The fact that Mrs. Seton was in doubt upon the question of religion made her a subject of attack for the friends of all denominations. Writing of this, she says: “I had a most affectionate note from Mr. Hobart to-day, asking me how I could ever think of leaving the Church in which I was baptized. But, though whatever he says has the weight of my partiality for him, as well as the respect it seems to me I could scarcely have for anyone else, yet that question made me smile; for it is like saying that wherever a child is born and wherever its parents place it, there it will find the truth; and he does not hear the droll invitations made me every day since I am in my little new home and old friends come to see me.
“It has already happened that one of the most excellent women I ever knew, who is of the Church of Scotland, finding me unsettled about the great object of a true faith, said to me: ‘Oh, do, dear soul, come and hear our J. Mason and I am sure you will join us.’
“A little after came one whom I loved, for the purest and most innocent of manners, of the Society of Quakers (to which I have always been attached), she coaxed me, too, with artless persuasion: ‘Betsey, I tell thee, thee had better come with us.’ And my faithful old friend of the Anabaptist meeting, Mrs. T——, says, with tears in her eyes: ‘Oh! could you be regenerated; could you know our experiences and enjoy with us our heavenly banquet.’ And my good old Mary, the Methodist, groans and contemplates, as she calls it, over my soul, so misled because I have got no convictions. But, oh, my Father and My God! all that will not do for me. Your word is truth, and without contradiction, whatever it is. One faith, one hope, one baptism, I look for, whatever it is, and I often think my sins, my miseries, hide the light. Yet I will cling and hold to my God to the last gasp, begging for that light, and never change until I find it.”
Mrs. Seton’s doubts were finally set at rest, and on Ash Wednesday, 1805, she was received into Catholicism in old St. Peter’s Church, New York city. The embarrassed state of her husband’s finances at the time of his death had involved her, and she opened a boarding house for some of the boys who attended a neighboring school. Some months later Miss Cecilia Seton, the youngest sister-in-law of Mrs. Seton, followed her into the Catholic Church. The one thought of Mrs. Seton was now to devote her life to the poor and to the Church. The opportunity came sooner than she anticipated. The co-operation of the Church authorities, and financial resources being forthcoming, a little Community was formed in St. Joseph’s Valley, Emmittsburg. Vows were taken in accordance with the rules of the institute of the Sisters of Charity, of France, and in a few months ten Sisters were employed with the instruction of youth and the care of the sick. They were poor but happy. The first Christmas day, for instance, “they rejoiced to have some smoked herring for dinner.” Rigid regulations were adopted for the government of the new order, and its growth was remarkable. Mother Seton had the satisfaction of receiving her eldest daughter into the Sisterhood.
Mrs. Seton’s youngest daughter lived into the nineties and died recently in the Mercy Convent, New York, where she had lived as a Sister of Mercy for over forty years. The sons of Mrs. Seton were prosperously launched in business enterprises.
Mother Seton died on the 4th of January, 1821, in the forty-seventh year of her age. Her bedside was surrounded by the dark-robed Sisters of Charity and her only surviving daughter, Josephine. Her end was happy and tranquil. Her career was one of great piety and usefulness. She has gone but her memory will live forever through the perpetration of the great order that she planted in the United States, and which has already grown to proportions far beyond the most sanguine expectation of its tender and affectionate founder.
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IX.
“THE SISTER OF CHARITY.”
This beautiful poem, descriptive of a Sister of Charity, written by Gerald Griffin, has taken its place among those precious bits of literature that never die. The author was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1803, and began his literary career as a reporter for a London daily. He wrote many novels, a tragedy and various poems. He died in Cork, in 1840.
A correspondent whose opinion is valued very highly writes to remind the author of the “Angels of the Battlefield” that a society of Sisters of Charity was first established in Dublin by Mary Mother Aikenhead early in this century. It was these ladies, particularly a sister and a cousin of the poet who joined Mother Aikenhead, that inspired Gerald Griffin’s beautiful lines. The Irish Sisters of Charity make perpetual vows, wear veils and dress somewhat similar to the Sisters of Mercy. They are not connected with any other congregation. The “Sister of Charity” is as follows: