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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
3
FORMER GEORGIA MINISTER STUDYING FOR
PRIESTHOOD IN ENGLAND
F. X. Farmer, S.J., Graduate of Emory College During Bishop Candler’s Regime, Plans to
Labor in China as Jesuit Missionary—Was Stationed There as Methodist Minister.
By F. X.
The Bulletin is indebted to The Missionary for the
following interesting story of Mr. Farmer’s entry into
the Church.
By way of foreword to the story, Rt. Rev. Benjamin
J. Keiley, Bishop of Savannah, writes:
“Six years ago, while at the residence of the Marist
Fathers in Atlanta, one of the Fathers asked me to
meet Mr. Farmer, who, I was told, was a Methodist
preacher who had been a missionary in China for a
number of years and was now preparing to become
a Catholic.
“Mr. Farmer was a young man about thirty-five.
He was rather tall and slender and had a low and
pleasant voice, and was evidently an educated gentle
man. He told me his life story very much as he tells
it here; and when I heard of his tender and personal
love for our Lord, of his devotion to prayer, and his
great desire to please God, I was much attracted to
him. He came to Savannah at my earnest invitation,
and after a few days he made his abjuration, was
conditionally baptized and the following day (May 7,
1915), received his first Holy Communion.
“After a retreat he determined to enter the Society
of Jesus, and as he ardently wished to go back to
China, he went abroad and entered the Novitiate of
the French Jesuits, as they have charge of the Chinese
Missions of the Society.
“He is now making his theological course at Hast
ings, England. Some months ago I wrote to Mr.
Farmer and asked him to send me an account of his
conversion. Recently 1 received it.
“About his story I would like to make two re
marks: Mr. Farmer implies that he owes much to
me. I bless and thank God for the opportunity He
gave me of knowing such a man as Mr. Farmer. He
did more for me than I could ever have done for him.
“Mr. Farmer speaks of the wonderful influence on
his life of his mother. I have had the pleasure of
meeting Mrs. Farmer. She is now what she was in
the days of his youth, an earnest, devout and truly
Christian mother. She is yet a member of the Meth
odist Church, and of all tfie women I have known
there is none more womanly.
“The New Testament tells us of a certain Roman
officer who came to our Blessed Lord asking a
great favor from Him, and the people joined their
prayers to his telling Our Lord that the man had
built a house of worship for them, and Our Lord heard
and granted their and his prayer (Luke VII-5). As
suredly this good woman has done more for Christ in
giving the Church this ‘living temple,’ her son.
FARMER, S.J.
“May I ask your readers to pray that He will give
the light and gift of Faith to her.
I was born at Conyers, Ga., October 14, 1877, and
while still very young my parents moved to Covington,
where my father engaged in the mercantile business
and where I passed the years of my childhood and
young manhood.
I was reared with the greatest possible care, never
being allowed to visit or play with other children
promiscuously; and when I did make or receive occa
sional visits, my parents being moved by both re
ligious and social considerations, were solicitous as
to the kind of companions I had. My father, a thor
ough business man and at that time not identified
with any church, left the religious training of the
children in the hands of my mother, who was indeed
capable of it, as she was a good and devout woman.
How often in winter evenings, after having heard my
evening prayer,
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” etc.
tucked me snugly in my little bed and extinguished
the light, have I seen her kneeling or sitting before
the fireplace, whose dying embers filled the room with
a ruddy glow—motionless and recollected in prayer.
With such an example before my eyes added to holy
counsel and teaching, my young heart was early en
grossed with divine things, so that I do not remember
a time when 1 did not fear and love God. But there
are certain marked epochs in my life when impor
tant decisions were made and love for Christ grew
greater, stronger and more real.
Now, the first one of these decisions was made
when I was about twelve years of age. My mother,
a good Methodist, generally either took or sent my
younger brother and me every Sunday to church in
the morning and to Sunday School in the afternoon.
I also attended special services held for children dur
ing revivals or “protracted meetings,” and there I was
most deeply impressed by what I heard concerning sin
and its everlasting punishment in Hell, the Love, Pas
sion and Death of Our Lord, and the glorious reward
and happiness of the good in Heaven. On such occa
sions when an invitation was given, I went forward
to the altar-rail to be prayed for and to confess to
God my childish sins, for which 1 wept much and
made resolutions to be good. Seeing the other chil
dren joining the church and being baptized awakened
the same desire in my heart and, before twelve years
old, I had asked my mother several times to permit
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