Two Distinguished Converts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 13, 1 April 1909, Page 489

Two Distinguished Converts

After years of conversion, and after several years in /the sacred ministry, the distinguished author, Father Robert Hugh Benson, the convert son of the late Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, says : ' The Church promises a great deal, but. my experience is that she gives ten times more. And if you put on the balance the most successful life outside the Church and the most unsuccessful and disastrous life within her fold, a thousand times rather choose the latter. The Catholic Church is supremely what she promises to be. She is the price pearl for which the greatest sacrifice is not too great.'

A similar experience is recorded in such happy phrase by Mr. C .Kegan- Paul, the- noted author and publisher, that it is worth quoting in full. ■ We take" it from the story of his conversion, which is so exquisitely told by himself in Roads to Borne (edited by Mr. Godfrey Raupert), the third edition of which is just to hand. ' Those who are not converts,' says Mr. Kegan Paul (pp. 203-4), 'are apt to think and say that converts join the Church in a certain exaltation of spirit, but that when it cools they regret what has been done-, and would return but for very shame. It has been said of marriage that every one finds, when the ceremony is over, that he or she has married another, and not the bride or groom who seemed to have been won; and Clough takes the story of Jacob as a parable representing this fact. We wed Rachel, as we think, and in the morning, behold it is Leah. So the Church bears one aspect when seen from a distance, ab extra; another when you have given yourself to her keeping.' ,

' But,' continues our author, ' the Church is no Leah, rather a fairer Rachel than we dared to dream, her blessings are greater than we had hoped. I may say for myself that the happy tears shed, at the tribunal of Penance, on that 12th day of August, the fervor of my first Communion, were as nothing to what I feel now. Day by. day the-mys-tery of the Altar seems greater", the unseen world nearer, God more a Father, our Lady more tender, the great company of the saints more friendly — if .1 dare use the word — my guardian angel closer to my side. All" human relationships become holier, all human friends dearer, because they are explained and sanctified by the relationships and the friendships of another life. Sorrows have come to me in. abundance since God gave me the grace to enter His<. Church, but I' can bear them better than of old, and the blessing He has given me "outweighs them all. May He forgive me that I so long resisted Him, and lead those I love unto the fair land wherein He has brought me to dwell ! It will be said, and with truth, that I am very confident. My experience is like that 1 of the blind man in the Gospel who was sure. He was still, ignorant of 'much, nor could he fully explain hoio Jesus opened his eyes, but this -he cotild say with unfaltering certainty: "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." '