Rebuilding a lost faith [antikvár]

PREFACETHE world of literature possesses many records of conversion to Catholicism which are more startling in their events, more powerful in their delineation and more pleasing in their language than this story. Yet the experience of every soul is after all unique, and I myself have gained much benefit from reading the accounts of those who have preceded me, as pilgrims to the Port of Peace. This book is the result of numerous requests to write an explanation of the motives, influences and arguments which brought me back to faith in God, the Bible, Immortality and the Christian Religion, and finally led me to enter the ancient, Apostolic, Catholic Church, whose Primate is the Pope. It has seemed best to preface this explanation with a brief account of my youthful religious experience, between which and my present standpoint there stretches, like a desert between two oases, a spiritual wilderness of more than forty years. Both of these widely separated mental states constitute kindred portions of my spiritual entity, the former having been to some extent the origin of the latter.From a glance at the Table of Contents of this volume one might perhaps conclude that the book is intended to be controversial. It is true that many of the usual differences between Catholics and Protestants are here discussed, but not with a desire for controversy. As I formerly took a more or less public stand towards prominent religious questionsunhappily in opposition to what I now through God's grace recognise as truthI feel myself constrained to state with equal frankness my present religious convictions. As possible readers, I have had in mind especially such Protestants and Rationalists as, like myself, have grown up under modern sceptical and materialistic conditions, with little or no conception of ecclesiastical authority. To them the point of view from which I have approached the study of the Catholic Church will seem familiar and natural, however much they may differ from me in my conclusions. To Catholics, who may turn these pages, I would say in advance, lest they be disappointed, that the results arrived at by these arguments