“MY parents were Baptists; but until the age of thirty-two, I was not a believer in the truth of Christianity. My own observation of men and things, as well as the arguments of others, at length satisfied me that the system was divine; and I at once acted upon my convictions, and joined myself to the Disciples, in 1840. In 1843 I removed with my family to Oregon. After my arrival, and while I was temporarily located at Fort Vancouver, I attended High Mass as a mere spectator, on Christmas, at midnight. I had never witnessed any thing like it before, and the profound solemnity of the services—the intense, yet calm fervor of the worshippers—the great and marked differences between the two forms of worship—and the instantaneous reflection, that this was the Church claiming to be the only true Church, did make the deepest impression upon my mind for the moment. In all my religious experience, I had never felt an impulse so profound, so touching. I had witnessed very exciting scenes in Protestant worship, and had myself often participated, and was happy. But I had never felt any impulse so powerful—an impulse that thrilled my inmost soul. I gazed into the faces of the worshippers, and they appeared as if they were actually looking at the Lord Jesus, and were hushed into perfect stillness, in His awful presence.”

—- Peter H. Burnett (first governor of Califiornia), The path which led a Protestant lawyer to the Catholic Church, 1860

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