Harvard memorial biographies ...

Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff.

45

Father Gavazzi's lectures in Boston, and heard the doctrines
of purgatory, the intercession of the saints, transubstantiation,
the infallibility of the Church, etc., explained, and then attacked by the reverend lecturer. With the boy listener, the
explanations had more effect than the subsequent attempted
refutation of the doctrines. He had never, up to this time,
read a Catholic book, entered a Catholic church, or spoken
to any Catholic of the state of his mind. Soon after, however,
he obtained a Catholic Prayer-Book, and commenced its use,
and about the end of the spring began to attend the Franklin
Street Church, kneeling in the back part among the laborers,
but never having spoken to a priest or educated Catholic.
His summer vacation he spent in Maine, taking with him
Cumming's "Lectures on Romanism," and, while reading it,
very naturally for him, with his habitual love of argument,
constantly espoused the opposite side.
During his visit in Maine he was examined by Rev. John
Bapst, a Jesuit clergyman, and baptized at Bangor, August
19, 1854. Thereafter he was a Catholic from the heart, and,
as he matured in years, with all the enthusiasm and strength
of his nature. More particularly during the last two years
of his college life, absorbed by religious investigation and
religious interests, he kept in a manner aloof from his classmates, from whom he could have had but little sympathy,
and devoted himself to controversial reading and discussion,
and to active labors in Boston among the Catholic youth
of the city. He consecrated himself to a religious life with
sincere intent, according to his faith, dedicated himself to
the work of the priesthood, and in the closing years of his
life at Cambridge, looked forward with much longing to that
which should be to him a quiet retreat from all conflicts,
with entire abnegation of personal aims and ambitions,-the
Novitiate of the Order of the Jesuits.
His inward experiences in regard to this important religious
change may best be learned through an extract from his
autobiography in the Class-Book, written at the time of
graduation: -