The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Fay Berry 2013 – Chapter 23

My parents were members of the Adelaide Christadelphian Ecclesia and so for all my early years I was a member of the Adelaide Sunday School. Sunday School up until I was 13 years of age had been a very positive and enriching experience for me. I loved my lessons and my teachers, but by my 13th year, I had become bored with Sunday School. Our class teacher was Stephen Smith and he was a lovely man and I really liked him, but his classes were not very exciting.

Two of the girls in our class were Barbara Stokes and Wendy Jolly, and we often used to introduce controversial subjects into the class discussion to try to liven things up a bit. The following year, our teacher was Sis Phyllis Dangerfield and she was a very lovely lady, but her classes were kind of staid and feminine and not overly exciting. We all used to envy the boys for being in John Martin’s class because his classes were vibrant and exciting and the boys loved them. How we girls wished our classes were not segregated. “Why couldn’t the girls and boys be in the one class together?” we used to ask.

All the way through school and now even at Sunday School, girls’ classes were mostly kept separate from the boys. The senior girls’ class was held in the women’s cloakroom at the front of the Halifax Street hall and the boy’s class was held behind some screens in the main foyer. Leslie Rogers was in our class, and she was Jim Luke’s girlfriend and she used to tell us everything that Jim told her about John’s classes. Even without Leslie’s stories, we could tell that the boys’ class was more exciting than our own because we could hear the gales of laughter and the banter and boisterous discussions coming from behind the screens in the foyer.

There was a change on the horizon which was to have a great effect on my future. Prior to 1953 the ecclesial world in England and Australia had been divided, but moves were in hand both in Australia and the UK towards achieving a united fellowship. In 1953 Bro John Carter was sent out from England to Australia to try to unite the Australian ecclesias and to this end, meetings were held in each State.

Although I was only 14 years of age, through my father and brother, I somehow got caught up in it all. I remember sitting in the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne listening to  Bro Carter speak. He was talking about how unity could be achieved if only we would stop trying to remove the “mote” in our brother’s eye and concentrate rather on the “beam” in our own eye. In the same vein, he talked about the incongruity of “straining out a gnat” and yet “swallowing a camel.” He said, “Imagine that big lumpy camel with its scrubby feet sliding down your throat.”  I had a sudden vivid image of holding up a camel in my right hand and sliding its “scrubby feet” down my throat and that image, conjured up by Bro Carter’s words, is with me to this day.

One outcome of the newly achieved Unity was that the Woodville ecclesia which had been “on the other side” now came into association with the Adelaide ecclesia. The Woodville ecclesia was a very small ecclesia and HP Mansfield, who was a veritable encyclopedia of Bible knowledge, decided to give assistance to the Woodville ecclesia by leading its senior Sunday School class. My brother Charles who had become “a disciple” of HP Mansfield, decided to join him at Woodville to help him in his work.

As usual, Charlie could never do anything without dragging me along with him and so I too began attending the Woodville Sunday School. This turned out to be one of those “cross-road” events in my life. If I had stayed at the Adelaide meeting my life would have most likely gone in a completely different direction. Under HP Mansfield’s wing, I guess I learned more about the Bible than I could ever have learned if I had remained a member of the Adelaide Sunday School. HP was only a small man but he was a veritable giant in scriptural knowledge. He was like the “Pied Piper” to us kids and we followed him wherever he went.

In my last year at High School, a very large percentage of the students at the school belonged to one church youth group or another and there was a great deal of Bible discussion that took place. I became embroiled in these discussions and very quickly found out how ignorant I was and unable to prove my particular point of view on a number of bible doctrines. I asked my parents if there was anyone I could go to who could teach me “how to argue about the Bible.” They sent me to see an old man who lived further up Kenilworth Road and his name was “Pa Harris.” I asked “Pa” if he would teach me about the Bible so that I could hold my own in the arguments I was having at school.

Pa Harris was a wise old man. He ignored my motivation “to learn to argue about the Bible” and instead he began to teach me “the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ.” I used to go to his place every Thursday night. Those nights were filled with my “Whys and What ifs.” I was very impatient and thought I would only have to go to him for one or two weeks and he would give me some arguments to use in discussions about whether we went to heaven when we died or whether there was a trinity or not. Instead, he taught me about God and Jesus, the promises to Abraham, and the Beatitudes of Jesus.

On these nights Pa Harris would tell me I was to take notes and when I came back the next week I was to have the previous session’s discussion all written up and he would “mark” them. Mrs Harris, Pa’s wife, used to sit in on our discussions and knit. I soon began to resent her presence. I felt that my discussions with Pa should be private and that she should not be there during our meetings. I was quickly “put in my place” and learned a good lesson when I raised the subject with Pa. Pa told me that there were good reasons why he NEVER would sit and talk with a young woman like myself without his wife being present. Today, when I consider Pa’s honorable and circumspect behavior towards me at that time I feel very humble. I “tip my hat” as it were to that wise old man that I had the privilege to know all those years ago.

I continued going to him for months and months. I did use my newfound knowledge in my school discussions but eventually came to the conclusion that what I really wanted, and what it was all really about, was that I needed to be baptised into the Name of Jesus Christ. My aims and Pa’s aims had finally become congruent. It had never been Pa’s intention to teach me to hold my own in an argument. His motivation was to lead me to Jesus Christ. When I finally told Pa that I wanted to be baptised, Pa was very cautious. He knew I was young and wilful and would soon be beset by all sorts of physical and mental temptations. He thought it was too soon for me to be baptised.

I was only 15 years of age, so he sent me to see Lindsay Colquhoun and have a few more sessions with him. I think he figured that if I survived Lindsay Colquhoun, then I would definitely be ready. Survived was the word! Lindsay Colquhoun was a lawyer in the Children’s Courts and a very rigid and uncompromising man. He questioned me about all that I had so far learned and I was extremely proud of my answers. I KNEW the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ!.

It must have been very plain to Lindsay that I was completely lacking in humility and so his questioning began to take a more personal direction and he began to probe my personal life. There was not a night after that, that I spent with Lindsay Colquhoun when I did not go home in tears. I stuck it out until one day I had had enough! I went to Lindsay and announced to him that if he was not prepared to baptise me then I would baptise myself.

Lindsay Colquhoun had a very sonorous voice, almost like intoning and he said to me.

  “Well then, Fay, do you believe the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ?”

 “Yes, I do,” I replied.

 “With all your heart?” he asked.

 “With all my heart,” I responded.

 “Then I am happy for you to be baptised, my dear?” was his reply.

  I was finally baptised on 26th

June 1956.