Life of Father Hecker

ition to the stock of materials available for Father Hecker's biography. Until after his

ht before founding his community, no records of his interior life have been discovered which are at all comparable in fulness to those made during the eighteen months which preceded his admission to the Church. In his years of

s of in studying the greater mass from which our extracts are taken. They will, perhaps, be struck, in the first place, by the unexpectedly strong witness they bear to the wholly interior and mystical experience of the man. They testify, moreover, to the real and objective character of that leading which he

ers, young, gay, intelligent, and well bred, acquaintance and familiarity with whom were in many ways attractive to a susceptible youth like Isaac Hecker. What impression he made upon the circle he entered, how cordially he was received and held in high esteem, our readers already know. And if he gave pleasure, he received it also. At first the new circumstances were a little

w is" which Mr. Curtis, in the letter given in the preceding chapter, has described, with so fine an insight, as one of reserve and observation. "He was the dove floating in the air, not yet finding the spot on which his foot might rest," writes Mr. Curtis of Isaac Hecker at that period of his youth when his surroundings and com

f depression because the earthly weighs him down. Then come eager glances of inquiry in every direction for the satisfaction of his aspirations, little by little narrowing down to the Catholic Church, wherein the dove of Mr. Curtis's image was finally to rest his foot for ever. And in all this he scarcely at all mentions a dread of the Divine wrath as a motive for his flight. It is not out of the city of destruction, but toward the celestial city that he goes. He is drawn by what he wants, not hounded by what he fears. Always there is the reaching out of a strong nature toward what it lacks-a material for its strength to work on, a craving for rat

t there is in it an invocation to those "that are in heaven to intercede and plead" for him, which recalls the fact, so often mentioned by him, that it was the teaching of the Catechism of the Council of Trent on the Communion of Saints which cleared away his final clouds and brought him directly to the Church. There is a note, too, among his later papers,

has said somewhere that the Church is the touchstone of rational humanity, and that probably no adult passes out of life without having once, at least, been brought squarely face to face with it and made to understand and shoulder the tremendous responsibility which its claims impose. There would be no need of a touchstone if there were no alloy in human nature, no feebleness in man's will, no darkness in his understanding. Were that the condition of humanity, the call to the supernatural order would be simply the summons to come

hich we are writing, which was that of the Oxford Tracts, controversy turned mainly on questions of historical continuity and of Divine warrant in the external revelation of holy Scripture, it follows that he, and such as he, must have taken a lonely and unfrequented road towards the truth. Every time he looked at the Church he was greeted with the spectacle of unity and uniformity, of discipline and order. These are elements whic

conception of it-must be the binding of all things together, natural and supernatural. Hence we find him at times complaining that the Church is not sufficient for his wants. If it were not personal in its adaptation to him, it was little that it should be historical this, hierarchical that, or biblical the other. It must be his primarily, because he cannot live a rational and pure life without it. An ordinarily decorous life,

his diary has been alre