Life of Father Hecker

home from which he had departed nearly a year before. He expected little from this step, but his state of mind was now one in which he had be

ions of his kindred and abide results in his own place. He did not go there at once, however, after quitting Alcott's comm

own, was the relation of the natural man to the regenerating influences of Christianity. This being so, it is plain to our own mind that no adequate representation of the man could be made without a free use of these early journals. They seem to us one of the chief Providential results of the spiritual isolation of his youth. He was in a manner driven to this intimate self-communing, on one hand by his never-satisfied craving for sympathetic companionship, and on the other by his comp

nd violently driven. But it is also shown by the deep humility which is revealed precisely by this sharp probing of his interior. Though he felt himself in touch with God in some special way, yet it was with so little pride that it was his profound conviction, as it remained, indeed, throughout his life, that what he

ten brought him to the verge of credulity, over which he was prevented from stepping by his shrewd native sense. Though he insisted all his l

m to me to be instinct with prophecy? I do not see any more individual personalities, but pri

retofore. It appears as if their atmosphere was denser, their life more natural, more in the flesh. Instead of meeting them on my highest, I can only do so by coming down into my body, of which it seems to me that I am now almost unconscious. There is not that sense of heaviness, du

her to swell their volume or to lessen their force. These are mainly the transmissions of heredity, and the environm

e most natural and earnest and at home when they speak from this link which binds them to the past. Then their hearts are opened, and they speak with a glow of eloquence and a peculiar unction which touch the same chord in the breasts of those who hear them. It is well for man to feel his indebtedness to the past which lives in him and without which he would not be what he is. He is far more its creature than he gives himself credit for. He reproduces d

be miraculous, gods, and they were deified. What any one man (and this is a most comfortable and cheering thought) has been or has done, all men may in a measure be or do, for each is a type, a specimen of the whole human race. If it is said in reply, 'These miracles or great acts, which you hold as actual, are mere superstitious dreams,' I care not. That would be still more glorious for us, for then they are still to be performed, they are in the coming time, these divine prophetic instincts are yet to be actualized. The dreams of Orpheus, the inspired strains o

rds taken from all who have truly interpreted the

ssible, for faith is an act of the soul;

on of their souls they would gain more knowl

ink of this deeply. God is just. We have what we ough

best to deny and sacrifice these desires? It may be said that, gratified, they add to life, and the question is how to in

etimes. My heart laughs quite merrily to think of it. When I am hungry, and there is something tempting on the table, hunger, like a serpent

elf. If it tempts, away with it, until it tempts no more. Then partake of

ism, so that we may hear the most delicate, the sweetest, the stillest sounds and murmurings of the angels who are about us. How much fuller and richer would be our life if we were more acutely s

here we look, what we hear, what smell, or feel, or taste! And how we should endeavor that all around us should be made b

and obedience to Thy Spirit. May all self be put from me so that I may enter into the glorious li

aking Catholics have had access to the great authorities on this subject through adequate translations. But what little he had learned from other sources, combined with his own intuitional and expe

of insight believe that it is a special miraculous gift, and that all they may say is infallibly true, whereas they still retain their own individuality though raised to a purer state of being. They have not been so raised in order to found new sects, or to cause revolutions, but to fulfil the old, continue and carry it on as far as they have been given light to do so. In forming new sects they but reproduce their own individualities with all their errors. So Swedenborg did, and Wesley, men of modern times who were awakened in a greater degree than the mass of their fellows. Their mistake lay in their

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