Born: 1862
Married: Edward Clarence Long, on ?. Long died in 1933.
Died: 1950

HOW I BECAME A CHRISTIAN
PRINCESS C. LONG

In complying with your request for my "experience," which to me is a memorable one, let me say as briefly as possible: I was born and reared under Methodist doctrine, in a Methodist home. My father's house was one of the stopping-places of the preachers, and with these surroundings I do not remember when I first felt the desire to become a Christian; but I do remember distinctly when, at the age of ten years, one night after a week's agonizing at the altar, nature asserted herself (as I believe now), a reaction of feeling took place in my overwrought nerves, I felt a peacefulness steal over me, and decided that I was converted.

I was very happy for awhile, but it did not last. I began to feel that I was not truly converted. The story of the next eight years, with its lights and shadows, feeling saved one day and lost the next, is a familiar one to many who have passed through the same waters. I said nothing to any one, of my feelings, but attended services at the church all the time, keeping my doubts to myself, and feeling that in time, maybe, it would come all right. After awhile it would be all right again for another period, but oh the suffering of those days, when for weeks at a time I felt that even my prayers were not heard, and that, for some reason I could not define, I was completely ignored by the divine Father.

--192--

Then my reason began to assure me that if religion was to keep me so unsettled and unhappy so much of the time, there was something wrong somewhere. At this time there came into my life a great trial, which I need not relate, but to bear which I was sorely in need of the comfort and consolation that only a true child of God can have, and I had it not. At times I grew careless, and felt that I would be better off without my religion (I didn't have much, did I?). At others I would listen in vain in sermon, prayer and testimony of others, for some light, but none came. The texts, Scripture reading, Bible-school lessons, and even the reading in our family worship of my dear father (God bless him for his Christian character, his godly life and his own unbounded faith, the knowledge, of which kept me from giving up entirely), were nearly always from those books in the Bible that are especially for Christians. I felt they never applied to me, for I was getting further and further away.

After a few years of this suffering, which was bringing me nearer and nearer the borderland of skepticism, there came one of those turning-points which come into all our lives, I accepted a position in the music department of the Tri-State Normal College at Angola, Indiana. Here I attended occasionally, and for the first time, a church known simply as Christian Church. There was no such organization in my home town, and all I had ever heard of it was that there was one man there who had at one time belonged to the "Campbellite" Church (and he was not a godly man). F. P. Arthur was the minister at Angola, and my first interest was aroused by something he said that made me want to read for myself; for I didn't believe it was in the Bible. L. M. Sniff, president of the college, and Professor Fairfield preached occasionally in the surrounding towns, and as much to advertise the school

--193--

as anything else, I sometimes went with one or the other to sing. Those who have heard these men preach, know that I heard some pretty strong doctrine, and I heard it every time. And so, under the preaching of these three men, and the helpful influence of the many Christian lives with which I came in contact, especially Mrs. Sniff and "Aunt Lucie" (how many of those who have gone out from Angola are better men and women on account of these two women), I began to see that religion was not a condition of one's feelings. There was something for me to do, for which Christ would claim me as his child.

When that truth fully dawned upon me, I think there was enough Methodist enthusiasm left in me that I wanted to shout. I had not realized until then that religion was a growth, a development of life that is never-ending. I had felt that when one became a Christian, he reached a certain high standing or plane of life at one miraculous bound, and remained there, and I thought more of the "wrath of God" than his great love and mercy.

I would not that any one should think I am decrying Methodism. There are and have been too many brave, true, strong souls whose lives have been blessings to the world, for me or any one else to do so; I am simply stating facts in my own life, and though I take all the blame to myself, yet the facts exist. My father did not oppose my uniting with the Christian Church, but it deeply grieved him that I should leave the mother church, and become one of a body of which so little was known (as was then the ease in that part of Ohio). It was hard for me to tell him that I did not feel that I had been baptized, and that I could not believe in and adopt human creeds; my brothers and sisters looked askance at me, and so, to be sure that I was not acting on emotion, I waited awhile before making the change. In fact, it was after I married Mr. Long,

--194--

who had been a member of the Christian Church for years, that I made the confession and was baptized by Isaac Reynolds, at North Middletown, Kentucky. What it meant to me, only those who have wandered in doubt, and then found the light, can know. My heart was ready for the truth and received it gladly. I want to devote my life to Him, and I feel that I have lost so much time that the most I can do in the years left me, is such a little offering. In times of sorrow and affliction, he never fails me. I realize my own weakness and ignorance. There are so many things I can not understand, but "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day."