Isaac Hecker's renewed experiment of engaging in business and following at the same time the lead of the peremptory Spirit within him soon proved a failure. He complains, though not as bitterly as the year before when he felt the first agony of this suffering, that the greater part of his true life is lost in his present position—the thoughts, feelings, studies which are of supreme value to him, getting entrance into his mind almost by stealth, while, at the same time, he is not of much use in the business and of little benefit to others in any way. On March 10 he wrote to Brownson that he was going to give up business totally and finally, and asked his Advice about a course of study "for the field of the Church," not having yet fully settled as to whether it should be "the Roman or the Anglican." Upon his determination to withdraw from the secular affairs of life he experienced "such peace, calmness, and deep, settled strength and confidence" as never before. "I feel the presence of God," he writes, "wherever I am. I would kneel and praise God in all places. In His presence I walk and feel His breath encompass me. My soul is borne up by His presence and my heart is filled by His influence. How thankful ought we to be! How humble and submissive! Let us lay our heads on the pillow of peace and die peacefully in the embrace of God."
Brownson answered his letter with one of encouragement to carry out his purpose. Yet, there was a pang; Isaac laments "the domestic comforts, the little offices of tender love" which he should lose by going from home. And well he might, for tender love may well describe the bond uniting the dear old mother and her three noble sons. The present writer had no personal acquaintance with John Hecker, but we never heard his name mentioned by Father Hecker except with much affection. George always seemed to us something like a perfect man. He especially it was who all his life gave his entire unselfish love to his brother Isaac. The reader has noticed, we hope, that there has been no mention so far in the diary of difficulty in obtaining money for the expenses of his various journeyings and for his support when absent from home. The two brothers in New York appear to have held these pilgrimages in search of the truth in such reverence as to make Isaac their partner, only in a higher sense than ever before. And George Hecker, especially, seemed throughout his life to continue Isaac a member of his great and rich firm, lavishing upon his least wish large sums of money, and these not only for his strictly personal expenditure, but for any cause whatever he might have at heart.
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BEFORE summarizing and conveniently arranging Isaac Hecker's reasons for becoming a Catholic and narrating the accompanying incidents, we give the following profession of faith in the authority of the Spirit speaking within. It was written in the diary in the midst of his preparations for his baptism, and is an early witness of a permanent characteristic of Father Hecker's life. It is, besides, a fitting introduction to the description of his state of mind when he entered the Church, showing better than anything we have found what kind of man became a Catholic in Isaac Hecker.
"Man is a mystic fact.
"What is most interior is ever mystical, and we should ever be in the centre of the circle of the mystic life.
"We must unfold the mystical in all our expressions, actions, thoughts, and motions.
"It is the mystic life only which can fully interest man. This is deeper than all conditions, behind all organs, faculties, and functions.
"We must listen to those who speak to us in the interior world, and hear the mystic man speak through us.
"The mystic man is ever youthful, fresh, and new.
"The mystic sphere is the kingdom of heaven within.
"I can neither study nor sit down and read for any length of time. The inner man will not permit me. Ever he calls me from it to meditate and enjoy his presence.
"He says: I am all. Ask of me and I will give you more than has been written—more than you can ever find or dig out by study.
"Be my spokesman—this is your office. Submit to me—this is your glory. I have taken up my abode in you on condition that you will be faithful and submissive.
"You have no business to ask of me what I am going to set you about.I am, and you know it—and this is enough for you to know.
"This is my condition of remaining with you—that you entertain me, and me alone, and no other on any pretext whatsoever. I am all, and this suffices. You have nothing to say, to do, or to be troubled about. Do only as I bid you, follow what I tell you, and be still.
"If you neglect me in any way, or forget me for any other object, now that you have enjoyed my confidence, love, and blessing, I will not abide with you any longer.
"I want all your time and to speak all that is to be said. You have no right to speak a word—not a word—of your own. You are not your own. You have given yourself up to me, and I am all. I will not leave you unless you leave me first, and even then I shall ever be the nearest to you, but you will not know it.
"I am your Friend; the One who loves you. I have discovered myself to you and will do so yet more. But the condition of so doing requires from you even more faith, tenderness, and submissiveness.
"Nothing is so real, so near, so full of enjoyment as I am to you, and you cannot leave me without giving up the greater for the less.
"I talk to you at all times and am near you at all seasons, and my joy is to be in your presence, to love you and to take delight in this love I bestow upon you. I direct your pen, speech, thought, and affections, though you know it not sensibly. But you shall know more clearly who I am, and all respecting me, if you but comply with my requirements. You need not fear: you cannot make any mistakes if you submit to be guided by me."
Isaac Hecker had now tried every form of philosophy. Whoever sailed with Brownson on that voyage which ended on the shores of Catholic truth, had explored the deep seas and sounded the shoal waters of all human reason; and young Hecker had been Brownson's friend and sympathizer since the years of his own earliest mental activity. Pantheism, subjectivism, idealism, and all the other systems were tried, and when at last he was convinced thatLife is Realit was only after such an agony as must attend the imminent danger of fatal shipwreck.
He had, meantime, given a fair trial to philanthropy. Theoretically and practically, Isaac Hecker loved humanity; to make men happy was his ever-renewed endeavor; was, in truth, the condition on which his own happiness depended. For years this view of his life-task alternated with his search for exact answers to the questions his soul asked about man's destiny hereafter; or, one might rather say, social questions and philosophical ones borrowed strength from each other to assail him till his heart throbbed and his brain whirled with the agony of the conflict.
In a series of articles inThe Catholic Worldpublished in 1887, and before referred to, Father Hecker called Dr. Brownson's road to the Church the philosophical road. Finding that doctrines which his philosophical mind perceived to answer the deepest questions of the soul were taught only in one society, and there taught with authority, he argued validly that that society could lay claim to the right to teach. From the doctrine to the teacher, from the truth to the external authority that teaches it, is an inference of sound reason. This applies to Father Hecker's case also, for he was of a bent of mind truly philosophical, and he has placed on record the similarity of his philosophical difficulties with those of Brownson. But in addition to philosophical questions, and far more pressing, were to Isaac Hecker the problems arising from the mystical occurrences of which his soul was the theatre. Were these real? that is, were they more than the vagaries of a sensitive temperament, the wanderings of a sentimental imagination, or, to use Father Hecker's own words, "the mere projections into activity of feelings entirely subjective; mystical impulses towards no corresponding objective realities, or, at any rate, with objects which it is not possible to bring into the field of the really knowable? Some will admit that religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness, affirming, however, the subjectivity of all purely spiritual life; and no more can be said, they insist, for the principles, metaphysical and logical, with which they are associated in the spiritual life of man. Now, such a theory never leaves the soul that is governed by reason at rest. The problem ever and again demands solution: are these yearnings, aspirations, unappeased desires, or religious feelings—the ruling traits of the noblest men and women—are they genuine, real, corresponding to and arising from the reality of certain objects external to the soul? I think that in the solution of this problem Dr. Brownson fought and won his greatest victory; at any rate, it was to me the most interesting period of his life. No wonder, since I had the same battle to fight myself, and it was just at this epoch that I came into closest contact with him. We fought this battle shoulder-to-shoulder."—Catholic World,October, 1887, pp. 5-6.
Brownson's heavy heart was due to philosophical difficulties, and Isaac Hecker's to the same; but in addition the latter had a mystical experience to which Brownson was at that time, certainly, a stranger, and, as far as we know, he remained so; and these mystical difficulties demanded settlement far more imperatively than did the philosophical ones. Isaac Hecker's inner life must have an external adjunct of divine authority. Such aspirations of the soul for present union with God in love as he had, are more peremptory in demanding satisfaction than those of the logical faculty in demanding the ascertainment of the certain truth. Philosophy outside the Church is to the searcher after truth what St. Paul said the Law was to the Jews, a schoolmaster; but, to a soul in the condition of Isaac Hecker, the Holy Spirit is a spouse demanding union. Both Brownson and himself were men true to their convictions, courageous and unselfish. They were both firmly determined to have the truth and to have the whole of it, whether spokenex cathedrain the divine court of the innermost soul, orex cathedraby the supreme authority of God in the organism of the Christian Church. "Brownson was firmly persuaded," says Father Hecker, "and so am I, that the great fault of men generally is that they deem the life of their souls, thoughts, judgments, and convictions, yearnings, aspirations, and longings to be too subject to illusion to be worthy their attentive study and manly fidelity; that even multitudes of Catholics greatly undervalue the divine reality of their inner life, whether in the natural or supernatural order."
The philosophical difficulty was far less serious than the spiritual one. To the philosopher the fundamental truths of human reason are established as objective realities by processes common to every sane mind, and are backed by the common consent of men; and this is true also of the prime verities of ethics. But when a man finds himself subject to secret influences of the utmost power over him, able to cast him off or to hold him, to sicken his body and distress his soul, extending his views of the truth by flashes of light into vistas that seem infinite, making his love of right an ecstasy, his sympathy for human misery a passion, controlling his diet and his clothing, ordering him here and there at will and knowing how to be obeyed—when, in a word, a man finds himself treated by God in a manner totally different from any one else he knows or ever heard of, it is plain that he must agonize for the possession of a divine sanction to which he can appeal in common with all men, and which must therefore exist in the external order. He longs, above all things, to test his secret in the light of day.
The problem that Isaac Hecker had to solve, as he described it himself, was whether his life was real—using the word "life" to denote its truest meaning, the interior life. We have been careful to make the reader aware of how deep and continuous were the inner touches of the Holy Spirit which led him on. Before applying for admission to the Church, there was no truth that he could believe more firmly than that he was the temple of the Holy Ghost. Of that he had the certitude which is called personal and the teaching of God which is most direct. Yet something was lacking, and therein lay his agony, for he knew that his fellow-men were entitled to all that he had of truth and virtue. The more distinct the Voice which spoke within, the more perplexing it became to hear no echo from without. He felt sure that what was true and holy for him must be so for all, and yet he could not so much as make himself understood if he told his secret to others. To the born Catholic there is no such difficulty. He is so fully accustomed to the verification of the inner action of God, enlightening his mind and stinging his conscience, by God's external action in the Church, that he often confounds the two. He knows the Voice better by its echo than by its own tones. There are many good Catholics, but few enlightened mystics. This is not for lack of guidance, so far as doctrine is concerned, for accredited authors on such subjects are numerous and their teaching is uniform and explicit, besides being of the most intense interest to those for whose instruction it is adapted. These masters of spiritual doctrine not only dwell upon the interior life itself, but also on the external order of God in His Church which brings His interior teaching into proper relation with the exterior. The interior life thus made integral is alone worthy of the termreal;is alone worthy of the description of St. Paul when he calls it "the witness of the Spirit." Now, as a witness who cannot be brought into open court to give his testimony might as well be dumb, and is as good as no witness, so the inner life, lacking the true external order of God, is cramped and helpless; and cramped and helpless Isaac Hecker was. Whatever he did, therefore, toward investigating religious evidences was done primarily as a search for the external criterion which should guarantee the validity of the inspirations of God within him, and at the same time provide a medium of union with his fellow-men.
Those whose advertence is not particularly aroused to the facts of their interior life, have for their main task either the study of the Church as a visible society, claiming continuity with one established by Christ; or, preceding that, the question whether such a society was ever founded by God. Now, although such questions must be settled by all, they are not the main task of men like Isaac Hecker. In their case the problem transcending all others is where to find that divine external order demanded for the completion of their inner experience. Such men must say: If there is no external order of God in this world, then my whole interior life is fatally awry.
The captain whose voyage is on the track of the trade winds nevertheless needs more than dead reckoning for his course; he needs to take the sun at noon, to study the heavens at night, and to con his chart. To follow one's interior drift only is to sail the ocean without chart or compass. The sail that is wafted by the impulses of the divine Spirit in the interior life must have, besides, the guarantee of divine veracity in the external order to justify him. This he needs, in order to safeguard him in the interior life itself, and to provide a common court of appeal between himself and his fellows, or otherwise he is in danger of fanaticism, and is certain of the mistrust of his fellow-men. No man, unsupported by external miracles, can claim to teach what is vouched for only by his own testimony; and this especially applies to purely subjective experiences. Isaac Hecker was a born teacher of men, and to be shut off from them by an isolated experience was to be robbed of his vocation. A soul like his, led to the truth along the path of social reform, will hail with delight a religion which organizes all humanity on a basis of equality, and at the same time verifies and explains the facts of each one's particular experience. Such a religion is to be longed for, not only because of its universal brotherhood, but also because it can decide between the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and the criminal conceits of passion or the dreams of an imaginative temperament.
Many years afterwards Father Hecker thus stated the harmony between the inner and outer action of God in the soul's life:
"In case of obscurity or doubt concerning what is the divinely revealed truth, or whether what prompts the soul is or is not an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recourse must be had to the divine teacher or criterion—the authority of the Church. For it must be borne in mind that to the Church, as represented in the first instance by St. Peter and subsequently by his successors, was made the promise of her divine Founder that 'the gates of hell should never prevail against her.' No such promise was ever made by Christ to each individual believer. 'The Church of the living God is the pillar and ground of truth.' The test, therefore, of a truly enlightened and sincere Christian will be, in case of uncertainty, the promptitude of his obedience to the voice of the Church.
"From the above plain truths the following practical rule of conduct may be drawn: The Holy Spirit is the immediate guide of the soul in the way of salvation and sanctification; and the criterion or test, that the soul is guided by the Holy Spirit, is its ready obedience to the authority of the Church. This rule removes all danger whatever, and with it the soul can walk, run, or fly, if it chooses, in the greatest safety and with perfect liberty, in the ways of sanctity."—The Church and the Age,p. 35.
In transcribing the above we are reminded that St. Ignatius, who was the divine instrument in establishing and perfecting God's authority in the external order, yet left on record that so clearly had the Holy Spirit shown him by secret teaching the truths of religion, that, if all the Scriptures had been destroyed, his private revelations at Manresa would have sufficed him in their stead.
All that we have just been saying helps to answer the question why Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker did not set up systems of their own, and become Carlyles and Emersons or, especially in Father Hecker's case, Emanuel Swedenborgs or Edward Irvings. We find the following among the memoranda of conversations:
"June 30, 1886.—Why didn't I switch off from Christianity as Carlyle did? Because I hope that I was truer to natural reason; but chiefly because God had given me such an amount of infused lights and graces that I was forced to seek a guide or go off into extravagant fanaticism. They were ready to encourage me in the latter. George Ripley said to me, 'Hecker, what have you got to tell? Tell us what it is and we will accept it.'"
The impression a perfectly "independent thinker" made on him, as typified in Emerson, is told in an entry in his diary, dated April 24, 1844:
"I have had a few words with Emerson. He stands on the extreme ground where he did several years ago. He and his followers seem to me to live almost a purely intellectual existence. His wife I have understood to be a very religious woman. They are heathens in thought, and profess to be so. They have no conception of the Church: out of Protestantism they are almost perfectly ignorant. They are the narrowest of men, yet they think they are extremely 'many-sided'; and, forsooth, do not comprehend Christendom, and reject it. The Catholic accepts all the good they offer him and finds it comparatively little compared to that which he has."
That he recognized that the test of the character of his inner experiences, for good or ill, was to be finally found in what they led him to, is shown by the following passage, already quoted, from the diary: "What I do I must do, for it is not I that do it; it is the Spirit. What that Spirit may be is a question I cannot answer. What it leads me to do will be the only evidence of its character. I feel as impersonal as a stranger to it."
The aid which fidelity to the light of reason and the cherishing and obeying the inspirations of the Holy Spirit lends to the discovery of the fulness of truth is shown by the following extract from an article by Father Hecker inThe Catholic Worldof October, 1887:
"The man who establishes the historical identity of the Church of to-day with the Apostolic college says the doctrines now taught must be true; the man who perceives the identity of the Church's doctrines with his own highest aspirations also proves them true. The man who has become responsive to the primitive action of his reason says that the Church, which is its only authoritative exponent, must be a divinely appointed teacher. The infallible authority of the Church in her past, present, and future teaching is established by the necessity of the truths which she teaches for the welfare of the human race, by thus completing the outlines of natural truth drawn by the divine hand in human consciousness."
By this we see that, if the divine inner life had need of the divine outer life for its integrity, it is equally certain that in his case, and also in that of Dr. Brownson, the intimate action of God within was a pointer to the true Church of the Divine Word incarnate in the actual world of humanity: for Dr. Brownson chiefly in the intellectual order, for Isaac Hecker in both the intellectual and mystical. We have no fear of wearying the reader with the length of an extract of such value as the following:
"The one who reaches Catholicity by the philosophical road, as Brownson did, by no means pretends that the problem of human destiny can be solved by mere force of reason: Catholicity is not rationalism. Nor does he pretend that the product of reason's action, the knowledge of human immortality and liberty and of the being of God, place man apart from or above the universal action of God upon all souls by means of a visible society and external ordinances: Catholicity is well named; it is universal. But he knows that when a man is persuaded of a truth philosophically he is not called upon by his intelligence or his conscience to base it upon historical evidence; it is enough that he has one source of certitude in its favor. It may be a truth first known by revelation, but if the human intelligence is capable of receiving it in revelation it must have some element of kinship to the truths of pure reason. As in the order of nature men are like unto God, so is there a likeness between the truth of God naturally known and that known only by revelation.
"As there is an appetite in the human heart which not all the treasures, honors, joys of nature can satisfy, so there is a void in the mind which all the truth within reach of the unaided natural faculties leaves unfilled. When a man without guile is brought face to face with truth he spontaneously desires union with it. Appetite proves the existence of food, and the food affirms itself by satisfying the appetite.
"Where there is question of a principle there is a class of minds which must study the part a principle has played in history, and is mainly influenced for or against it from its effect on former generations of men. This class follows the historical road. Another class is so profoundly moved by the truths of revelation as soon as known, assimilates them so readily and perfectly, becomes so absorbed and lost in them, that the history of revelation is not of primary importance; it is only necessary in order to establish necessary facts, such as the divine institution of an external society, and of other external aids. But with this philosophical class of minds the truth stands sponsor for itself and is its own best witness. The impression produced by revelation here and now upon the soul without guile is one of the best probable proofs to that soul of the historical claims of the society to which God entrusted it. 'The Church Accredits Itself' was the title of one of the most powerful articles Dr. Brownson ever wrote for this magazine.
"Both the historical and the philosophical processes are necessary, but each is more so to one class of minds than to another. To the philosophical mind, once scepticism is gone and life is real, the supreme fact of life is the need of more truth than unaided reason can know. The more this need is felt, and the more clearly the deficiencies of natural reason are known, the better capable one is to appreciate the truths of revelation which can alone supply these deficiencies. In such a state of mind you are in a condition to establish revealed truth in a certain sensea priori,and the methoda posterioriis then outranked. The philosopher outranks the historian. In minds of a speculative turn the historian is never considered of primary importance. The principles which its facts illustrate are furnished him by human reason in philosophy, and by the divine reason in revelation. The historical mind has never been considered in the world of thought as sovereign. The philosopher is broad enough to study all ways leading to the full truth and joy of life, whether logical or traditional; but he knows that the study of principles is higher than that of facts. . . . No man can intelligently become a Catholic without examining and deciding the historical question. But back of this is the consideration that the truths the Church teaches are necessarily in harmony with my reason—nay, that they alone solve the problems of reason satisfactorily and answer fully to the wants of the heart. To some minds the truths standing alone compel assent; that is to say, the truths standing alone, and considered in themselves, demand the submission of my reason. Among these truths, thus imperative, not the least is the need of the very Church herself, viewed in her action on men and nations—viewed quite apart from the historical and Scriptural proof of her establishment by Christ. Once the mind is lifted above subjectivism and is face-to-face with the truth, union with the Church is only a question of time and of fidelity to conscience."—Catholic World,November, 1887, "Dr. Brownson and Catholicity."
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HAD Protestantism possessed anything capable of attracting Isaac Hecker he would certainly have found it, for he made due and diligent search. He was, in a manner, bound to do so, for the atmosphere in which he had been born and nurtured had not yet cleared so fully that he could say to himself with positive assurance that there was no safe midway between no-belief and Catholicity.
All the natural influences of his surroundings were such as to draw him to one or other of the Protestant denominations. The power of example and precept in his mother tended that way. The power of public opinion, in so far as it had any religious bearing, was Protestant. The most intelligent and high-minded people he had enjoyed intimate acquaintance with were Protestant by birth and training. True, most of these had fallen away from both the fellowship and the doctrines of orthodoxy; but while they had not the heart to point him to what had been their Egypt, still they had no Promised Land to lead him into, and were confessedly in the Desert. Yet their influence was indirectly favorable to Protestantism as opposed to Catholicity, although no one but the ministers whom he consulted thought of urging him to identify himself with any variety of it until he showed signs of becoming a Catholic.
To this rule Brownson may appear as a partial exception, but until the summer of 1844 he was so in appearance only. It is true that Isaac Hecker had learned from him the claims of most of the great forms of Protestantism, and got his personal testimony as to the emptiness of them all. Brownson was a competent witness, for he had been an accepted disciple of every school, from sterile Presbyterianism to rank Transcendentalism. Although of a certain testiness of temper, he bore malice to no man and to no body of men. His testimony was in the presence of patent facts, and his condemnation of all forms of orthodox Protestantism in the end was unreserved. But, up to the date given above he still made a possible exception in favor of Anglicanism. In the middle of April, 1843, he wrote Isaac a letter, motioning him toward this sect, at the same time affirming that he could not quite accept it for himself. Such counsel was no better than motioning him away from it, and was but a symbol of Brownson's own devious progress, swaying now to one side and again to the other, but always going forward to Rome. But young Hecker would learn for himself. Of an abnormally inquiring mind by nature, he never accepted a witness other than himself about any matter if he could help it.
In the early part of 1844 the question of religious affiliation began to press for settlement with increasing urgency, casting him at times into an agony of mind. It was not merely that he was impelled by conscience towards the fulness of truth, but that truth in its simplest elements seemed sometimes to be lacking to him. He was heard to say in after years that, had he not found Catholicity true, he would have been thrown back into a scepticism so painful as to suggest suicide as a relief. Yet those who have trodden any of the paths which lead from inherited heresy to true doctrine, will appreciate the force of the influences, both personal and social, which induced him to reconsider, and make for himself the grand rounds of Protestant orthodoxy before turning his back upon it for ever.
We find him, therefore, going diligently to all who claimed to be watchmen on the walls of Sion, to seek from each one personally that countersign which would tally with the divine word nature and grace were uttering in his own soul. He interviewed ministers repeatedly. "Not having had," he wrote in this magazine for November, 1887, "personal and experimental knowledge of the Protestant denominations, I investigated them all, going from one of them to another—Episcopal, Congregational, Baptist, Methodist, and all—conferring with their ministers and reading their books. It was a dreary business, but I did it. I knew Transcendentalism well and had been a radical socialist. All was found to be as stated above. Brownson's ripe experience and my own thoroughly earnest investigation tallied perfectly. Indeed, the more you examine the Protestant sects in the light of first principles the more they are found to weaken human certitude, interfere with reason's native knowledge of God and His attributes, and perplex the free working of the laws of human thought. Protestantism is no religion for a philosopher, unless he is a pessimist—if you can call such a being a philosopher—and adopts Calvinism."
Why Calvinism, with its dread consistency of aversion for human nature, did not attract him in these early inquiries was expressed by Father Hecker in after years by the saying, "Heresy always involves a mutilation of man's natural reason." The typical Calvinist foams against man's natural capacity for the true and the good, and one of its representatives, a Presbyterian minister, had the consistency to say to our young disciple of nature, "Unless you believe that you are totally depraved you will certainly suffer eternal damnation." These words were spoken to one who felt some sort of apostleship growing into act within his bosom: to preach the Gospel to those who are totally depraved he perceived to be both vain and suicidal. Furthermore, the consciousness of his own upright character, his experience and observation of human virtue in others, made abstract arguments needless to prove that Calvinism is an outrage on human kind and a blasphemy against the Creator.
Anglicanism, too—uncleansed, as it notoriously is, of a Calvinistic taint, broken up by absolute license of dissent, maintaining a mere outward conformity to an extremely lax discipline—affronted Isaac Hecker's ideal of the communion of man and God; man seeking and God giving the one only revelation of divine truth, unifying and organizing the Christian community: and this in spite of an attraction for the beauty of the Episcopal service which he often confesses in his diary.
In the same scrupulous spirit he tried the Baptists, though he must have known that they were, almost without exception, Calvinists. He had a conference with one of their ministers which, from the account he gives of it, must have degenerated into something like a wrangle. "If," said young Hecker, "you admit that baptism is not a saving ordinance, why, then, do you separate yourselves from the rest of Christendom on a mere question of ceremonial observance?" There could be no satisfactory answer to this question.
As to the Methodists, they made fifty years ago much less pretension to an intellectual footing in the religious world than at the present day. One thing, Father Hecker tells us, drew his sympathetic regards their way—their doctrine of perfection. He went to one of their ministers, a Dr. Crawford. "I have read in the Bible," said he, "'If thou wouldst be perfect, go and sell all thou hast'; now, that is the kind of Christian I want to be." The answer was: "Well, young man, you must not carry things too far; you are too enthusiastic. Christ does not require that of us in the nineteenth century." After conversing with him for some time, the minister told him to give up such ideas and study for the ministry.
A singular episode in his search was his meeting with two enthusiastic Mormon apostles, and a long and careful examination, under their guidance, of the then newly-delivered revelations and prophecies of Joseph Smith. He describes his Mormon acquaintances as men of some intelligence, but given over, totally and blindly, to Smith's imposture.
But what cut under the claims of every form of Protestantism was the error, common to them all, concerning the rule of faith: the private and independent judgment of the teaching of Scripture made by each man for himself. As the real owner of a homestead has most reason to dread a dealer in false titles, so the truly free man has most reason to dread false liberty. Isaac Hecker was the type of rational individual liberty, hence the very man to abhor most the caricature of that prerogative in the typical Protestant.
Five years before his death, in an article inThe Catholic Worldentitled "Luther and the Diet of Worms," Father Hecker put the case thus: "It is a misapprehension common among Protestants to suppose that Catholics, in refusing the appeal of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, condemn the use of reason or individual judgment, or whatever one pleases to call the personal act which involves the exercise of man's intellect and free will. The truth is, personal judgment flows from what constitutes man a rational being, and there is no power under heaven that can alienate personal judgment from man, nor can man, if he would, disappropriate it. The cause of all the trouble at the Diet of Worms was not personal judgment, for neither party put that in question. The point in dispute was the right application of personal judgment. Catholics maintained, and always have and always will maintain, that a divine revelation necessitates a divine interpreter. Catholics resisted, and always will resist, on the ground of its incompetency, a human authority applied to the interpretation of the contents of a divinely-revealed religion. They consider such an authority, whether of the individual or the state, in religious matters an intrusion. Catholics insist, without swerving, upon believing in religion none but God. . . . To investigate and make one's self certain that God has made a revelation is of obligation, and consistent with Christianity. But as a divine revelation springs from a source above the sphere of reason, it necessitates a divinely authorized and divinely assistedinterpreterand teacher. This is one of the essential functions of the Church."
That the use of the Scriptures is not, and cannot be made the ordinary means for making all men Christians, was plain to Isaac Hecker for other reasons than the essential one thus clearly stated. For, if such were the case, God would bestow on all men the gift to read at sight, or cause all to learn how to read, or would have recorded in the Book itself the words, "Unless a man reads the Bible, and believes what he reads, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," or their plain equivalent; whereas the Bible, as we have it now, did not exist in the apostolic days, the most glorious era of the Christian Church. Such is Father Hecker's argument in a powerful article inThe Catholic Worldfor October, 1883. He continues:
"But suppose that everybody knew how to read, or all men were gifted to read at first sight; suppose that everybody had a copy of the Bible within his reach, a genuine Bible, and knew with certitude what it means; suppose that Christ himself had laid it down as a rule that the Bible, without note or comment, and as interpreted by each one for himself, is the ordinary way of receiving the grace of salvation—which is the vital principle of Protestantism; suppose all these evident assumptions as true. Would the Bible even in that case suffice to make any one man, woman, or child a Christian? Evidently not. And why? For that is a personal work, and the personal work of Christ; for Christ alone can make men Christians. And no account of Christ is Christ. . . The contents of a book, whatever these may be, are powerless to place its readers in direct contact and vital relations with its author. No man is so visionary as to imagine that the mental operation of reading theIliad,or thePhædo,or theDivine Comedy,suffices to put him in communication with the personality of Homer, or Plato, or Dante. All effort is in vain to slake the thirst of a soul famishing for theFountainof living waters from a brook, or to stop the cravings of a soul for the living Saviour with a printed book. . . . His words are 'Come unto ME all that are weary and heavy laden, and I will refresh you.' It was the attempt to make men Christians by reading the Bible that broke Christendom into fragments, multiplied jarring Christian sects, produced swarms of doubters, filled the world with sceptics and scoffers at all religion, frustrated combined Christian action, and put back the Christian conquest of the world for centuries. Three centuries of experience have made it evident enough that, if Christianity is to be maintained as a principle of life among men, it must be on another footing than the suicidal hypothesis invented in the sixteenth century after the birth of its divine Founder."
His farewell interviews with exponents of the Protestant claims were mainly, if not wholly, with representatives of Anglicanism. This did not arise from any grounded hope of getting all he wanted there, but from an insensible drift of his mind upon those currents of thought set in motion by the great power of Newman. The air was full of promise of non-Roman Catholicity, and the voices which called the English-speaking world to listen were the most eloquent since Shakespeare. It needed but a dim hope pointing along any road to induce the delicate conscience of Isaac Hecker to try if it might not be a thoroughfare. But neither in his copious entries in the diary at this period, nor in his articles in this magazine for the year 1887 on Dr. Brownson's difficulties—and these were much like his own—do we find any trace of his discovering in Anglicanism a germ of Catholicity unfolding from the chrysalis of genuine Protestantism and casting it off. This was readily perceived in Isaac Hecker's bearing and conversation by acute Episcopalians themselves, as in the case of Dr. Seabury, who, as Father Hecker relates in the articles above referred to, prophesied Brownson's conversion to Catholicity, and did so for reasons which Seabury must have known would apply to young Hecker also.
Many at this time were being drawn by poetical sentiment to the beautiful and religious forms of Episcopalian worship; drawn and held rather by imagination and feeling than by any adhesion of their minds to distinctive Anglican doctrines. Father Hecker was, indeed, more poetical in temperament than at first acquaintance he seemed to be, but his mind was so constituted that he must have the main reasons of things, whether religious or not, firmly settled before he could enjoy their use. Nor could he be content with fragments of revealed truth, such as are found in all denominations of non-Catholics. "There is a large floating body of Catholic truth in the world," says Newman; "it comes down by tradition from age to age. . . . Men [outside the church] take up and profess these scattered truths, merely because they fall in with them." Not so Father Hecker: no flotsam and jetsam of doctrine for him, unless some fragment would reveal to him the name of the ship from which it had been torn, and the port from which she had sailed, and so lead him to the discovery of the ship herself, crew, cargo, port, and owner.
Yet he lingered long over the claim of Anglicanism to be the Catholic religion. Of Mr. Haight and of his interviews with him we have already spoken. Through him he came across a published letter of a Mr. Norris, Episcopal minister in Carlisle, Pa., which so pleased him for its Catholic tendency that he wrote to him, asking to be allowed to go to Carlisle and live there as the writer's pupil. The answer, though a refusal of this request, was kind, and contained a cordial invitation to visit Mr. Norris after Easter. On his way to Concord, in the following spring, Isaac made a long detour to the little town in southern Pennsylvania, interviewed Mr. Norris, and came away no wiser than before.
The following words of the diary, under date of March 30, 1844, refer to an Episcopal dignitary of higher grade:
"Mr. Haight gave me a note of introduction to Dr. Seabury. I called to see him two evenings ago and had a very pleasant conversation with him. His sociableness and perfect openness of expression I was quite delighted with. He frankly acknowledged that he thought that error had been committed on both sides in the controversy of the Reformation between the Pope and the Anglican Church. He recommended me to examine those points which kept me from joining the Anglican or Roman Church before I should do anything further, as there was the charge of schism against the Anglican Church and neglect of discipline among the members of her communion. I told him that though the Church of Rome may commit errors in practice, she had not committed any in principle, and that it was easier to prune a luxuriant tree than to revivify a tree almost exhausted of life. I left him with an earnest invitation to call again."
This half-confession of schism and frank avowal of lack of discipline on the part of a perfectly representative official of the Anglican Church was something singularly Providential, for it came within a fortnight after Isaac Hecker's first interview with Bishop Hughes, described in the diary under date of March 22. That powerful man and great prelate was a type of the best form of Catholicism at that day. He was of the Church militant in more senses than one; and the military qualities which have inspired the public action of Catholic champions for the past three centuries were strongly developed in him. That it was for the good of religion that it should have such characters as John Hughes to care for its public welfare there is no room to doubt. Since then the temper of Protestant Americans has undergone a change which is almost radical. It has grown infinitely more just and kindly towards Catholics. The decay of the Protestant bond of cohesion from lapse of time and from the unsettlement of belief in its chief doctrines; the fighting of two wars, one of them the great Rebellion, which fused the populations of States and acquainted men better with their neighbors; the coming in of millions of Catholic foreigners whose every breath was an aspiration for liberty; the rise, culmination, and collapse of the anti-Catholic movement termed Know-nothing-ism; the polemical warfare of Bishop Hughes himself and of his contemporaries—these and other causes have made it possible, nay necessary, to treat non-Catholics in a different spirit from what wisdom dictated fifty years ago.
If Dr. Seabury owned to schism and lack of discipline in Anglicanism, Bishop John Hughes brought out to Isaac Hecker the very contrary as the attractive qualities of Catholicity. He was questioned by the young inquirer about the latter's chances for studying for the priesthood should he decide on entering the Church, and he answered according to rigid notions of the place of authority in religion.
"He said," are the words of the diary, ending a summary of the interview, "that their Church was one of discipline. I thanked him for the information that he gave, and told him that it was for just such instruction that I sought him. He seemed to think that I had some loose notions of the Church. So far, this settles my present intention of uniting myself with the Roman Catholic Church. Though I feel not in the least disinclined to be governed by the most rigid discipline of any church, yet I am not prepared to enter the Roman Catholic Church at present. It is not national with us, hence it does not meet our wants, nor does it fully understand and sympathize with the experience and dispositions of our people. It is principally made up of adopted and foreign individuals."
To us this is exceedingly instructive, for it tells us hownotto meet the earnest seeker after Catholic truth. Even a good-natured dog does not show his teeth when caressed, nor is an artillery salute the only show of amity between even warlike powers. Yet the repellant attitude of the great controversialist was that of very many representative Catholics of his time, especially those holding his high office. For although he really did know the American people, and although their country was fully his own, and was by him deeply and intelligently loved, yet he did not understand or sympathize with the religious movements of which his strange young visitor was the truest type. He afterwards knew him better and loved him.
The toss thus given Isaac Hecker by Bishop Hughes's catapult of "discipline" had the good effect of throwing him again upon a full and perfect and final investigation of Protestantism. With what immediate result is shown by the Seabury interview already related, and with what honesty of purpose is shown by the following words written the same day:
"If a low passion usurps the place of pure love, if a blind prejudice usurps the place of Catholic truth, he who informs me of it, though he had been my enemy (if enemies it is possible for me to have), I will receive him as an angel from heaven, as an instrument of God. My honor, my consistency, my character consists in faithfulness to God's love, God's truth, and nothing else. Let me be but true to Him—how then can I be false to either man or the world? It is Him who knows our secret thoughts that we should fear (if fear we must) and obey."
Thus it was Anglicanism that engaged Isaac Hecker's last efforts to adjust a Protestant outside to his inward experience with the Holy Spirit; and this for a reason quite evident. That body pretended, then as now, to be the Catholic Christian Church, assisting men to union with God by a divinely-founded external organism, but not demanding the sacrifice of human liberty. To an inexperienced observer such as he, it seemed possible that Anglicanism might be the union of historical Christianity with manly freedom. Closer observation proved to him not only the compatibility of Catholicity and liberty, but that Anglicanism, though assuming some of the forms of Catholic unity, is kept alive by the principle of individual separatism common to all Protestant sects. For a time, or in a place, it may have much or little of Catholicity; but in no place can it live for a day without the Protestant principle of a right of final appeal to the individual judgment to decide upon the verity of doctrine.
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"I HAVE been groping in darkness, seeking where Thou wast not, and I found Thee not. But, O Lord my God,Thou hast found me—leave me not."
These words are part of a long prayer written by Isaac Hecker in his diary April 23, 1844, after his arrival at Concord, Mass. He appears to have gone directly there from Carlisle, Pa., where he had spent some days with the Rev. William Herbert Norris, whose published letter to "A Sincere Enquirer" had excited in the young man a hope that he might find in him a teacher whose deep inward experiences would be complemented by the adequate external guaranty that he was seeking. We have already noted that he was disappointed. He states the reason very suggestively in a letter written at the time:
"Alas, that men should speak of those things they are most ignorant of! What hopes did he not awaken in my bosom as I read his letter to a Sincere Enquirer, and how were they blasted when I met him and found that it was not he, but Hooker, Newman, Paul, etc.! It is a sad fact that many believe, but very few give themselves up to what they believe so that they may have the substance of their belief."
Isaac Hecker's business in Concord had, as usual, two sides. Externally it meant going on with Greek and Latin, under the guidance of the lately deceased George P. Bradford, a scholar of rare acquirements, whose acquaintance he had made at Brook Farm the previous year. The end he sought in this study was to fit himself for "working in the field of the church." But as the question of which church was not even yet fully settled in his mind, his search for the true religion still remained his deepest and most inmost purpose. Nevertheless, he was enjoying at this time one of his periods of profound interior and exterior peace. "I feel," he writes, "that I am growing in God's grace. To Him I look for support. Will He not impart wisdom as well as love?"
His surroundings at Concord are so vividly described in the letters he wrote to his family that we cannot omit quotations from them. The first of these is dated at Brook Farm, and describes his efforts to find a room after reaching the village. He seems to have gone at once to Mr. Bradford's house on his arrival.
"April 22, '44.-. . . After supper we sallied forth again. We saw a room, and what do you imagine they charged for it? Seventy-five dollars a year!! This was out of the question. We went further and found a room, good size, very good people, furnished, and to be kept in order for eight dollars a quarter. This seemed reasonable to me, and also to Mr. Bradford. I felt safe in telling the lady that I thought I should take it. I requested Mr. Bradford to keep a look-out for me while I was gone, and if we could not find a better place before I returned I would accept this. This morning I left Concord to come and see Charles Dana concerning the books I shall require, and to see some of my friends. I got into Boston at ten o'clock, and walked out here by dinner-time. All of the old set that are here were delighted to see me. I have conversed with a few of them, and find them more open to consider the claims of the Church than I had anticipated."
"Concord, April 24, '44.—Dear Friends: This evening I can say that I am settled, comfortably settled in every particular. All that is needed for my comfort is here: a good straw bed, a large table, carpet, washstand, book-case, stove, chairs, looking-glass—all, all that is needful. And this for seventy-five cents a week, including lights; wood is extra pay. This is the inanimate about me. The lady of the house, Mrs. Thoreau,is a woman.The only fear I have about her is that she is too much like dear mother—she will take too much care of me. She has told me how she used to sit up nights, waiting for a young man whom she had taken to board, to come home. He was a stranger to her, but still she insists that she must treat all as she would her own, and even with greater care. If you were to see her, mother, you would be perfectly satisfied that I have fallen into good hands, and met a second mother, if that is possible."
"April 25, 1:30 P.M.—I have just finished my dinner; it wasein herrliches Essen.Unleavened bread (from home), maple-sugar, and apples which I purchased this morning. Previous to taking dinner I said my first lesson to Mr. Bradford in Greek and Latin.
"I am extremely well situated, and feel contented in myself, and deeply grateful to you all for your goodness in helping me to pursue the real purpose of my being. All we can do is to be faithful to God and to the work He has given us to do, and, whatever end He may lead us to, to have that central faith that 'all is for the best.' There is only one life, and that is life in God; and only one death, and that is separation from Him. And this life is not and cannot be measured by the external eye. We must be fixed in God before we can do anything rightly—study, labor, social, political or of any kind. . . .
"I have written this letter full of nothingness; I will be more settled the next time and do better. Send all your love to me—think more of heaven and we shall grow happier. If once celestial love has touched us, we cannot rest until it dwells and abides in our hearts. To you all I send my warmest and purest love.—ISAAC."
"Concord, May 2, 1844.—Dear Friends: It was my intention not to write home until I had received a letter from you; but as none has yet come, and I am in want of a few things, I will write you immediately.
"You can scarcely imagine how different my life is now from what it was at home. It is like living in another world. It is possible that you might not be suited with the conditions here, but to me they are the very ones which are congenial to my present state of being. I am alone from early dawn to late at night; no one to intrude upon my quiet except Mr. Bradford, who occupies the hour between twelve and one to hear my recitations, and Mrs. Thoreau a few minutes in making my bed in the mornings. The rest of my time is devoted to study, communion, and, a little of it, to reading. How unlike the life at home!
"The thought just occurs to me that if such a life seems desirable to you, how easily you could obtain it. What is it that costs so much labor of mind and body? Is it not that which we consume on and in our bodies? Then, if we reduce the consumption there will be less need of production. Most of our labor is labor for the body. We are treasuring up corruption for the day of death; is this not so? As we rise in spirit above the body we shall bring all its appetites into subjection to the moral law. . . .
"This is what I should like you to do for me. All the food that I brought with me is gone, and as I would like to have my razor sent on, and as the articles you can give me would be better than any I can get here, you will be so kind as to send with it the following list, if you think best: 1. Put in some hard bread. 2. A few unleavened wheat biscuits, such as I used to make. 3. Some unleavened Graham biscuits. 4. A five-cent or ten-cent loaf of bread, if you think it will keep good until it gets here. 5. Get me a linen summer frock-coat such as are worn—those loose ones. Dunster has my measure and he can cut it for you. Let it be made. I have only a summer jacket with me, and that is John's. 6. Do not forget the razor. You can put in any other simple, solid food, if you wish to send any. Do I ask too much from you? If so, you must be kind enough to tell me. Your labor is already too great, and I am burdening you with more. . . .
"How much my heart loves you all! How unkindly I have spoken to you at times! You will forgive me and love me none the less, will you not? May we live together more and more in the unity of love."
"May, 1844.—. . . My studies are pursued with the same spirit in which they were commenced, and there seems to me no reason to fear but that they will be continued in the same for some time to come. However, I would affirm what has been affirmed by me for these two years back, the only consistency that I can promise is submission to the Spirit that is guiding me, whatever may be the external appearance or superficial consequences to others. . . .
"How our astonishment should be excited to perceive that we have been in such a long sleep, and that even now we see but dimly. Let us each ask ourselves in whose business we are employed. Is it our Father's, or is it not? If not, let us immediately turn to the business of our Father, the only object of our life. Let us submit wholly to the guidance of Love."
"TO MRS. CATHERINE J. HECKER. Concord, May 31, 1844.—You speak of my situation as pleasant, and so it is to me. Though the house is situated on the street of a village, the street is beautifully arched with trees for some distance, and my room is very pleasant. One window is wholly shaded by sweet honeysuckle, which is now in blossom, filling the room with its mild fragrance. The little humming-birds visit its flowers frequently without being disturbed by my presence."
The diary, which runs side by side with these letters, was, as usual, the recipient of more intimate self-communings than could be shared with any friend. It shows that although he was now well-nigh convinced of the truth of Catholicity, yet that he still felt a lingering indecision, produced, perhaps, by a haunting memory of the stern front of "discipline" he had encountered in Bishop Hughes. This seemed like a phantom of terror to the young social reformer, whose love of liberty, though rational, was then and ever afterwards one of the passions of his soul. Yet we rarely find now in these pages any statement of specific reasons for and against Catholicity such as were plentiful during the period preceding his acquaintance with Mr. Haight, Dr. Seabury, and Mr. Norris. He seems to shudder as he stands on the bank and looks upon the flowing and cleansing stream; but his hesitancy is caused not so much by any unanswered difficulties of his reason as by his sensibilities, by vague feelings of alarm for the integrity of his manhood. He feared lest the waters might cleanse him by skinning him alive. Catholicity, as typified in Bishop Hughes, her Celtic-American champion, seemed to him "a fortified city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass against the whole land."
Now, Isaac Hecker was built for a missionary, and the extreme view of the primary value of highly-wrought discipline which he encountered everywhere among Catholics, though not enough to blind him to the essential liberty of the Church, was enough to delay him in his progress to her. There can be little doubt that multitudes of men and women of less discernment and feebler will than his, have been and still are kept entirely out of the Church by the same cause.
Only at long intervals, as we near the last pages of the large and closely-written book containing the first volume of his diary, do we meet with those agonizing complaints of dryness, the distress of doubt, the weary burden of insoluble difficulties, so common heretofore. He seems, indeed, no longer battling; be victory is won; but it remains to know what are the spoils and where they are to be gathered. Of course there are interludes of his irrepressible philosophizing on moral questions. And at the very end, under date of May 23, 1844, we find the following:
"This afternoon brings me to the close of this book. How different are the emotions with which I close it from those with which I opened it at Brook Farm, now little more (a month) than a year ago! How fruitful has this year been to me! How strangely mysterious and beautiful! And now my soul foreshadows more the next year than ever it presaged before. My life is beyond my grasp, and bears me on will-lessly to its destined haven. Like a rich fountain it overflows on every side; from within flows unceasingly the noiseless tide. The many changes and unlooked-for results and circumstances, within and without, of the coming year I would no more venture to anticipate than to count the stars. It is to me now as if I had just been born, and I live in the Sabbath of creation. Every thing that I see I feel called on to give a name; it has a new meaning to me. Should this life grow—what? It is a singular fact that, although conscious of a more interior and potent force at work within, I am now more quiet and will-less than I was when it at first affected me. I feel like a child, full of joy and pliability; and all ambition of every character seems to have left me. I see where I was heretofore, and the degree of externality which was mixed with the influences that I co-operated with, an externality from which I now feel that I have been freed. It does seem to me that all worldly prospect that ever was before me is gone, and as if I were weak, very weak, in the sight of the world; so I really am. I feel no more potency than a babe. Yet I have a will-less power of love which will conquer through me, and which, O gracious Lord, I never dreamt of before."
In the middle of the above entry he thus notes an interruption, and records a lesson taught by the late New England spring: "George and Burrill Curtis came in, and I have just returned from a walk in the woods with them. May the buds within blossom, and may their fruit ripen in my prayers to God."
He was now, indeed, very near his goal, though even yet he did not clearly see it. And once more all his active powers deserted him. Study became impossible. His mind was drawn so strongly in upon itself that neither work nor play, neither books nor the renewed intercourse which at this period he sought with his old friends in Boston and at Brook Farm, could any longer fasten his attention. He opens his new diary with a record of the trial he has just made in order to discover "whether in mixing with the world I should not be somewhat influenced by their life and brought into new relations with my studies. But it was to no purpose that I went. . . . There was no inducement that I could imagine strong enough to keep me from returning. Ole Bull, whom I very much wished to hear again, was to play the next evening; and Parley Pratt, a friend whom I had not met for a great length of time, and whom I did wish to see, was to be in town the next day. There were many other things to keep me, but none of them had the least effect. I could no more keep myself there than a man could sink himself in the Dead Sea, and so I had to come home.
"I feel a strong inclination to doze and slumber, and more and more in these slumbers the dim shadows that appear in my waking state become clearer, and my conversation is more real and pleasant to me. I feel a double consciousness in this state, and think, 'Now, is not this real? I will recollect it all, what I saw and what I said'; but it flies and is lost when I awake. . . . I call this sleeping, but sleep it is not; for in this state I am more awake than at any other time."
A few days later, on June 5, he notes that
"Although my meals are made of unleavened bread and figs, and my drink is water, and I eat no more than supports my body, yet do I feel sinfully self-indulgent."
He resolves, moreover, to trouble himself no more about the fact that he cannot continue his studies. On this subject, and on the passivity to which he was now compelled, he had written as explicitly as he could to his friend Brownson, and on June 7 he received a response which had such an immediate result upon his future that we transcribe it entire:
"Mt. Bellingham, June 6, 1844.—My dear Isaac: I thank you for your letter, and the frankness with which you speak of your present interior state. You ask for my advice, but I hardly know what advice to give. There is much in your present state to approve, also much which is dangerous. The dreamy luxury of indulging one's thoughts and ranging at ease through the whole spirit-world is so captivating, and when frequently indulged in acquires such power over us, that we cease to be free men. The power to control your thoughts and feelings and to fix them on what object you choose is of the last necessity, as it is the highest aim of spiritual culture. Be careful that you do not mistake a mental habit into which you have fallen for the guidance of the All-wise. Is it not the very sacrifice you are appointed to make, to overcome this spiritual luxury and to become able to do that which is disagreeable? Where is the sacrifice in following what the natural tendencies and fixed habits of our mind dispose us to do? What victory have you acquired, what power to conquer in the struggle for sanctity do you possess, when you cannot so far control your thoughts and feelings as to be able to apply yourself to studies which you feel are necessary? Here is your warfare. You have not won the victory till you have become as able to drudge at Latin or Greek as to give up worldly wealth, pleasures, honors, or distinctions.
"But, my dear Isaac, you cannot gain this victory alone, nor by mere private meditation and prayer. You can obtain it only through the grace of God, and the grace of God only through its appointed channels. You are wrong. You do not begin right. Do you really believe the Gospel? Do you really believe the Holy Catholic Church? If so, you must put yourself under the direction of the Church. I have commenced my preparations for uniting myself with the Catholic Church. I do not as yet belong to the family of Christ. I feel it. I can be an alien no longer, and without the Church I know, by my own past experience, that I cannot attain to purity and sanctity of life. I need the counsels, the aids, the chastisements, and the consolations of the Church. It is the appointed medium of salvation, and how can we hope for any good except through it? Our first business is to submit to it, that we may receive a maternal blessing. Then we may start fair.
"You doubtless feel a repugnance to joining the Church. But we ought not to be ashamed of Christ; and the Church opens a sphere for you, and you especially. You are not to dream your life away. Your devotion must be regulated and directed by the discipline of the Church. You know that there is a large Roman Catholic population in our country, especially in Wisconsin. The bishop of that Territory is a German. Now, here is your work—to serve this German population. And you can do it without feeling yourself among foreigners. Here is the cross you are to take up. Your cross is to resist this tendency to mysticism, to sentimental luxury, which is really enfeebling your soul and preventing you from attaining to true spiritual blessedness.
"I think you would better give up Greek, but command yourself sufficiently to master the Latin; that you need, and cannot do without. Get the Latin, and with that and the English, French, and German which you already know, you can get along very well. But don't be discouraged.
"I want you to come and see our good bishop. He is an excellent man—learned, polite, easy, affable, affectionate, and exceedingly warm-hearted. I spent two hours with him immediately after parting with you in Washington Street, and a couple of hours yesterday. I like him very much.
"I have made up my mind, and I shall enter the Church if she will receive me. There is no use in resisting. You cannot be an Anglican, you must be a Catholic or a mystic. If you enter the Church at all, it must be the Catholic. There is nothing else. So let me beg you, my dear Isaac, to begin by owning the Church and receiving her blessing.
"My health is very good, the family are all very well; I hope you are well. Let me hear from you often. Forgive me if I have said anything harsh or unkind in this letter, for all is meant in kindness, and be assured of my sincere and earnest affection.
"Yours truly,
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