IT was the middle of August, 1843, when Isaac Hecker once more took up his residence with his family in New York. His first endeavor was to sink back again as far as possible into the old routine of business.

"To-morrow I commence to work," he writes on the evening of his return. "My interior state is quiet and peaceful. I have not met any one yet. My dear mother understands me better than any one else. How far business will interfere with my inner life remains to be seen. O Lord! help me to keep my resolution, which is not to let the world enter my heart, but to keep it looking toward Thee! My heart has been in a constant prayerful state since I have been at home. It is busy in its own sanctuary, its own temple, God. O Lord! preserve it."

One of the first noteworthy things revealed by the diary—which from this time on was kept with less regularity than before—is that Isaac not only maintained his abstemious habits after his return, but increased their rigor. For a robust man, working hard for many hours out of every twenty-four, and deprived of all the pleasant relaxations, literary, conversational and musical, to which he had been accustoming himself for many months, the choice of such a diet as is described in the following sentences was certainly extraordinary:

"August 30.—If the past nine months or more are any evidence, I find that I can live on very simple diet—grains, fruit, and nuts. I have just commenced to eat the latter; I drink pure water. So far I have had wheat ground and made into unleavened bread, but as soon as we get in a new lot, I shall try it in the grain."

He had evidently at this time a practical conviction of the truth of a principle which, in after years, he repeated to the present writer in the form of a maxim of the transcendentalists: "A gross feeder will never be a central thinker." It is a truth of the spiritual no less than of the intellectual order. A little later we come upon the following profession of a vegetarian faith, which will be apt to amuse as well as to edify the reader:

"Reasons for not eating animal food.

"It does not feed the spirit.

"It stimulates the propensities.

"It is taking animal life when the other kingdoms offer sufficient and better increment.

"Slaughter strengthens the lower instincts.

"It is the chief cause of the slavery of the kitchen.

"It generates in the body the diseases animals are subject to, and encourages in man their bestiality.

"Its odor is offensive and its appearance unÆsthetic."

The apprehension under which he had labored, that city life would present many temptations which he would find it difficult to withstand, appears to have been unfounded. Some few social relaxations he now and then permitted himself, but they were mostly very sober-toned. "Last evening I attended a Methodist love-feast," is his record of one of these. "In returning I stopped at the ward political meeting." Then he notes that although the business he follows is especially full of temptations—as no doubt it was to a man keeping so tight a rein over his most natural and legitimate appetites—he feels deeply grateful that, so far, he has had no need to fear his being led away. "What yet remains?" he adds. "My diet is all purchased and all produced by hired labor. I suppose that slave labor produces almost all my dress. And I cannot say that I am rightly conditioned until all I eat, drink, and wear is produced by love."

It was a vivid recollection of these early efforts after an ascetic perfection which had neither guide nor definite plan, which prompted the following vigorous self-appreciation, made by Father Hecker two years before his death. He had been speaking of some of his youthful experiments in this direction, and ended with an amused laugh and the ejaculation,

"Thank God! He led me into the Catholic Church. If it hadn't been for that I should have been one of the worst cranks in the world."

Here are two expressions taken from the diary of a permanent fact of Father Hecker's individuality. They help to explain why he was misunderstood by many in later years:

"Men have fear to utter absurdities. The head is sceptical of the divine oracles of the heart, and before she utters them she clothes them in such a fantastic dress that men hear the words but lose the life, the thought."

"We often act to be understood by the heart, not by the head; and when the head speaks of its having understood, we deny its understanding. It is the secret sympathy of the heart which is the only response that is looked for. Speech is cold, profane."

This must recall, to those who were intimate with Father Hecker, how often he arrived at his own convictions by discussing them with others while they were yet but partially formed. It is a custom with many to do so, mind assisting mind, negation provoking affirmation, doubt vanishing with the utterance of the truth. In Father Hecker's case his perfect frankness led him, when among his own friends, to utter half-formed ideas, sometimes sounding startling and erroneous, but spoken with a view to get them into proper shape. At such times it required patience to know just what he meant, for he never found it the easiest to employ terms whose meaning was conventional.

By the first of September such faint hopes as Isaac had entertained of adapting himself to the conditions of his home in New York were well-nigh dissipated. But a certain natural timidity, joined with the still complete uncertainty he felt as to what his true course should be, made him dissemble his disquiet so long as it was bearable. After a month or two, by a mutual agreement between his brothers and himself which exonerated him from much of the manual labor which they still shared with the men in their employment, he devoted himself to an occupation more accordant to his mind. He set to work to make single beds and private rooms for the workmen, contriving various conveniences and means of occasional solitude for them, and in other ways doing all in his power to achieve for them the privileges he found so necessary for himself. Of these efforts we get occasional glimpses in the diary. But it is, in the main, devoted to more impersonal and larger topics, and the facts of his daily employment, as just given, have been gained from other sources.

"September 1.—There are two ways in which the spirit may live itself out. One is to leave all these conditions, purchase a spot of ground, and live according to its daily dictates. The other is to make these conditions as harmonic as possible by giving the men" (workmen) "an associative interest in the accumulations of our associative labor. Both extremes require renunciation of property and of self. Love, universal love is the ruler, and only by it can the spirit find peace or be crowned with the highest happiness."

"The mystery of man's being, the unawakened capacities in him, we are not half aware of. A few of the race, the prophets, sages, and poets, give us a glimpse of his high destiny. Alas! that men should be on the borders of such mighty truths and stand as blind and dumb as lower animals before them!"

"Balaam sometimes, but ignorantly, utters true prophecies. A remark I heard to-day leads me to say this. Speaking of diet a man said: 'Why, what do you intend? At last you will have men to live on God.' We must become God-like, or God-full. Live as He lives, become one with Him. Until we are reconciled with our Father we are aliens, prodigals. Until we can say, My Father and I are one, we have not commenced to be. We must fulfil what the Apostle said (and it means, perhaps, more than we commonly imagine): 'In God we live and move and have our being.'"

"The deeper and more profound a truth is, the less proof can you give in its support."

"September 8.—On the evening of the 6th I went to see the French Opera Company in Auber's 'Black Domino.' It did not please me as well as some music I have heard, though parts of it were very beautiful. The hymns of the nuns were very sweet. The thought occurred to me that if the Church does not provide religious gratifications for the true wants of humanity, she must be silent if men feed them profanely. It is because the Church has not done her duty that there are so many secular societies for Reformation, Temperance, and so on. The Church has provided for the salvation of the sinner's soul by means of spiritual acts, such as prayer, penance, the Eucharist and other sacraments. But now she must provide terrestrial sacraments for the salvation and transfiguration of the body."

"We should strive constantly to actualize the ideal we perceive. When we do realize all the beauty and holiness that we see, we are not called to deny ourselves, for then we are living as fully on all sides as we have capacity to do. Are we not in this state? Then, if we are sincere, we will give up lower and unnecessary gratifications for the sake of the ideal we have in view.

"I would die to prove my immortality."

"At times we are called to rely on Providence, to be imprudent and reckless according to the wisdom of the world. So I am willing to be thought. Each of us has an individual character to act out, under the inspiration of God, and this is the highest and noblest we can do. We are forms differing from one another, and if we are acting under the inspirations of the Highest, we are doing our uttermost; more the angels do not. What tends to hinder us from realizing the ideal which our vision sees must be denied, be it self, wealth, opinion, or death."

"The Heart says, 'Be all that you can.' The Intellect says, 'When you are all that you can be—what then?'"

"Infinite love is the basis of the smallest act of love, and when we love with our whole being, we are in and one with God."

"To love is to lose one's self and gain God. To be all in love is to be one with God."

"When the Spirit begets us, we are no more; the Spirit is, and there is nothing else."

"There is much debauchery in speaking wilfully.

"Every act of self is sin, is a lie.

"The Spirit will lead you into solitude and silence if it has something to teach you.

"You must be born again to know the truth. It cannot be inculcated.

"To educate is to bring forth, not to put in. To put in is death; to flow out is life."

Lest the reader may have got an impression, from any of the extracts already given, that Isaac Hecker was puffed up by the pride of his own innocence, we transcribe what follows. It shows that he did not fall under the Apostle's condemnation: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It was written on the last Sunday of September, and, after this long outpouring of confession, longing, and weakness, the diary was not again resumed for nearly a month. The desire expressed in its second paragraph for the kind of spiritual refreshment which in after years he so often enjoyed under the name of a "retreat," seems noteworthy.

"September 24, 1843.—The human heart is wicked above all things. The enemy of man is subtle and watchful beyond conception. Instead of being on the way of goodness, I am just finding out the wickedness of my nature, its crookedness, its impurity, its darkness. I want deep humility and forgetfulness of self. I am just emerging out of gross darkness and my sight is but dim, so that my iniquities are not wholly plain to my vision.

"At present I feel as if a week of quiet silence would be the means of opening more deeply the still flowing fountains of divine life. I would cut off all relations but that of my soul with the Spirit—all others seem intrusions, worldly, frivolous. The inpouring of the Spirit is checked by so much attention to other than divine things. In the bustle and noisy confusion its voice is unheard.

"I feel that one of my greatest weaknesses, because it leads me to so much sin, is my social disposition. It draws me so often into perilous conversations, and away from silence and meditation with the Spirit. Lately I have felt almost ready to say that good works are a hindrance to the gate of heaven. Pride and self-approbation are so often mixed with them. I feel that nothing has been spoken against the vain attempt to trust in good works which my soul does not fully accord with. This is a new, a very new experience for me."

The foregoing must be understood in the sense of good works hindering better works. Isaac Hecker felt his noblest aspirations to be, for the moment at any rate, towards solitude and the passive state of prayer; and in this he was hindered by the urgency of his zeal for the propagation of philanthropic schemes and his great joy in communing with men whom he hoped to find like-minded with himself. The time came when he was able to Join the two states, the inner purifying the outer man and directing his energies by the instinct of the Holy Spirit. This entry goes on as follows:

"By practice of our aspirations, ideals, and visions, we convert them into real being.

"We should be able to say, 'Which of you convinceth me of sin?' before we are fit to preach to others in such a way that our preaching may have a practical effect upon society.

"Did all our efforts flow into realizing the teachings of the Spirit, we should do much more good and be greater in the sight of God than we are now by so much speaking and writing. But let us be watchful that the pride of good works does not take the place of that of speaking and writing.

"By our sins and many weaknesses we are prevented from entering the Promised Land, and must die just in sight of it. Instead of being humble, willing, and self-denying in our youth, and being led by the Spirit of God, we keep on in the spirit of the world and give all the substance of our being to its service. And when we are nearly worn out we flee to God, and die, perhaps, in sight of heaven, instead of having been among its inhabitants, living in it upon earth, in the full bloom of our youthful joy of life. . . .

"The Lord has been good to me and my heart is filled with His warm love. Blessed be Thou, O God! for Thou hast given me a taste of Thy sweetness. Thou hast given me gratitude and thankfulness and an overflowing heart of praise. I would stand still and shout and bless God. It is God in us that believes in God. Without the light of God we should be in total darkness, and He is the only source of light. The more of God we have in us, the more we see beyond us.

"Thy inspiration, O God! is love and wisdom. In Thee they are one, as light and warmth are in the fire.

"Thou art the true, eternal food of life, and he that has tasted Thee can never be at rest until he is wholly filled with Thee. Lord, when we are without Thee we are lost, dead, in darkness. It is in and by Thy presence that we live and move and have our being.

"Ever more, O Lord, increase Thy Spirit in us until between as there is no more we or Thee, but Thou, O Father, art all!

"Like the fixed light in a crystal which flashes back the light of the sun, so does the soul of man reflect God.

"A good life consists in passive as well as active virtues.

"O Lord, so fill me that nothing shall be left but Thee, and I may be no more."

One would be tempted to believe that none but a master in the spiritual life could have written the sentences which immediately follow this outburst of love and praise. Yet remember that Isaac Hecker was not yet twenty-four, and that he knew nothing of the ways of the Spirit except what the Spirit Himself had directly taught him:

"The reason why men are perplexed and in darkness about their being and the questions which their being often asks, is not that these are insoluble, but that the disposition and spirit in which a solution is attempted is so contrary to that in which they may be solved, that they appear as hidden mysteries.

"When we come together to converse, it should be to learn from each other what good we can and ought to do, and so mingle the brightness of one with the dimness of the other. Our meetings should be such that we should go away feeling that God had been with us and multiplied our blessings. The question should be, 'Brother, can you teach me the way of the Lord in a more perfect manner than that in which I tread it, so that my soul may be increased and God abide in me more and more?' Oh! he is my brother, my master, who leads me to do more and more good and to love and live more of God. He that does not increase my heart in love or my mind in true godly wisdom, is unprofitable and negatively injurious to me.

"Wilfulness locks up while willingness" (docility) "unlocks the portal to the divine mysteries of God. I would not attempt to solve a mystery by intellect, but by being."

"October 17.—It is some time since I have written in this book. All my spare time has been occupied in writing letters to my friends, meditating, feeling, arranging matters with my brothers regarding our relations with each other, and attending to the business. I have had little time to read and to visit my friends. Since I have written my feelings have become more definite, my thoughts clearer and more distinct, and my whole mind more systematic. . . .

"The settlement which has been made with my brothers gives me the opportunity of doing what my spirit has long demanded of me. This afternoon I have been working on their bedroom, making it larger and more pleasant for their minds. This is the first movement I have made toward ameliorating their condition. I hope that God will give me strength to continue."

"October 18.—I feel this afternoon a deep want in my soul unsatisfied by my circumstances here, the same as I experienced last winter when I was led from this place. It is at the very depth of my being. Ah, it is deeply stirred! Oh, could I utter the aching void I feel within! Could I know what would fill it! Alas! nothing that can be said, no, nothing, can touch the aching spot. In silence I must remain and let it ache. I would cover myself with darkness and hide my face from the light. Oh, could I but call upon the Lord! Could I but say, Father! Could I feel any relationship!"

"November 3.—All things considered, could I, under any circumstances, have more opportunities for self-culture and for doing good than I have in my present position?

"For one thing, there is too much demand on me for physical action. My heart and head have not their share of time. But when I consider, I am at a loss to know how we can possibly diminish our business in any way without a still greater demand on us for physical labor in consequence of diminishing it.

"Yesterday afternoon I went alone in my bedroom and I was led to pray, and to think what more I can do for the friends around me than I now do. This morning I arose and prayed, and felt determined not to let any outward event disturb my inward life; that nothing should ruffle my inward peace, and that this day should be one of interior life, let come what would.

"Often I think of my past life and my present with such a strength of emotion that I would cry aloud, 'O Heaven help me from my course! This is not the life I would lead, but how shall I change it? O Lord! wilt Thou guide me and lead me, no matter what pain or distress I may have to pass through, to the true path Thou wouldst have me go in? Oh! I thank Thee for all Thou hast in any way inflicted on me; it has been to me the greatest blessing I could have received. And, O Lord! chasten me more, for I need it. How shall I live so that I may be the best I can be under any conditions? If those in which I now am are not the best, where shall I go or how shall I change them? Teach me, O Lord! and hear my humble prayer.'"

The following account of his curious inner experiences tells of the positive interference of God and His angels, supplementing the calmer moods in which Isaac longed for and struggled towards the settled condition only to be attained after his entering the Church.

"November 5.—How is it and why is it that I feel around me the constant presence of invisible beings who affect my sensibility, and with whom I converse, as it were, in thought and feeling, but not in expression? At times they so move me that I would escape them, if I could, by running away from where I am. I can scarcely keep still; I feel like beating, raving, and grasping what I know not. Ah! it is an unearthly feeling, and painfully afflicts my heart. How to get rid of it I do not know. If I remain quietly where I am, by collecting its scattered rays it burns more deeply into my soul, bringing forth deep sighs, groans, and at times demanding all my energy to repress an unnatural howl.

"How shall I escape this? By remaining here and trying to bear it, or by travelling? To do the latter has often occurred to me of late. By such a cause I was driven from home last winter. What the result will be this time I cannot tell; but if I did know, I would not wait, as I did then, until it came on me with such power as to be torturing in the extreme. Ah, what nervous strength and energy I feel at such times! If I speak of it to my brothers, they cannot understand me, never having had the same experience. My timidity, which does not wish to be thought of as desiring anything extra on account of my life, makes me bear it until it is unendurable. Hence I am silent so long as it does not speak for itself, which extremity might be prevented were circumstances other than they are. Since they are not, let it be borne with, say strength and resignation united with hope. 'Tis this that is fabled in Prometheus and LaocoÖn—and how well fabled, too."

It is significant that after every extraordinary disturbance, such as the above, he experienced the impulse to study the credentials of claimants in the outer religious world, the envoys of the Deity to man; and this especially concerning the Catholic Church. He goes on at once to say:

"Of late I have felt more disposed to look into church matters than for six months past. Last evening I made a visit to the Rev. Mr. Haight" (an Episcopal clergyman) "and conversed with him about that subject for an hour and a half. We differed very little in our opinions. If the Church of Rome has fallen into corruptions from her over-warmth, the Anglican has neglected some of her duties through her coldness. And if the Anglican receives the first five or six councils as legitimate and rejects the Council of Trent as not a full one, still, as an individual, I think Rome did not establish or enjoin anything in those decrees" (the Tridentine) "which was not in harmony with the Spirit of Christ, the Scriptures, and tradition. But the Anglican thinks she has, and hence, in his judgment, they are unwarrantable and unnecessary."

"November 15.—How does Jesus commune with Humanity through the Church? Does He now commune with the Church? Was the life given by Him to His immediate disciples all that has been given and transmitted to us, or does He now commune with the visible Church? And how? He promised to be with His disciples even unto the end of the world, to send the Comforter who should lead them into all truth, and to intercede for us with the Father. The Church holds that its sacraments and forms are the visible means for communing with the invisible—that grace is imparted through them to the worthy receiver. Is it true that such grace is imparted? If it is, it will be shown by its fruits. Contrast the Catholic who believes most in the sacraments with the Quaker who does not believe in them at all as religious or moral forces. Certainly, if the sacraments have any beneficial effect, it should be shown in the contrast between those who totally deny their efficacy and those who religiously believe in them. Now, does this show what one would naturally expect to flow from faith in the sacraments?

"November 20.—I feel in better health than I have ever had, both mind and body, having at the same time an increased sensitiveness, so that the touch of any one I cannot bear. Also, I am conscious of a more constant spiritual communion. I feel more vividly and distinctly the influence and presence—spiritual presence—of others.

"I lie down in my bed at night with the same feelings with which I rise in the morning. I anticipate as much from one as from the other. The events, emotions, and thoughts which come in my sleep are as much a part of my real life as those of the day. Waking and sleeping are two forms of existence. To me the latter state is full of interest and expectation. The two states mutually act upon each other. . . .

"Hope, Faith, Wish, are the presentiments of sight, the evidences of becoming sight to the senses. They are the forerunners of vision. It is by them we know. . . .

"To believe is to see, not with the senses but with the higher faculties of the soul, reason, imagination, hope. . . .

"I believe that every faculty may be elevated to the state of prophecy.

"Reasoning is faith struggling with doubt."

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