With Readers and Correspondents [pp. 420-427]

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.
TO LEO XIII.,
SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD.
Decemnber, 1887.
I. Lo! fifty years have passed since Jesus Christ
II. Elected thee to bear His yoke, and make
III. Oblation of thy life and love: and find
IV. Thy heritage among the blest who give v. Humanity's best friends-whose motto reads,
vI."I serve God's servants." Such thy name and work,
VII. Reminding thee, enthroned, of Him who left
VIII. The throne of Heav'n to serve a suffering world.
IX. Employment all divine! Work God and man
x. Exalts. The nations of the earth to-day
xi. Name thee their noblest head and wisest guide,
xII. True to God's rights and theirs; and breathe the prayer,
XIII. Heav'n bless and spare the thirteenth Leo, Pope,
Priest, Pastor, Pontiff Servant names them all!
ALFRED YOUNG.
WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.
STORY OF A CONVERSION.
You ask me to write an account of my conversion, but, in truth, I think it
is hardly worth telling. If there is anything peculiar about it, it is that what made
me a Catholic was what first made me a Congregationalist; my joining the Catholic Church was but the completion of that act. This happened when I was nineteen years old. I was born and brought up in a New England village, my parents
being of exemplary lives; but my father never joined church, and mny mother did
so only when I was about eleven years old. I saw her baptized in the orthodox
church, and it was a great event to me, being the earliest of my strong religious
impressions. Of course I considered myself as too young to become a Christian,
but hoped that God would spare me till I was old enough: there is no use for
children in Calvinism. At the age of nineteen I professed religion and was baptized. The Bible was the cause of it. I read it from earliest childhood, and, after
the ripening of my faculties, followed the rational process of discovering the truth,
proving Christianity historically and then Scripturally, not the least argument,
however, being the need I found of it to keep the natural law of God. The Pil
[Dec.,
420