NOT finding any solution of his spiritual difficulties at either Fruitlands or Brook Farm, Isaac Hecker turned his face once more toward the 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 begun to anticipate, at any turn, some light on the dispositions of Providence in his regard which might determine his course for good and all. And, meantime, as patient waiting was all that lay in his own power, it seemed the wisest course to yield to the solicitations of his kindred and abide results in his own place. He did not go there at once, however, after quitting Alcott's community, but returned to Brook Farm for a fortnight. His journal during this period offers many pages worthy of transcription.

It is possible that we have readers who may deem us too copious in our quotations from this source. But, if wearisome to any, yet they are necessary to those for whom this Life is especially written. The lessons to be learned from Father Hecker are mainly those arising from the interaction between God's supernatural dealings with him, and his own natural characteristics. This fact, moreover, is typical as well as personal, for the great question of his day, which was the dawning of our 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 complete unacquaintance with a kind of reading which even at this point might have shed some light upon his interior difficulties. In later years he enjoyed, in the study of accredited Christian mystics, that kind of satisfaction which a traveller experiences who, after long wanderings in what had seemed a trackless desert, obtains a map which not only makes his whole route plain, but assures him that he did not stray from well-known paths even during his times of most extreme bewilderment.

That the diary has the character we here claim for it, and is not the mere ordinary result of a morbid and aimless introspection, is plainly shown by the speedy cessation of excessive self-analysis on Father Hecker's part, after he had actually reached the goal to which he was at this period alternately sweetly led and 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 had all had or might have. But the study of his interior thus forced upon him was far from a pleasing task. "It is exceedingly oppressive to me to write as I now do," we find him complaining; "continually does myself appear in my writing. I would that my I were wholly lost in the sea of the Spirit—wholly lost in God."

We preface the subjoined extract from the diary with the remark that Father Hecker's reading of signs of the Divine will in men and events often brought him to the verge of credulity, over which he was prevented from stepping by his shrewd native sense. Though he insisted all his life on interpreting them as signal flags of the Divine wisdom, this did not hinder him from gaining a reputation for sound practical judgment:

"Brook Farm, July 31, 1843.—Man is the symbol of all mysteries. Why is it that all things seem to me to be instinct with prophecy? I do not see any more individual personalities, but priests and oracles of God. The age is big with a prophecy which it is in labor to give birth to."

"My experience is different now from what it has been. It is much fuller; every fibre of my being seems teeming with sensitive life. I am in another atmosphere of sentiment and thought. . . . I have less real union and sympathy with her, and with those whom I have met much nearer heretofore. 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, dulness, fleshliness, in me. I experience no natural desires, no impure thoughts, nor wanderings of fancy. Still, I feel more intensely, and am filled to overflowing with love, and with desire for union. But there is no one to meet me where I am, and I cannot meet them where they are."

All his life Father Hecker was on the lookout for the great human influences which run across those of religion, either to swell their volume or to lessen their force. These are mainly the transmissions of heredity, and the environments that are racial, temporal, epochal, or local. This enduring tendency is foreshadowed in the following extracts:

"August 2, 1843.—I have been thinking much of late about the very great influence which nationality and the family progenitors have upon character. Men talk of universality, impartiality, many-sidedness, free judgment, unbiased opinion, and so on, when in reality their national and family dispositions are the centre and ground of their being, and hence of their opinions. They appear to be most themselves when they show these traits of character. They are 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 daily the sentiments and thoughts of the dim and obscure before. There are certain ideas and aspirations which have not had their fulfilment, but which run through all men from the beginning and which are continually reproduced. There is a unity of race, called Humanity; one of place, called Nationality; one of birth, called Kindred; one of affinity, called Love and Friendship. By all these we are greatly influenced. They all make their mark upon the man."

"The faculties which take cognizance of the inner world have been awakened in only a few of the human race, and these, to distinguish them, have been called prophets, miracle-workers, Providential men, seers, and poets. Now, their privilege is that of all men in a greater or less degree, just as is the case with regard to the faculties which relate to the outward world. For when men in general were as ignorant about the exterior world as they now are about the interior, the men of science, the astronomers, the mathematicians, the founders of the arts, were held to 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 of the Hebrew bards, and, above all, the prophecies of Christ, are before us. The divine instincts will be realized as surely as there is a God above who inspires them. It is the glory of God that they should be so; it is His delight. This world must become heaven. This is its destiny; and our destiny, under God, is to make it so. Prophecy is given to encourage and nourish our hopes and feed our joys, so that we may say with Job, 'I know that although worms shall eat this flesh, and my bones become dust, yet at the latter day I shall see my Redeemer face to face.'"

The sentences which follow can be paralleled by words taken from all who have truly interpreted the doctrine of Christ by their lives or their writings:

"To him that has faith all things are possible, for faith is an act of the soul; thy faith is the measure of thy power."

"If men would act from the present inspiration of their souls they would gain more knowledge than they do by reading or speculating."

"No man in his heart can ask for more than he has. Think of this deeply. God is just. We have what we ought to have, even according to our own sense of justice."

"The desire to love and be beloved, to have friends with whom we can converse, to enter society which we enjoy—is it not best to deny and sacrifice these desires? It may be said that, gratified, they add to life, and the question is how to increase life, not how to diminish it. But by denying them, would not our life gain by flowing in a more heavenly direction?"

"We are daily feeding the demons that are in us by our wicked thoughts and sinful acts; these are their meat and drink. I make them gasp sometimes. 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, comes creeping up into my throat and laps its dry tongue with eagerness for its prey, but it often returns chagrined at its discomfiture."

"That which tempts us we should deny, no matter how innocent it is in itself. If it tempts, away with it, until it tempts no more. Then partake of it, for it is then only that you can do so prudently and with temperance."

"All our thoughts and emotions are caused by some agent acting on us. This is true of all the senses and the spiritual faculties. Hence we should by all possible means purify and refine our organism, 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 sensitive and finely textured! How many exquisite delights nature yields which we are not yet aware of! What a world surrounds us of which none but holy men, prophets, and poets have had a glimpse!"

"The soul is a plate on which the senses daguerreotype indelibly pictures of the outer world. How cautious should we be where we look, what we hear, what smell, or feel, or taste! And how we should endeavor that all around us should be made beautiful, musical, fragrant, so that our souls may be awakened to a divine sense of life without a moment's interruption!"

"O God, be Thou my helper, my strength and my redeemer! May I live wholly to Thee; give me grace and obedience to Thy Spirit. May all self be put from me so that I may enter into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, Awaken me, raise me up, restore me, O Jesus Christ, Lord, Heavenly King!"

In reading what next follows it must be remembered that at the time when it was written Isaac Hecker had absolutely no knowledge of Catholic mystical theology. It is since that day that English-speaking 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 experimental knowledge of human capabilities for penetrating the veil, had already furnished him with conclusions which nothing in his devoted study of Catholic mystical writers forced him to lay aside:

"Belief in the special guidance of God has been the faith of all deeply religious men. I will not dispute the fact that some men are so guided, but will offer an explanation of it which seems to me to reconcile it with the regular order of laws established by God. My explanation would be that this guidance is not a miraculous power, specially bestowed upon some men, but merely a higher degree of ordinary divine guidance. Our ordinary life is inspired; the other is only a higher degree of what is common to all. The evil which arises from the contrary opinion is this: men who have received a higher degree 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 attempt to make universal ends out of their individual experiences. In the ordinary state no man does this, but these, being lifted a little above the mass, became intoxicated. The only one, so far as I have read, who has had humility equal to his inspiration was Jacob Boehmen. Luther, Calvin, Fox, Penn, Swedenborg, Wesley, had self in view. Selfism is mixed with their universalism. None has spoken truth so pure and universal as Boehmen. He is the most inspired man of modern times. He had more love and truth than all the other mystics put together, and fewer faults than either one of them taken singly."

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