Reminiscences of Edgar P. Wadhams, first bishop of Ogdensburg

Preface

The following pages have already been appreciated by the readers of the Catholic World as a tribute of faith and of friendship.

A tribute of faith. Both the subject and the author of the Reminiscences were actors in that great tractarian movement which brought thousands out of the labyrinth of Protestantism into the one Christian fold, and which, moreover, infused into non-Catholic denominations that new religious leaven by which they are lifted up every day nearer and nearer to the truth. To few was it known how lively this movement had been on this side of the ocean, and how many Americans, Episcopalians principally, had been either led by it into the Catholic Church, or stimulated to adopt many of her doctrines and rites. Father Walworth gives us a vivid description of those memorable years, and it is not without a desire for more that we peruse the documents which it was his good luck to discover among the papers of the first bishop of Ogdensburg. No Catholic will read his reminiscences without feeling happier with him and his illustrious brother-convert for the possession of the one true religion and

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without praying that those friends of theirs, who are still wavering at the entrance, may like them receive the kiss of welcome from the Master of the fold.

The book is a tribute of friendship. United less by the tie of kindred than by that of affection and of common aspirations, Bishop Wadhams and Father Walworth, like Basil and Gregory, attended the same schools; like Newman and Froude, they communed together on the light that was leading them on, until finally the one helped the other to take the decisive step that made them denizens of the City of God. No wonder that their souls remained knit and that Virgil was half of the soul of his Horace. It was fitting that when one was called to his reward, the other should put in writing some of the words and deeds by which the departed had deserved remembrance, either as the neophyte who had with him piously accepted the Divine message, or as the priest and prelate who had taught and ruled for the salvation of many, or as a partisan of sacred truth who knew how to mingle the largest kindness with controversy, or in fine as the citizen and friend who, by his patriotism and his genial disposition, had endeared himself to all :

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The proceeds of the sale of this book will be applied to missionary labor in behalf of the Catholic Iroquois of this diocese.

* H. Gabriels.

Ogdensburg, Feast of St. Pius V., 1893.

Contents*

PAGE

Preface, 3

Introductory, 9

Wadhams Becomes Bishop of Ogdensburg. — His Lie and Labors in the New Diocese. —His Sufferings and Sudden Cure. — Trials. — His Last Illness and Death. 1872-1891, ' 15 j