of prayer was clearly brought out, and the value of acts and sufferings, as well as of mere words offered up to God. Oh, the light and healing that came through that sermon ! After that I Wanted More Catholic Books, and discovered St. Joseph's Library, May fair. I careM not at all for theology, but revelled in lives of saints and founders of religious Orders, and I strove to weave all I learned into my own life and work, and to popularise them into the War Cry sketches. 1 Get us another saint for next week, won't you ? ' the editor used to say, coming into my office ; ' but not too Popish a one.' My own feeling was that I was working into my writing 4 the best in Catholicism.' Mdlle. Marie Belloc came to interview me as a woman editor somewhere

about this time, and thrust an unwitting pin into me by speaking of the marvellous stability of Catholic foundations and their irrepressible vitality. But it only pricked a day or two. My fellow-editor did me one very good turn. • I've got a wonderful little book,' he said to me one day. • Remarkable. It's called " Catholic Belief," by a Father Bruno.' • Lend it to me,' I pleaded. 'I daren't,' he said. 'But it's only sixpence, and you can get it in the Row.' I did before I slept. I grew fond of ' Catholic Belief.' It's denunciations of Justification by Faith only furnished me many a text against what Salvationists abhor as ' Only-Believe-ism.' But it didn't stir my conscience, and a ' Hail Mary ' which I essayed to say once nearly choked me. I never could even remember the 4 Hail Mary ' till I really wanted to pray it. A ' Life of St. Teresa,' with a preface by Cardinal Manning, made a great impression on me. I felt, as does my old auxiliary, Dr. Whyte of Edinburgh, that she knew how to draw near to God. May she do for him all she has done for me ! One morning I opened the book before breakfast, and laid it down with a strange terror. Somehow, from somewhere, through the cold London daylight in that ordinary little room, Teresa d'Ahumada spoke, and told me she should never let me go till I too was a child of the Church. Confession and Communion, as I knew they were linked and used in High Church parishes, seemed so me to supply A Need of Human Nature only partially met by Army penitent-forms and ' personals,' as manifestations of conscience to a superior is called. Confession would enable the officers to know the state of their soldiers' consciences, and, if insisted on as a duty incumbent on all, often prevent losses of which we knew nothing till they had occurred. • Some substitute for the communion service would,' I argued, ' meet the need some of us feel of a regular external act of worship. We can't go out to the penitent-form unless we have done wrong. But we often long to fling ourbelves down before God in special humility, when we are not conscious of sin.' For myself I always wanted to go to the penitentform when I was living closest to God, and my longing ior such confession of sin was a great trial to my Army friends. ' I'm best when I'm sorry ! ' I used to say. ' It's almost worth while to be a poor sinner ; to come to God in a sorry heap and be forgiven.' Indeed, truly devout Salvationists could hardly live for the meetings in which they may voice their 1 experiences ' and all their imperfections. No doubt the possession of an honest ' abiding sorrow for sin ' on the part of people who are taught, as I was, that admission of a sense of sin after one has ' obtained the second blessing ' is dishonoring to God, accounts for the melancholy tone so often taken by those experiences among Methodists. • Getting the second blessing ' with most English Salvationists, the General among them, means no more than striving to follow counsels of perfection with a consequent deepening of one's sorrow for sin, though the influences of American religious emotionalism have, in this country, produced a far more dangerous tendency in 4 holiness ' teaching. All these ideas I voiced with the utmost frankness to Mr. Bramwell Booth, his wife, and Commissioners Railton and Corleton, who were my close friends. ' But I never took you seriously,' protested Mr. Booth when I reminded him of these talks after my conversion. He could hardly have shown more clearly how Salvationists regard the most sacred dogmas as pure matters of speculation. They were never such to me. In 1895 I was set to work, among waif and stray boys in London, and, later on in the year, given charge of the Auxiliary League of non-Salvationists who support the Army by money and influence. This involved much speaking from Protestant pulpits of all denominations, an intercourse with Protestants which only deepened my love for the Army. 'We know neither Catholic nor Protestant,' say its members. 'We are Salvationists.' In March, 1896, at the time of Mr. Ballington Booth's quarrel with his father, which threatened the complete disruption of the Army in America, I was sent hurriedly to New York to do what I could to uphold the principles of the Salvation Army— of internationalism, of unity in faith (?), of surrender of individualism for the sake of union in a Spirit-guided body. But Providence Ruled it Otherwise for me. Just at the critical moment of my mission to what I had believed to be a Spirit-guided body, I was summoned to my mother's deathbed, where I was obliged to watch for a period of five weeks, during which my mind was distracted from international schemes for

averting the disruption then threatening the Army. Besides, my bewildered spirit could not help exclaiming as I watched the sufferer visibly nearing her end, ' she is dying like a Catholic saint, not like a Salvationist ' The constant acts of contrition, the perpetual ejaculatory prayers—' Mercy, my Father ! My Jesus, mercy ! '—the steady disclaiming all personal merit and the longing for strong authorised aid such as she regarded my own and that of my Savaltiomst brother-in-law were also Catholic. And I rejoice to-day to recall that from many Salvationist deathbeds the delusion of ' sanetification ' seems to pass. Mrs. General Booth herself begged us to sing, beside her's, a song tabooed in Aimy meetings— ' The mistakes of my life have been many, The sins of my heart have been more.' My mother was the sweetest and most instinctively Catholic soul I have ever known. She had never entered a Catholic church, nor read a Catholic book. But she spent hours each day in prayer, and had to be held back, like St. Elizabeth, from stripping her wardrobe for the poor. She always prayed for her dear dead She said once, hearing my sister declaim against a crucifix of mine, ' I do not understand how Lily can speak so It can only help us to see representations of our Lord on the Cross in every room. After her deatn I prayed for her still, I spoke to her in God, not knowing how I verged on Catholic doctrine in so doing. And a week after she went away from us, a longing to ' come close to our Lord,' as 1 put it, in Holy Communion, woke in my heart, and was ne\er soothed until lie came to me one stormy morning of last March, in the Pro-Cathedral at Liverpool. After my Mother's Death I went back to New York. I was a ' Brigadier,' head of the 6000 ' Auxiliaries,' and selected as a sort of con-troversialist-in-ordinary, in a warfare against Salvationist repudiation of the Sacraments by leading sectarian ministers of the city. I studied Barclay's Apology—the Salvationist Authority— and my New Testament, and wondered what these ministers were contending for. The New Testament alone offered no ground for their own views. The New Testament interpreted by tradition, in whose light the General said we were to read it, even when one accepted his definition of tradition as ' the consensus of Christian belief,' taught the doctrine of the Catholic Church. I drifted, one November Sunday, into the Jesuit church in Fifteenth street for Benediction, and realised, for the first time, that our Lord was present in a different way to that in which He may be spiritually present with His people anywhere. I believed, because I discerned Him. Still I took no action. Belief like mine was still a different thing from living faith. Next I learned that my dear friend, Hon. Mrs Drummond, of London, Had Been Received Into the Church in August. She had been my sheet anchor of Protestantism, and the embodiment of all that ga\e Salvatiomsm an intellectual right to exist. I wrote, entreating her to give me the grounds for her action ; but the line of argument which had convinced her did not appeal to me It was based on a reverence for Scripture authority which I had never felt. She begged me to consult Father Searle, the noted Paulist, and to read his book, ' Plain Facts ' Pressed by a determination to know at least just what I did believe, I went to him Father Searle refused my cry for ' more books,' saying that I had read enough, thanks to St. Joseph s library, and that my one crux, ' Did our Lord intend to establish a visible Church on earth ? ' could only be met by the illumination of grace. I was to go away and pi ay— to make prayer a constant undercurrent of life, and to offer up all my work as prayer for light What Church He founded, if any, did not need coiiMdennp, I had settled that years before, and le-settled it when Purcell's ' Life of Cardinal Manning ' brought the (Jorham controversy to light again. (I am not aware that the said book was ever of benefit to any living soul besides myself ) This was on December 26, 1897 I asked my American leaders for thiee months' leave to think, pray, and 1 settle some spiritual difficulties ' They lefuscd absolutely. ' Might I be excused from my next lectunng tour ? ' I might not No word was said m reply to my complaint of spuitual difficulties The Salvation Army is established to caie for the souls of those outside its ranks, at what cost to the souls within, who are found able to extend its domain, it matters not, unless they make utter moral shipwreck I had previously written to Mr Bramwell Booth, telling him that Mrs Dnnnmond's conversion had shaken me and pleading tautlv for help. He had none to give, and he never answered my letter. By New Year's Eve I needed no help fi om him. I saw the Church as Christ's creation in the pages of my little red Army Testament as clearly as I saw

Himself to be the Incarnate God. I had stolen that night for God and my own soul, and shut myself into my room promising Him to read that Testament unbiassedly, and to act on what He might show me through it.

Next Day Came the Real Agony. I believed my conversion would literally kill my father and my friend and leader, Emma Booth Tucker. I had no single Catholic acquaintance on all that continent ;■ Father Searle had left the city. The bed I slept on was Army property, the clothes I wore were Salvationist uniform, my home was my sister's Salvationist headquarters New York police would probably not allow me to sit on a doorstep and enjoy the luxury of being a Catholic, and how would flesh and blood and woman's nerves ever endure the clash round me of all that had made life for so long ?

I slipped away and found Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Nathaniel Hawthorne's convert daughter, down at her wonderful Damien-like work of caring for cancer patients in the slums, and she took me to Father Van Rensseiaer, S J — a man who had heard that clash himself of a world falling round him. He sent me to the Archbishop — the Salvationist convert seeming to present herself to everybody as a curious anomaly— and finally I turned back to the Paulists. There is no need to tell of all the storms and tempests and excitements the next weeks held.

' I wish I were an apple woman or a crossing-swee-pei with no responsibilities in the world but my own soul ! ' I used to wail, wondering if I had a right to my own salvation when it seemed likely to cost the spiritual wreckage of many. Then I was called to England at three days' notice to give an account of my intentions. I dared not go unbaptised or unabsolved, and two days before I sailed I Hung myself into the office of the editor of the • Catholic World,' Rev. A. P. Doyle, C.S.P. His sympathy and wise helpfulness had never failed during the weeks in which he had been instructing the most irregular and terrified of catechumens, who had always before her the fear that an enterprising Journalist might be on her track. I said that day, ' I've come, and I can only possibly stay an hour ; can you take me in now ? ' And he did. Oh, the bliss of it ! As I jogged up town on the ' Elevated,' clutching still that fhst worn little copy of ' Catholic Belief,' bought m the Old-World Paternoster Row, the words of an Anglican hymn rang in my ears— ' Forth from the dark and stormy sky, Lord, to Thine altar's shade we fly. Forth from the world, its hope and fear, Savior, we seek a refuge here, Weary and weak, Thy grace we pray, Turn not, O Lord, Thy guests away ! ' Of all the baptismal service the words I longed to hear were ' Ingredeie in templum Dei ' ' Is there any particular saint whose name you would like to take ? ' asked Father Doyle at the font, and I opened wide mine eyes. ' Teresa of couise ' Her help and her friendship had been as real a thing to me as Mrs. Drummond's or Mrs. Lathrop's or his own ; and the thoughts kept uppermost in my mind through severance and loneliness and — hardest of all — apparent uselessness and idleness is ' After all I, too, am a child of the Church,'