Father Hecker's repertory covered the entire ground between scepticism and Catholicism. In refutation of Protestantism the principal lectures were: The Church and the Republic; Luther and the Reformation; How and Why I Became a Catholic, or A Search after Rational Christianity; and The State of Religion in the United States. On the positive side his chief topics were: The Church as a Society, Why We Invoke the Saints, and the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion. Others he had against materialism, spiritualism, etc.

As may naturally be supposed, some of his lectures succeeded better than others. One of those he personally preferred was The Churrk and the Republic. He opened by affirming, as the fundamental principle of the American nation, that man is naturally virtuous enough to be capable of self-government. He developed this in various ways till his audience felt that it was to be the touchstone of the question between the churches. He then exhibited the Protestant teaching on human virtue and human depravity, quoting extensively from Luther and from Calvin, as well as from the creeds of the principal Protestant sects, until the contrast between their teaching and the fundamental American principle was painfully vivid. There was no escape; doctrinal Protestantism is un-American. He then gave the Catholic doctrine of free will, of merit, of human dignity, and of the equality of men and human brotherhood. The impression was profound. Great mountains of prejudice were lifted up and cast into the sea. The elevating influences of the Church's faith fixed men's eyes and won their hearts. To have it demonstrated that Catholicity was not a gigantic effort to combine all available human forces to maintain a central religious despotism in the hands of a hierarchy, was a surprise to multitudes of Protestants. To not a few intelligent Catholics the style of argument was a great novelty. Father Hecker's success proved that the claim of authority on the part of the Church could be established without much difficulty in men's minds, if it were not associated with the enslavement of reason and conscience, and if shown to be consistent with rational liberty. He insisted upon the positive view of the subject. He proclaimed the purpose of Catholic discipline to be essentially conservative of human rights, a divinely-appointed safeguard to the liberty and enlightenment of the soul of man. He further proclaimed that the infliction of penalties by Church authority was an accidental exercise of power provoked by disobedience to lawful authority.

Luther and the Reformation excited widespread remark, and yet to one accustomed to old-time controversy it seemed but a fragment of an argument. The lecture proved that Luther was not an honest reformer, because, having started to reform inside the Church and as a Catholic, he finished by leaving the Church and therefore the real work of reform. At the outset Father Hecker proved that Luther was but one, and by no means the most important one, of the great body of Catholic reformers of his time. These set to work to remedy abuses which had grown to such an extent as to have become intolerable. The genuine reformers, led by the Popes, went right on and did reform the Church most thoroughly, ending by the decrees of the Council of Trent. All this the lecturer proved by citations from numerous high authorities, all of them Protestants. Why did Luther leave the company of the true reformers? or, as Father Hecker puts it, "Why did Luther change his base?" Whatever reason he had for leaving Catholicity, it was not, as a matter of fact, on account of zeal for reform. The lecture concluded by emphatically and, in different terms, repeatedly denying to Luther the name of Reformer and to his work the name of Reformation. Such was the line of argument in a lecture which entertained the general public and enraged bigoted Protestants more, perhaps, than any of the others. The secret of its success was that it overturned the great Protestant idol.

With humanitarians, rationalists, indifferentists, and sceptics Father Hecker's lectures were popular, and such were his favorite audience. If he so much as aroused their curiosity about the Church, he deemed that he had gained a victory; this and more than this he always succeeded in doing. Regular "church members" he did not hope much from, though they came to hear him and he sometimes made converts even among them. The lecture system, then far more in vogue than at present, gave him hearers from all classes of minds, and especially those most intellectually restless and inquiring. He took his turn in the list which contained the names of Wendell Phillips, Beecher, Emerson, and Sumner, and found his golden opportunity before such audiences as had been gathered to listen to them. Thus into the drifts of thought and into the intellectual movements around him, into the daily and periodical press, into the social and political and scientific groupings of men and women, his lectures enabled him to breathe the peremptory call of the true religion, sure to provoke inquiry in all active minds, and in some to find good soil and bear the harvest of conversion. He searched for earnest souls; and his confidence that they were everywhere to be found was rewarded not only in many particular instances, but also by the removal of much prejudice throughout the entire country.

The writer of these pages saw Father Hecker for the first time on the lecture platform. He was then in the full tide of success, conscious of his opportunity and of his power to profit by it. We never can forget how distinctly American was the impression of his personality. We had heard the nation's greatest men then living, and their type was too familiar to be successfully counterfeited. Father Hecker was so plainly a great man of that type, so evidently an outgrowth of our institutions, that he stamped American on every Catholic argument he proposed. Nor was the force of this peculiar impression lessened by the whispered grumblings of a few petty minds among Catholics themselves, to whom this apostolic trait was cause for suspicion. Never was a man more Catholic than Father Hecker, simply, calmly, joyfully, entirely Catholic. What better proof of this than the rage into which his lectures and writings threw the outright enemies of the Church? Grave ministers lost their balance and foamed at him as a trickster and a hypocrite, all the worse because double-dyed with pretence of love of country.

For the Protestant pulpits felt the shock and stormed in unison against this new exposition of Catholicity and against its representative. In some cases, not content with one onslaught, they returned to the charge Sunday after Sunday. All this was not unexpected. The secular press, however, were very generally favorable in their notices, excepting some of the Boston dailies. As a rule, the lectures were very fully reported and sometimes appeared word for word.

To reply to one's assailants after one has left the field of battle is no easy matter, and for the most part Father Hecker trusted for this to local champions of Catholicity; and not in vain. But it happened on one occasion that after he had lectured in a large town in Michigan, and had journeyed on to fulfil engagements farther West, he was attacked in a public hall by a minister of the place. On his return East Father Hecker stopped over and gave another lecture in the town, and not only refuted the minister but covered him with ridicule. In fact there was no great need of defence of Father Hecker's arguments, they were so simply true and so readily understood. Not one of his antagonists compared well with him for frankness, good humor, courtesy; and they almost invariably shirked the issue and confined themselves to stale calumnies against the Church.

At Ann Arbor, Michigan, Father Hecker lectured in the Methodist meeting-house, then the largest hall in the town. The Michigan State University, at this town, had at the time about seven hundred students, nearly all of whom came to the lecture. The subject chosen was Luther and the Reformation. As it was announced, the audience loudly applauded Luther's name, and some one called for three cheers for him, which were given vociferously, especially by the students. Father Hecker smiled, waited till the noise was over, then bade them give him a fair hearing; which, of course, they did. Before he had concluded, his audience seemed won to his view of the question in hand, and showed it by the names and the sentiments applauded. At the end some one called out "Three cheers for Father Hecker!" and they were given most heartily.

There seems nothing like a new discovery, as we have already said, in Father Hecker's controversial matter, or even in the method of its treatment. But joined with its exponent, blended into his personality, as it was, by the sincerity of his conviction, it was a discovery; flavored and tinctured by him, this wayside fountain had a new life-giving power to both Catholics and non-Catholics. Bishops, priests, and Catholic men and women in the world heard him with mute attention. Some Catholics, it is true, were stunned by his bold handling of those traditional touch-me-nots of conservatism—reason and liberty; and such drew off suspicious. But multitudes of Catholics felt that he opened up to full view the dim vistas of truth towards which they had long been groping; these could agree with him without an effort. A few had reached his stand-point before they knew him, and hailed with rapture the leader who, unlike themselves, was not kept back by either dread of novel-sounding terms or by the impotency of private station. But here and there he met Catholics as dead-set against him as the Judaizing converts had been against his patron, St. Paul. Their only love was for antiquity, and that they loved passionately and in all its forms, even the neo-antiquity of the controversy of the Reformation era. On the other hand many, when they heard him, said, "That is the kind of Catholic I am, and the only kind it is easy for me to be." Non-Catholics, earnest men and women, were often heard to say, "If I were quite sure that Hecker is a genuine Roman Catholic I think that I could be one myself"; and this some of them did not hesitate to publish in the newspapers, so that Father Hecker might have said with Job: "The ear that heard me blessed me, and the eye that saw me gave witness to me."

Father Hecker felt that he was a pioneer in thus dealing with rationalized Protestants. His eye was quick to see the signs of the breaking up of dogmatic Protestantism, and he was early out among the vast intellectual wreckage, endeavoring to catch and tow into port what fragments he could of a system founded on doubt and on the denial of human virtue and human intelligence. "I want," he said on one occasion in private, "to open the way to the Church to rationalists. It seems to me to be now closed up. I feel that I am a pioneer in opening and leading the way. I smuggled myself into the Church, and so did Brownson." And now he wanted to abolish the custom-house, and open the harbor wide and clear for the entrance into the Church of all men who had been forced back on reason alone for guidance. The words above italicised were uttered with powerful emphasis and with much feeling. He quoted the following saying of Ozanam with emphatic approval: "What the age needs is an intellectual crusade"; and he affirmed that Leo XIII. had done very much to aid us in preaching it, and that Pius IX., rightly understood, had led the way to it. "The Catholics I would help with my left hand, the Protestants with my right hand," he once said. And non-Catholics, all but the bigots, liked him, for he was frank and true by every test. He was neither an exotic nor a hybrid, and they felt at home with him. He much resembled the best type of public men in America who have achieved fame at the bar or in politics; indeed, as we have already intimated, he really belonged to that type, for all his studies and all his training in the Catholic schools and convents, which had given him more and more of truth, more and more of the grace of God, had not changed the kind or type of man to which he belonged. He was the same character as when he harangued the Seventh Ward voters, or discussed the Divine Transcendence at Brook Farm. Scholastic truth sank deep into his soul, but scholastic methods stuck on the surface and then dropped away. "And David having girded his sword upon his armor began to try if he could walk in armor, for he was not accustomed to it. And David said to Saul, I cannot go thus, for I am not used to it. And he laid them off. And he took his staff which he had always in his hands, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook."

If his duties in the Paulist community and parish had allowed, Father Hecker could have lectured to large audiences during the greater part of the year, and been well paid for his labor. He soon became the foremost exponent of Catholicity on the public platform in the United States. From the close of the war till his health gave way in 1872 he was much sought after for lectures, and spoke in the different cities and very many of the large towns, besides being obliged to refuse numerous applications, constantly coming in from all parts of the Union and from all sorts of societies, secular, Catholic, and even distinctly Protestant. Meantime he was frequently called on to preach on such occasions as the laying of corner-stones of churches and their dedications. He also gave one of the sermons preached before the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore.

The following is the introductory paragraph of a long character sketch of Father Hecker from the pen of James Parton, the historian. It is taken from an article entitled "Our Roman Catholic Brethren," published in the Atlantic Monthly for April and May, 1868. The entire article is full of admiration for the Catholic Church and of yearning towards her, though written by a typical sceptic of this era:

"As usual with them [Catholics] it is one man who is working this new and most effective idea [the Catholic Publication Society]; but, as usual with them also, this one man is working by and through an organization which multiplies his force one hundred times and constitutes him a person of national importance. Readers who take note of the really important things transpiring around them will know at once that the individual referred to is Father Hecker, Superior of the Community of the Paulists, in New York. . . . It is he [Father Hecker] who is putting American machinery into the ancient ark and getting ready to run her by steam. Here, for once, is a happy man—happy in his faith and in his work—sure that in spreading abroad the knowledge of the true Catholic doctrine he is doing the best thing possible for his native land. A tall, healthy-looking, robust, handsome, cheerful gentleman of forty-five, endowed with a particular talent for winning confidence and regard, which talent has been improved by many years of active exercise. It is a particular pleasure to meet with any one, at such a time as this, whose work perfectly satisfies his conscience, his benevolence, and his pride, and who is doing that work in the most favorable circumstances, and with the best co-operation. Imagine a benevolent physician in a populous hospital, who has in his office the medicine which he is perfectly certain will cure or mitigate every case, provided only he can get it taken, and who is surrounded with a corps of able and zealous assistants to aid him in persuading the patients to take it!"

Mr. Parton having given us a picture of Father Hecker as he appeared to Protestants, the following exhibits him as Catholics saw him. It is an extract from Father Lockhart's clever book, The Old Religion; the original of Father Dilke is Father Hecker:

"The day after our last conversation, having an introduction to the Superior of the —— Fathers in New York, my friends agreed to accompany me. I was particularly glad of this because Father Dilke was one of the most remarkable men of our Church in the States. Himself a convert, and a man of large views and great sympathies, no one was better able to enter into the scruples and difficulties of religious Protestants on their first contact with Catholic doctrines and Catholic worship.

"On sending in our names we had not long to wait in the guest-room before the good father made his appearance. There was a stamp of originality about him; tall in stature, not exactly what we are used to call clerical in appearance, with a thoroughly American type of face, and with the national peaked beard instead of being closely shaven as is the custom with our clergy generally. I had met him before, without his clerical (religious) garb, on a journey on board a steamboat. At first, I remember, I had set him down as a Yankee skipper or trader of some sort; but when by chance we got into conversation, I found him a hard-headed man, shrewd, original, and earnest in his remarks; but when our conversation turned to religious topics, and got animated, I shall never forget how all that was common and national in his physique disappeared. And when he spoke of the mystery of God's love for man, his countenance seemed as it were transfigured, so that I felt that an artist would not wish for a better living model from which to paint a St. Francis Xavier, making himself all things to all men amidst his shipmates on his voyage to the Indies."

From what has been said of Father Hecker's aptitude to win non-Catholics to hear and believe him, it should not be thought that in order to do so he was obliged to leave off any sign of his priestly character. He was distinctly priestly in his demeanor, though, as already observed, not exactly what one would call a thorough "ecclesiastic." He ever dressed soberly. When he arrived at a town on a lecture tour he always put up at the house of the resident priest, if there was one, and, if he stayed over Sunday, preached for him at High Mass. He invariably corresponded beforehand with the pastor of the town to which he was invited by a secular lecture society, requesting him to send complimentary tickets to the leading men of the place—lawyers, doctors, ministers, merchants, and politicians. And when he appeared on the platform it was always in company with the priest. He loved priests with all his might and was ever at home in their company. It is not very singular, therefore, that some of his most devoted friends and most ardent admirers were priests, secular and religious, born and bred in the Old World—among them some of the most prominent clergymen in the country.

Father Hecker often met non-Catholics in private, being sought out by prominent radicals, sceptics, unbelievers, and humanitarians. What they had heard from him in public lectures, or read of him in the press, drew them to him, or they were brought to see him by mutual friends. And here he was indeed powerful, overbearing resistance by the strength of conviction and the simple exhibition of Catholic truth. The sight of a man anywhere, whom he could but suspect of aptitude for his views, was the signal for his emphatic affirmation of them, sometimes leading him to controversy bordering on the vociferous on cars and steamboats. In such circumstances, and in all his other dealings with men, you saw his prompt intelligence, his fine sensibility, his lofty spirit, his forceful and occasionally imperious will to hold you to the point; but the quality which, both in public and private discourse, outshone all, or rather gave all light and direction, was an immense love of truth joined to an equal admiration for virtue.





CHAPTER XXX

THE APOSTOLATE OF THE PRESS

ONE Sunday forenoon, happening to cross Broadway near a fashionable Protestant church, we saw the curb on both sides of the street lined with carriages, and the coachmen and footmen all reading the morning papers. The rich master and his family were in the softly-cushioned pews indoors, while their servants studied the news of the world and worshipped at the shrine of the Press outside: a spectacle suggestive of many things to the social reformer. But to a religious mind it was an invitation to the Apostolate of the Press. The Philips of our day can evangelize the rough charioteer by means of the written word as easily as they can his cultured master.

To Father Hecker the Press was the highest opportunity for religion. The only term of comparison for it is some element of nature like sunlight or the atmosphere. In the Press civilized Man lives and breathes. Father Hecker was as alive to the injury done to humanity by bad reading as a skilful physician is to the malaria which he can smell and fairly taste in an infected atmosphere; and he ever strove to make the Press a means of enlightenment and virtue. He began to write for publication almost immediately after his arrival in America as a Redemptorist missionary; the Questions of the Soul and the Aspirations of Nature were composed amidst most absorbing occupations between 1853 and 1858. Throughout life he was ever asking himself and others how the Press could be cleansed, and how its Apostolate could be inaugurated. To this end he was ready to devote all his efforts, and expend all his resources and those of the community of which he was the founder. It is true that no man of his time was better aware of the power of the spoken word, and few were more competent to use it, the natural and Pentecostal vehicle of the Holy Spirit to men's souls. But he also felt that the providence of God, in making the Press of our day an artificial medium of human intercourse more universal than the living voice itself, had pointed it out as a necessary adjunct to the oral preaching of the truth. He was convinced that religion should make the Press its own. He would not look upon it as an extraordinary aid, but maintained that the ordinary provision of Christian instruction for the people should ever be two-fold, by speech and by print: neither the Preacher without the Press nor the Press without the Preacher. He was heard to say that in reading Montalembert's Monks of the West he had been struck with the author's eloquent apostrophe to the spade, the instrument of civilization and Christianity for the wild hordes of the early middle ages. Much rather, he said, should we worship the Press as the medium of the light of God to all mankind. He felt that the Apostolate of the Press might well absorb the external vocation of the most active friends of religion.

In the Press he found a distinct suggestion from above of a change of methods for elevating men to truth and virtue. In the spring of 1870, while on his way home from the Vatican Council, he wrote to Father Deshon from Assisi:

"I felt as if I would like to have peopled that grand and empty convent with inspired men and printing-presses. For evidently the special battle-field of attack and defence of truth for half a century to come is the printing-press."

He believed in types as he believed in pulpits. He believed that the printing-office was necessary to the convent. To him the Apostolate of the Press meant the largest amount of truth to the greatest number of people. By its means a small band of powerful men could reach an entire nation and elevate its religious life.

This being understood, one is not surprised at the extent of his plans for this Apostolate. He was never able to carry them out fully. Not till some years after the founding of the community could he make a fair beginning, although the first volume of the Paulist Sermons appeared in 1861. Delays were inevitable from the difficulties incident to the opening of the house and church in Fifty-ninth Street, and these were aggravated by the war, which for over four years bred such intense excitement as to interfere with any strong general interest in matters other than political. But the very month it ended, in April, 1865, Father Hecker started The Catholic World. Its purpose was to speak for religion in high-grade periodical literature. The year following he founded The Catholic Publication Society, with the purpose of directing the entire resources of the Press into a missionary apostolate. In 1870 he began The Young Catholic. In literary merit and in illustrations it equalled any of the juvenile publications of that period, and was the pioneer of all the Catholic journals in the United States intended for children. And finally, in 1871, he projected the establishment of a first-class Catholic daily, securing within a year subscriptions for more than half the money necessary for the purpose, when the work was arrested by the final breaking down of his health.

The Catholic World was considered a hazardous venture. At the time it was proposed, such modest attempts at Catholic monthlies as had struggled into life had long ceased to exist. The public for such a magazine seemed to be small. The priesthood had little leisure for reading, being hardly sufficient in number for their most essential duties; the educated laymen were not numerous, nor remarkable for activity of mind in matters of religion; nearly the entire Church of America was foreign by birth or parentage, and belonged to the toiling masses of the people: "not many rich, not many noble." And, Father Hecker was asked, whom are you going to get to write for the magazine? How many Catholic literary men and women do you know of? Prudence, therefore, stood sponsor to courage. The cautious policy of an eclectic was adopted, and for more than a year the magazine, with the exception of its book reviews, was made up of selections and translations from foreign periodicals. The late John R. G. Hassard, who had already succeeded as a journalist, was chosen by Father Hecker as his assistant in the editorial work. Efforts were at once made to secure original articles; but before the magazine was filled by them three or four years were spent in urgent soliciting, in very elaborate sub-editing of MSS., and in reliance on the steady assistance of the pens of the Paulist Fathers. As a compensation, The Catholic World has introduced to the public many of our best writers, and first and last has brought our ablest minds on both sides of the water into contact with the most intelligent Catholics in the United States. All through its career it has represented Catholic truth before the American public in such wise as to command respect, and has brought about the conversion of many of its non-Catholic readers. Since its beginning it has been forced to hold its own against the claims of not unwelcome rivals, and against the almost overwhelming attractions of the great illustrated secular monthlies, to say nothing of the vicissitudes of the business world; and it has succeeded in doing so, Father Hecker's purpose in establishing it has been realized, for it has ever been a first-rate Catholic monthly of general literature, holding an equal place with similar publications in the world of letters. He was its editor-in-chief till the time of his death, except during three years of illness and absence in Europe. He conducted it so as to occupy much of the field open to the Apostolate of the Press, giving solid doctrine in form of controversy, and discussing such religious truths as were of current interest. He kept its readers informed of the changeful moods of non-Catholic thought, and furnished them with short studies of instructive eras and personages in history. These graver topics have been floated along by contributions of a lighter kind, by good fiction and conscientious literary criticism. Meantime, the social problems which had perplexed Father Hecker himself in his early life, have caught the attention of the slower minds of average men, or rather have been thrust upon them; and their consideration, ever in his own sympathetic spirit, now forms a prominent feature of The Catholic World.

The Young Catholic was an enterprise dear to his heart. His interest in it was constant and minute, and some of the articles most popular with its young constituency were from his own pen. It has always been edited by Mrs. George V. Hecker, assisted by a small circle of zealous and enlightened writers. It has held its way, but has had to encounter the not unusual fate of bold pioneers. It created its own rivals by demonstrating the possibilities of juvenile Catholic journalism, calling into existence more than a score of claimants for the support which it alone at first solicited. The lowest estimate of juvenile publications of a purely secular tone yearly sold in America carries the figure far into the millions. Some of these, and it is well to know that they are the most widely sold, are first-rate in a literary point of view and employ the best artists for the pictures. To say that they are secular but feebly expresses the totally unmoral influence they for the most part exert. They are the extension of the unreligious school into the homes of the people. When Father Hecker and Mrs. George V. Hecker and their associates began The Young Catholic, this vast mirage of the desert of life had but glimmered upon the distant horizon; they saw it coming and they did their best to point Catholic youth away from it and lead it to the real oasis of God, with its grateful shade, its delicious fruits, and its ever-flowing springs of the waters of life.

As already said, The Catholic Publication Society was begun a year after The Catholic World was started, its aim being to turn to the good of religion, and especially to the conversion of non-Catholics, all the uses the press is capable of. It was a missionary work in the broadest sense seeking to enlist not only the clergy but especially the laity in an organized Apostolate of the Press, to enlighten the faith of Catholics and to spread it among their Protestant fellow-citizens. Its first work was to be the issuing of tracts and pamphlets telling the plain truth about the Catholic religion. Local societies, to be established throughout the country, were to buy these publications at a price less than cost, and distribute them gratis to all classes likely to be benefited. To catch the eye of the American people, to affect their hearts, to supply their religious wants with Catholic truth, were objects kept in view in preparing the tracts. Although some of them were addressed to Catholics, enforcing important religious duties, nearly all of them were controversial. More than seventy different tracts were printed first and last, and many hundreds of thousands, indeed several millions, of them distributed in all parts of the country, public, charitable, and penal institutions being, of course, fair field for this work. They were all very brief, few of them covering more than four small-sized pages. "Three pages of truth have before now overturned a life-time of error," said Father Hecker. The tract Is it Honest? though only four pages of large type, or about twelve hundred words, created a sensation everywhere, and was answered by a Protestant minister with over fifty pages of printed matter, or about fifteen times more than the tract itself. One hundred thousand copies of this tract were distributed in New York City alone. It is printed herewith as a specimen, both as to style and matter, of what one may call the aggressive-defensive tactics in Catholic controversy:

IS IT HONEST To say that the Catholic Church prohibits the use of the Bible— When anybody who chooses can buy as many as he likes at any Catholic bookstore, and can see on the first page of any one of them the approbation of the Bishops of the Catholic Church, with the Pope at their head, encouraging Catholics to read the Bible, in these words: "The faithful should be excited to the reading of the Holy Scriptures," and that not only for the Catholics of the United States, but also for those of the whole world besides?

IS IT HONEST To say that Catholics believe that man by his own power can forgive sin—When the priest is regarded by the Catholic Church only as the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ, acting by the power delegated to him, according to these words, "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained?" (St. John 20:23).

IS IT HONEST To repeat over and over again that Catholics pay the priest to pardon their sins—When such a thing is unheard of anywhere in the Catholic Church—When any transaction of the kind is stigmatized as a grievous sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery, blasphemy, etc., in every catechism and work on Catholic theology?

IS IT HONEST To persist in saying that Catholics believe their sins are forgiven merely by the confession of them to the priest, without a true sorrow for them, or a true purpose to quit them—When every child finds the contrary distinctly and clearly stated in the catechism, which he is obliged to learn before he can be admitted to the sacraments? Any honest man can verify this statement by examining any Catholic catechism.

IS IT HONEST To assert that the Catholic Church grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin—When an "indulgence," according to her universally received doctrine, was never dreamed of by Catholics to imply, in any case whatever, any permission to commit the least sin; and when an indulgence has no application whatever to sin until after sin has been repented of and pardoned?

IS IT HONEST To accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the Saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ—When the Council of Trent declares that it is simply useful to ask their intercession in order to obtain favor from God, through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who alone is our Saviour and Redeemer—

When "asking their prayers and influence with God" is exactly of the same nature as when Christians ask the pious prayers of one another?

IS IT HONEST To accuse Catholics of paying divine worship to images or pictures, as the heathen do—When every Catholic indignantly repudiates any idea of the kind, and when the Council of Trent distinctly declares the doctrine of the Catholic Church in regard to them to be, "that there is no divinity or virtue in them which should appear to claim the tribute of one's veneration"; but that "all the honor which is paid to them shall be referred to the originals whom they are designed to represent?" (Sess. 25).

IS IT HONEST To make these and many other similar charges against Catholics— When they detest and abhor such false doctrines more than those do who make them, and make them, too, without ever having read a Catholic book, or taken any honest means of ascertaining the doctrines which the Catholic Church really teaches?

Remember the commandment of God, which says: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

Reader, would you be honest, and do no injustice? Then examine the doctrines of the Catholic Church; read the works of Catholics. See both sides. Examine, and be fair; for AMERICANS LOVE FAIR PLAY.

In preparing these little messengers of truth every style of writing was used, narrative, allegory, dialogue, and positive argument. They are as good reading to-day as when first issued, and the volume which they form may be placed in an inquirer's hands with excellent effect. To keep them agoing Father Hecker laid all his friends of any literary ability under contribution, the series being opened by Archbishop Spalding with a tract on Religious Indifferentism. Did space permit, an entire list of the subjects dealt with might be given, and the reader could the better see how they embrace the entire controversy between Catholics and Protestants and infidels, many of the tracts being masterpieces of popular argumentation.

As to the business side of these enterprises, Father Hecker confided it to Mr. Lawrence Kehoe, who was publisher of The Catholic World and of The Young Catholic from their beginning until the Paulists became their own publishers, shortly before Mr. Kehoe's death. He was placed in charge of the Publication Society as manager when it was started, and so continued until the formation of the present firm, remaining then the active partner in its management. No more ardent advocate of a good cause could be desired than Lawrence Kehoe. Father Hecker cherished him as a friend, and he was his zealous and efficient agent in his entire Apostolate of the Press.

The purpose of the Publication Society was missionary, and the intention was that its books, tracts, and pamphlets should be either given away or sold at cost price, or below it. Therefore it was necessary to secure funds for the running expenses. The reader has seen that this was to have been done by the contributions of subsidiary societies. To aid in the formation of these and to solicit contributions in money, circulars were sent to all the clergy of the United States. Only a few made any practical response. But the meeting of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866, the same year the Society was founded, was opportune. The bishops were induced to take the matter up, and a decree, of which the following is a translation, was enacted. After speaking of the need of supplying Catholic literature at a low price the Council proceeds:

"Since a society with this object in view, known as The Catholic Publication Society, has been founded in New York, and has been so far conducted with commendable diligence and with notable success, we therefore consider it to be entirely worthy of the favor and assistance of prelates and priests, as well as of the Catholic people in general. That the whole country may the better and more certainly share in its advantages, we advise and exhort the bishops to establish branches of this Society in their dioceses, by means of whose officers the publications of the Society may be distributed. But as without great expenditure of money these societies cannot be kept up and must fail of success, the bishops shall therefore appoint a yearly collection for their support, to be taken up in all the principal churches, or shall make other provision for the same purpose according to their best judgment" (Con. Plen. Balt., Sec. 500).

From the Pastoral Letter of the same Council we extract the following:

"In connection with this matter [the Catholic Press] we earnestly recommend to the faithful of our charge The Catholic Publication Society, lately established in the city of New York by a zealous and devoted clergyman. Besides the issuing of short tracts with which this Society has begun, and which may be usefully employed to arrest the attention of many whom neither inclination nor leisure will allow to read larger works, this Society contemplates the publication of Catholic books, according as circumstances may permit and the interests of religion appear to require. From the judgment and good taste evinced in the composition and selection of such tracts and books as have already been issued by this Society, we are encouraged to hope that it will be eminently effective in making known the truths of our holy religion, and dispelling the prejudices which are mainly owing to want of information on the part of so many of our fellow-citizens. For this it is necessary that a generous co-operation be given both by clergy and laity to the undertaking, which is second to none in importance among the subsidiary aids which the inventions of modern times supply to our ministry for the diffusion of Catholic truth."

How elated Father Hecker was by this action of the Council, and how over-sanguine, as the event proved, of the future of the Society, is shown by the following extracts from letters to a friend:

"My efforts in the recent Council were completely successful, owing to the many prayers offered to God—yours not the least. Could you have seen the letters from different quarters, from good pious nuns, and persons loving and serving and fearing God in the world, written to me, and their writers all praying and doing works of mercy and mortification for the purposes I had in view, you could not wonder at my success. God did it. What is more, I was fully conscious of the fact, and it is this that made my great joy.

"The Catholic Publication Society has the unanimous consent, and sympathy, and co-operation of the entire episcopate and clergy. Every year there is a collection to be taken up in the principal churches for its support. I have drawn an elephant, but I do not feel like the man who did not know what to do with him after he had got him."

"It is good in God to place me in a position in which I can act efficiently. The disposition towards me is, I know, most pleasant and favorable. I have been placed where I shall be at liberty to act and direct action. Quietly pray for me as the Holy Spirit may suggest. On my part I will also seek the same guidance. How good God is to give it!"

The Council had hardly adjourned when it began to be plain that in legislating for The Catholic Publication Society the prelates had been over-stimulated by the zeal of Archbishop Spalding and the personal influence of Father Hecker himself, who was present in his capacity of Superior of the Paulists. He went among the bishops and pleaded for the Apostolate of the Press with characteristic vigor, and with his usual success. Aided by the archbishop, he lifted the Fathers of the Council for a moment above what in their sober senses they deemed the exclusive duty of the hour. This was to provide churches and priests, and schools and school-teachers, for the people. Already far too numerous for their clergy, the Catholic people were increasing by immigration alone at the rate of more than a quarter of a million a year. Every effort must be concentrated, it was thought, and every penny spent, in the vast work of housing and feeding the wandering flocks of the Lord. And certainly the magnitude of the task and the success attained in performing it can excuse the indifference shown to the Apostolate of the Press, if anything can excuse it. But it seemed otherwise to Father Hecker, as it does now to us. For the Catholic people could have been better and earlier cared for in their spiritual concerns if furnished with the abundant supply of good reading which the carrying out of Father Hecker's plan would have given them, and that at no great expense. What substitute for a priest is equal to a good book? What vocation to the priesthood has not found its origin in the pages of a good book, or at any rate been fostered by its devout lessons? And all history as well as experience proves that the best guarantee of the faith of a Catholic, moving amidst kindly-disposed non-Catholic neighbors, is the aggressive force of missionary zeal. The Publication Society, if brought into active play, would have done much to create this zeal, and would have supplied its best arms of attack and defence by an abundance of free Catholic reading. It would have helped on every good work by auxiliary forces drawn from intelligent faith and instructed zeal.

A closer view of the case shows that antecedents of a racial and social character among the people had something to do with the apathy we have been considering. To a great degree it still rests upon us, though such organized efforts as the Catholic Truth Society of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Holy Ghost Society of New Orleans indicate a change for the better.

Had Father Hecker continued in good health there is a chance, though a desperate one, that he might have overcome all obstacles. Many zealous souls would have followed his lead. As a specimen we may name the Vicar-General of San Francisco, Father Prendergast, who, with the help of a few earnest friends, raised several thousand dollars in gold in that diocese alone. But in 1871 Father Hecker's strength began to fail, and in the following year his active life was done. As already shown, it had been the intention to establish branch societies everywhere, whose delegates would regularly meet and control the entire work, giving the Church in America an approved, powerful auxiliary dominantly made up of laymen. In that sense the Society never was so much as organized, the number of branch societies not at any time warranting such a step as a general meeting of their representatives. The money actually collected was all spent in printing and circulating the tracts and other publications given away or sold below cost, Father Hecker and the Paulists managing the entire work. When the collections gave out, Mr. George V. Hecker contributed a large sum for continuing the undertaking. The result was his finding himself in the publishing business, which he was compelled to place as far as possible on a basis to meet the current outlay. The Society, as far as its name went, thus became a Catholic publishing firm, with Mr. Hecker mainly involved financially and Mr. Kehoe in charge of the business. Mr. Hecker sunk a small fortune in the Apostolate of the Press, much of it during the hard times between 1873 and 1876. The history of the whole affair is as curious as it is instructive, and hence we have given a pretty full account of it. It weighed heavy on Father Hecker's heart, though he astonished his friends by the equanimity with which he accepted its failure. His work, if it did not perish in a night like the prophet's gourd, withered quickly into very singular form and narrow proportions. The amazement of Protestant bigots at the appearance of the Catholic tracts, speechless and clamorous by turns; the quaker guns of the Second Plenary Council, and the bright dreams of a vigorous attack upon the enemy all along the line and by all classes of clergy and laity—how Father Hecker did in after years discuss these topics, and how he did inspire all about him with his own enthusiastic hopes of a future and more successful effort! When he went to Europe in 1873, too feeble to hope for recovery, leaving the enterprise behind him in the same condition as his own broken health, how unmurmuring was his submission to the Divine and human wills which had brought all to naught!

Not more than a few words need be said of his undertaking to buy a New York daily paper. It happened that in 1871 a prominent journal, a member of the Associated Press, could be bought for three hundred thousand dollars. In an instant, as it seems, Father Hecker grasped the opportunity. By personal appeals to the rich men of the city more than half the sum required was subscribed, Archbishop McCloskey heading the list with a large amount. But soon the doctors had to be called in, and the enterprise went no further.

How Father Hecker appeared to men when advocating the Apostolate of the Press, and how he spread the forceful majesty of Catholicity over his personal surroundings, is shown by Mr. James Parton's words in the article in the Atlantic Monthly already quoted from: "The special work of this [the Paulist] community is to bring the steam printing-press to bear upon the spread of the Catholic religion in the United States." The resistless missionary power latent in the Church is thus spoken of by the same writer:

"What a powerful engine is this! Suppose the six ablest and highest Americans were living thus, freed from all worldly cares, in an agreeable, secluded abode, yet near the centre of things, with twelve zealous, gifted young men to help and cheer them, a thousand organizations in the country to aid in distributing their writings, and in every town a spacious edifice and an eager audience to hang upon their lips. What could they not effect in a lifetime of well-directed work?"

What follows, taken from a letter of Father Hecker's while sick in Europe in 1874, shows one of his aims in the Apostolate of the Press. It is suggestive of a result since attained, at least partially, in more than one religious community in America:

"Monsignor Mermillod desired, early in the fall, that I should see Canon Schorderet, of this place [Fribourg in Switzerland], as he was engaged zealously with the press. This was one of my principal reasons for visiting this place. My surprise has been most gratifying in finding that he has organized, or rather begun, an association of girls to set types, etc., who live in community and labor for the love of God in the Apostolate of the Press. He publishes several newspapers and journals. The house in which the members live is also the store and the publishing house. Each girl has her own room. They are under the patronage of St. Paul. The canon is filled with the idea of St. Paul as the great patron of the Press, the first Christian journalist. What has long been my dream of a movement of this nature has found here an incipient realization. Our views in regard to the mission of the press, and the necessity of running it for the spread and defence of the faith as a form of Christian sacrifice in our day, are identical. You can easily fancy what interest and consolation our meeting and conversation must be to each other. His movement is the completion of The Catholic Publication Society of New York."

As there may be some curiosity about Father Hecker's principles as a public writer, in point of view of ecclesiastical authority, we give the following from a letter written just before the Vatican Council:

"1. Absolute and unswerving loyalty to the authority of the Church, wherever and however expressed, as God's authority upon earth and for all time.

"2. To seek in the same dispositions the true spirit of the Church, and be unreservedly governed by it as the wisdom of the Most High.

"3. To keep my mind and heart free from all attachments to schools, parties, or persons in the Church, Hecker included, so that nothing within me may hinder the light and direction of the Holy Spirit.

"4. In case any conflict arises concerning what Hecker may have spoken or written, or any work or movement in which he may be engaged, to re-examine. If wrong, make him retract at once. If not, then ask: Is the question of that importance that it requires defence, and the upsetting of attacks? If not of this importance, then not to delay and perhaps jeopardize the progress of other works, and condemn Hecker to simple silence.

"5. In the midst of the imperfections, abuses, scandals, etc., of the human side of the Church, never to allow myself to think or to express a word which might seem to place a truth of the Catholic faith in doubt, or to savor of the spirit of disobedience.

"6. With all this in view, to be the most earnest and ardent friend of all true progress, and to work with all my might for its promotion through existing organizations and authorities."





CHAPTER XXXI

THE VATICAN COUNCIL

IN 1867 Father Hecker visited Europe in company with Father Hewit for the purpose of opening business relations between The Catholic Publication Society and English, Irish, and Continental publishers, as well as to attend the Catholic Congress of Malines held in the summer of that year. The latter purpose we the chief inducement for the journey. The Archbishop of New York favored the project of holding a Catholic Congress in America, and encouraged Father Hecker to study the proceedings at Malines with this end in view. Their stay at Malines was full of instruction, as they heard there the renowned orators, Dupanloup and Montalembert, as well as others of note. The Catholic Congress of American laymen held in Baltimore a few years ago, and whose good effects are still felt, would have been assembled twenty years earlier if Father Hecker could have brought it about. These meetings were part of his scheme for that moral organization of Catholic forces which he knew to be so necessary for the fruitful working of the official unity of the Church.

In the early part of the year 1869 Pius IX. wrote Father Hecker an autograph letter commending the various religious works which he and his community were engaged in, especially the Apostolate of the Press, and giving them all his blessing.

"I have good news to tell you," he wrote to a friend. "The Holy Father has written me the 'tallest' kind of a letter, endorsing every good work in which I am engaged. Hurrah for Catholicity at Fifty-ninth Street! My private opinion is that the Holy Father has gone too far in his endorsement of Hecker. He has made me feel ashamed of myself and humiliated."

When Pius IX. called together the Council of the Vatican Father Hecker was urged by friends, among them several bishops, to go to Rome for the occasion. The late Bishop Rosecrans, of Columbus, Ohio, not being able to attend himself, appointed Father Hecker his Procurator, or proxy. Before his departure he preached a sermon on the Council in the Paulist Church, which was printed in The Catholic World for December, 1869. He devoted the greater part of it to quieting the wild forebodings of timid Catholics and combating the prognostics of outright anti-Catholics. He concluded by asking the people to pray that the hopes of a new and brighter era for religion, to date from this great event, might be fulfilled; for it was commonly believed and expressly intended that the entire state of the Church should be considered and legislated upon at the Council. The breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war, as is well known, together with the seizure of Rome by the Piedmontese, frustrated these hopes as to all but the very first part of the work laid out for the Council.

Father Hecker arrived in Rome on the 26th of November, 1869. When the preliminary business of organization had been finished it was announced that the procurators of absent bishops would not be admitted to the Council, as the number of prelates present in person was exceedingly large. But, he writes home:

"The Archbishop of Baltimore has made me his theologian of his own accord. This gives me the privilege of reading all the documents of the Council, of knowing all that takes place in it, its discussions, etc. As his theologian I take part in the meetings and deliberations of the American hierarchy, which is, as it were, a permanent council concerning the interests of the Church in the United States, in which I feel a strong and special interest."

Father Hecker had ever been a firm believer in the doctrine of papal infallibility, as was the case with all American Catholics, prelates, priests, and people. Shortly before leaving for the Council we heard him say: "I have always heard the voice of Rome as that of truth itself." This he also showed very plainly in his farewell sermon. Speaking of the dread of undue papal influence over the bishops in the Council, he exclaimed: "All I have to say is, that if the Roman Court prevail [in the deliberations of the Council], it is the Holy Ghost who prevails through the Roman Court." But the tone of the controversy on the subject of papal infallibility, which soon deafened the world, was too sharp for his nerves, and he abstained from mingling in it. As a matter of fact he determined to get away from Rome early in the spring of 1870. If the reader would know what we deem to have been Father Hecker's frame of mind about the proceedings of the Council we refer him to Bishop J. L. Spalding's excellent life of his uncle, the then Archbishop of Baltimore, whose views of both doctrine and policy were, as far as we can judge, shared by Father Hecker, who was his intimate and beloved friend.

But his stay in the Eternal City, at this time more than ever before the focus of all religious truth, as well as the object of all human expectancy, had not been uneventful. Very much against his will he preached one of the sermons of the course given during the octave of the Epiphany, in the Church of San Andrea della Valle, and later on another, on an important occasion, in place of Archbishop Spalding, who had fallen ill. Much of his time he spent with the American bishops and the distinguished priests who were with them; he renewed the old-time friendships of his stay in Rome twelve years before, seeing a good deal of Archbishop Connolly, of Halifax, N. S.; he made new friends, too, among whom he names especially Mrs. Craven, the author of the Recit d'une Soeur; and he formed acquaintance with leading men and women of all nationalities.

"There is not a day passes," he wrote home, "that I do not make the acquaintance of persons of great importance, or acquire the knowledge of matters equally important for me to know; and I gain more in a day than one could in years at other times. For we may say that the intelligence, the science and sanctity of the Church are now gathered into this one city. Yet my heart is in my work at home."

He had two private audiences with Pius IX., which, though of course brief, were very interesting; the Pope remembered him, and expressed his interest in him and his work in America. The following extracts from letters to his brother George, written very soon after reaching Rome, recall an old friend:

"I do not know whether I told you of my interview with Cardinal Barnabo. He received me literally with open arms. After an hour's conversation on several matters he ended by saying: 'The affection and esteem which I had for you when you were here before has been increased by your labors since then, and my door is always open for you, and I shall always be glad to see you.' He entertains a high idea of the importance of The Catholic World."

"I had a most pleasant interview a few evenings since with Cardinal Barnabo," he writes in April, 1870, shortly before leaving. "Among other things he said: 'You ought to be grateful to God for three reasons: first, He drew you out of heresy; second, He saved you from shipwreck in Rome; third, He has given you talents, etc., to do great things for His Church in your country.' He takes great interest in the Paulists."

Not alone in Rome did he meet with friends, but what follows, written home in December, 1869, tells that his name and his vocation had been made familiar to many observant persons in Europe:

"It surprises me to find my name familiar everywhere I have been on my travels. But magazines, newspapers, telegrams, and what-not have turned the world into a whispering gallery. But the less a man is known to men the more he knows of God; so it seems to me, as a rule. Yet great activity may flow as a consequence of intimate union with Him whom theologians call Actus Purissimus. From the fact of his being known, I entertain no better idea of Father Hecker than I ever did; and could I get him again in the United States, he will be more devoted than ever to his work."

Father Hecker gave his view of the bearing of the Vatican Council on the future of religion in a letter which will be found below. It concerns what we have already spoken of at some length and what we shall again refer to, namely, the relation between the inner and outer action of the Holy Ghost as factors in the soul's sanctification. We heard Father Hecker several times affirm that he received special illumination from God on this subject while in Rome during the Council, and that something like the very words in which properly to express himself were then given to him. It was written in the summer of 1872, but we quote it here before bidding adieu to Rome and accompanying him in his short pilgrimage among the great shrines of Italy:

"These two months past I have been driven away from home to one place and another by poor health. . . . The definition of the Vatican Council completes and fixes for ever the external authority of the Church against the heresies and errors of the last three centuries. . . . None but the declared enemies of the Church and misdirected Catholics can fail to see in this the directing influence of the Holy Ghost.

"The Vatican Council has placed the Church in battle array, unmasked the concealed batteries of her enemies; the conflict will be on a fair and open field, and it will be decisive. The recent hostility of the governments of Europe, and especially of Italy, against the Church, has shown the wisdom of the Vatican Council in preparing the Church to meet the crisis. The definition leaves no longer any doubt in regard to the authority of the Chief of the Church.

"For my part I sincerely thank the Jesuits for their influence in bringing it about, even though that were as great as some people would have us believe. . . . This had to be done before the Church could resume her normal course of action. What is that? Why, the divine external authority of the Church completed, fixed beyond all controversy, her attention and that of all her children can now be turned more directly to the divine and interior authority of the Holy Ghost in the soul. The whole Church giving her attention to the interior inspirations of the Holy Spirit, will give birth to her renewal, and enable her to reconquer her place and true position in Europe and the whole world. For we must never forget that the immediate means of Christian perfection is the interior direction of the Holy Spirit, while the test of our being directed by the Holy Spirit and not by our fancies and prejudices, is our filial obedience to the divine external authority of the Church.

"If for three centuries the most influential schools in the Church gave a preponderance in their teaching and spiritual direction to those virtues which are in direct relation to the external authority of the Church, it must be remembered that the heresies of that period all aimed at the destruction of this authority. The character of this teaching, therefore, was a necessity. There was no other way of preserving the children of the Church from the danger of this infection. If the effect of this teaching made Catholics childlike, less manly and active than others, this was under the circumstances inevitable.

"The definition of the Vatican Council, thanks to the Jesuits, now gives us freedom to turn our attention in another direction, and to cultivating other virtues. If one infidel was equal to two Catholics in courage and action in the past, in the future one Catholic, moved by the Holy Spirit, will be equal to half-a-dozen or a thousand infidels and heretics.

"The stupid Doellingerites do not see or understand that what they pretend to desire—the renewal of the Church—can only be accomplished by the reign of the Holy Spirit throughout the Church, and that this can only be brought about by a filial submission to her divine external authority. Instead of their insane opposition to the definition of the Vatican Council and to the Jesuits, whose influence they have exaggerated beyond all measure, they ought to embrace both with enthusiasm, as opening the door to the renewal of the Church and a brighter and more glorious future. . . . To my view there is no other way or hope for such a future."

He left Rome and his many warm friends there early in the spring of 1870, and, as he thought, for the last time. He was full of courage, he was conscious of not only perfect agreement with every credential of orthodoxy, but of interior impulses of a marvellously inspiring kind. In a very familiar letter to his brother's family he says that just before his departure, while standing in one of the great piazzas, looking at the concourse of representatives of all nations passing back and forth, gathered to take counsel with the Vicar of Christ for the well-being of the human race, he was so exhilarated that he could hardly refrain from calling out, "Three cheers for Paradise, and one for the United States!"

"I return with new hope and fresher energy," he writes, "for that better future for the Church and humanity which is in store for both in the United States. This is the conviction of all intelligent and hopeful minds in Europe. They look to the other side of the Atlantic not only with great interest, but to catch the light which will solve the problems of Europe. Our course is surely fraught with the interests, hopes, and happiness of the race. I never felt so much like acquitting myself as a Christian and a man. The convictions which have hitherto directed my course have been deepened, confirmed, and strengthened by recent experience here, and I return to my country a better Catholic and more an American than ever."

That he might say Mass daily and at convenient hours while in Rome, crowded as it was at the time with bishops and priests, he obtained leave to do so in his own rooms. He made little pilgrimages to the great shrines of the Holy City, especially those of the Apostles and the typical martyrs, not forgetting, of course, his favorite modern saints, Philip Neri and Ignatius Loyola. The following are extracts from letters home telling of his celebration of St. Paul's Conversion and of the martyrdom of St. Agnes. The reader will remember that the "association of women" here mentioned was one of his earliest ideas, and one of the many whose realization Providence has given over, let us hope, to some souls especially favored by Father Hecker's gifts:

"I pray much for each member of the community, and for light to guide it in the way of God. Within a short period much light has been given to me, and the importance of our work and its greatness have impressed me greatly, more than ever before. Yesterday I went to the Basilica of St. Paul, being the feast of his conversion, especially to invoke his aid. I felt that my visit was not in vain. . . . I forgot no one of our dear community. . . . On the 21st I said Mass in the catacombs of St. Agnes; it was the day of her feast. More than twenty persons were present, friends and acquaintances. I gave eleven communions, and made a little discourse at the close of the Holy Sacrifice. The scene was most solemn and affecting.

"What did I pray for? [during my Mass in St. Agnes's Catacomb]. For you all, especially for the future. What future? How shall I name it? The association of women in our country to aid the work of God through the Holy Church for its conversion. My convictions become fixed, and my determination to begin the enterprise consecrated.

"At the close of the Mass I made a short discourse. Think of it, preaching once more in the Catacombs, surrounded with the tombs where the martyrs are laid and where the voice of the martyrs had spoken! You can imagine that the impression was profound and solemn on us all. It was a piece of foolhardiness on my part to open my lips and speak, when everything around us spoke so impressively and solemnly to our heads. I will attempt to interpret this speech: In the days of Agnes, Christians were called upon to resist and conquer physical persecution. In our day we are called upon to overcome intellectual and social opposition. They conquered! We shall conquer! Agnes tells us there is no excuse for cowardice. Agnes was young, Agnes was weak, Agnes was a girl, and she conquered! One Agnes can conquer the opposition of the nineteenth century. Such in substance was my discourse. The whole scene caused every one to be bathed in tears."

After leaving Rome he went straight to Assisi, for whose saint he had ever felt a very powerful attraction. He thus describes his impressions:

"The people that I have seen about here have a milder countenance and a more cheerful look, more refined and human than the Italians around Rome. They are to the other Italians what the Swabians are to the other Germans. It is easy for the Minnesinger of the human, to become the Minnesinger of Divine love.

"I could have kissed the stones of the streets of the town when I remembered that St. Francis had trodden these same streets, and the love and heroism which beat in his heart. . . . I said Holy Mass at the tomb of St. Francis, and in presence of his body this morning—a votive Mass of the Saint. It seems I could linger weeks and weeks around this holy spot. . . . What St. Francis did for his age one might do for one's own. He touched the chords of feeling and of aspiration in the hearts of the men and women of his time and organized them for action. St. Dominic did the same for the intellectual wants of the time. Why not do this for our age? Who shall so touch the springs of men's hearts and reach their minds as to lead them to the desire of united action, and organize them so as to bring forth great results? There is no doubt that the age wants this. Who is there that is inspired from a higher sphere of life, and sees into the future, so as to be able to speak to men and to invite them to do the work of God in our day? Who takes all humanity into his heart, and with the past and present at once in his mind can inspire men to live and act for the divine future?"

He also visited the Holy House at Loretto, and, passing through Venice and Milan to see the great churches of these cities, "the despair of all modern church-builders," as he says, he came finally to Genoa.

"I turned my steps," he writes, "to the general hospital; and why? Because the interest of my heart was there, and has been there for upward of twenty years. It is the spot where St. Catherine of Genoa labored for the miserable, loved God, and sanctified her soul. Her body is in a crystal case, uncorrupted, withered in appearance but not unpleasant to the sight. When the curtain was withdrawn and I could see her face and her feet, which were uncovered, I could not help exclaiming with the Psalmist, 'God is wonderful in His saints!' I cannot express what an attraction I have always felt for St. Catherine of Genoa. She knew how to reconcile the greatest fidelity to the interior attrait and guidance of the Holy Spirit with perfect filial obedience to the external and divine authority of the Holy Church. She knew how to reconcile the highest degree of divine contemplation with the greatest extent of works of external charity. She was a heroic lover of God, for she resisted His gifts, lest she might forget the Giver in them, and be hindered the entire possession of Him, and the complete union of her soul with Him. As a virgin she was pure, a model as a wife, and as a widow a saint! Her writings on the spiritual life are masterpieces, and though a woman, no man has surpassed, if any has equalled, the eloquence of her pen."

He procured an excellent copy of St. Catherine's portrait preserved at the hospital, and brought it home with him. He had done the same for Sts. Philip and Ignatius before leaving Rome. St. Catherine's picture represents a handsome face, earnest, simple, and joyful; she is dressed plainly as a devout woman living in the world, lovely to look upon and inspiring love of God and man in the beholder.

Father Hecker's stay in Europe during the winter of 1869-70 and the following spring awakened in his soul aspirations towards a wide and enduring religious movement in the Old World, similar to that which he had started in the New. At the time he did not anticipate any personal share in it other than encouragement and direction from America. The reader will learn in the sequel that these aspirations were again felt, and that with renewed force, when he returned to Europe in ill health three years later.

What follows is from a pocket diary, and from a letter home:

"The work that Divine Providence has called us to do in our own country, were its spirit extended throughout Europe, would be the focus of new light and an element of regeneration. Our country has a providential position in our century in relation to Europe, and our efforts to Catholicize and sanctify it give it an importance, in a religious aspect, of a most interesting and significant character."

"I do not wish to cross the Atlantic ever again, and therefore would like to finish with Europe and Italy. As for the notable men of the day, I have seen many of them—enough of them. My present experience in one way and another seems to have prepared me to lay a foundation for action which will be suitable not only for the present but for centuries to come. No one of my previous convictions have been disturbed, but much strengthened and enlarged and settled. I see nothing, practically, in which I am engaged, that, were it in my power, I would now wish to alter or abandon. I shall return with the resolution to continue them with more confidence, more zeal, more energy."

He arrived in New York in June, 1870.





CHAPTER XXXII

THE LONG ILLNESS

WE have now arrived at the last period of Father Hecker's life, the long illness which completed his meed of suffering and of merit, and gradually drew him down to the grave. It will not be expected that we shall treat extensively of this subject; nor can one who writes in the beginning of the '90s about the closing scenes of a life which ended late in the '80s go very much into detail without bringing in the living. As to Father Hecker's latter days in this world, it may be said that his joy and courage and buoyancy of spirits, as well as his hopeful outlook upon men and things, were all tried in the furnace of extreme bodily suffering as well as of the most excruciating mental agony.

Four distinct epochs divide Father Hecker's life: one when in early days he was driven from home and business and ultimately into the Church by aspirations towards a higher life; another marks the extraordinary dealings of God with his soul during his novitiate and time of studies; the third was the struggle in Rome which produced the Paulist community; the fourth and last was the illness which we are now to consider. The closing scenes of his life are scattered over more than sixteen years, filled with almost every form of pain of body and darkness of soul.

From severe colds, acute headaches, and weakness of the digestive organs Father Hecker was a frequent sufferer. But towards the end of the year 1871 his headaches became much more painful, his appetite left him, and sleeplessness and excitability of the nervous system were added to his other ailments. Remedies of every kind were tried, but without permanent relief, and, although he lectured and preached and did his other work all winter and most of the following spring, his weakness increased, until by the summer of 1872 he was wholly incapacitated. The winter of 1872-3 was spent in the South without notable improvement, and early in the following summer, acting upon the advice of physicians, he went to Europe. "Look upon me as a dead man," he said with tears as he bade the community farewell; "God is trying me severely in soul and body, and I must have the courage to suffer crucifixion." He also assured us that whatever action should be taken in adopting the Constitutions, then under consideration, had his hearty approval beforehand. He was accompanied to Europe by Father Deshon, from whom he parted with deep emotion at Ragatz, a health resort in Switzerland.

Father Hecker remained more than two years in Europe, trying every change of climate and scene, and every other remedy advised by physicians, and returned to New York in October, 1875, with unimproved health. He had derived most benefit from a journey up the Nile in the winter of 1873-4, and a short visit to the Holy Land in the following spring. While in Europe his mind was busy, and he managed to meet many of his old friends there, and formed new and important acquaintances. In February, 1875, he published his pamphlet, An Exposition of the Church in View of the Present Needs of the Age, which contains his estimate of the evils of our times, especially in Europe, and the adequate remedy for them. On his return to New York he was too weak to bear the routine of the house in Fifty-ninth Street and lived with his brother George till the fall of 1879, when he removed to the convent, remaining with the community till his death nine years afterwards.

As to the physical sufferings of those last sixteen years, they were never such as to impair Father Hecker's mental soundness. He never had softening of the brain, as the state of his nerves before going to Europe seemed to indicate; nor had he heart disease, as was for a time suspected. His mental powers were intact from first to last, though his organs of speech were sometimes too slow for his thoughts. His digestion had been impaired by excessive abstinence in early manhood, dating back to a time before he was a Catholic, and his nervous system, also, had been injured by that means, as well as by the pressure of excessive work in later life. Gradual impoverishment of the blood was the result, and the dropping down of nervous force, till at last the body struck work altogether. Four or five years before his death Father Hecker became subject to frequent attacks of angina pectoris, said to be the most painful of all diseases. During the sixteen years of illness every symptom of bodily illness was aggravated by the least attention to community affairs or business matters, and also by interior trials which will presently be described.

He was not unwilling to trace his breaking down to excessive austerity in former years. Once when asked for advice about corporal mortification he answered: "Don't go too fast. Remember St. Bernard's regret for having gone too far with such things in his youth. For my part, for many years I practised frightful penances, and now I fear that much of my physical helplessness is due to that cause." His state was not one of utter debility, though that quickly resulted if watchfulness were relaxed, or from application to responsible duties. But his strength never was to much to speak of, "only so, so," to use his own expressions, which signified a very small amount of the power of exertion or endurance in the muscles and nerves.

"What about my health?" he wrote from Europe. "There are days when I feel quite myself, and then others when I sink down to the bottom. My condition of mind and body often perplexes me, and there is nothing left me but to abandon all into the hands of Divine Providence. The end of it all is entirely in the dark, and were there not parallel epochs in my past life, and similar things in the lives of some others which I have read, my perplexity would be greater."

And again, from Ragatz, in the summer of 1875:

"My state of health is much the same. I found last week that my pulse was bounding in a few hours from the sixties into the nineties without any apparent cause. Yesterday I determined to consult the leading physician here. He examined me, and, like all others, attributes everything to my nerves, resulting from impoverished blood. I say to myself: 1st, How long will the machine keep working in this style? 2d, There will be a smash-up some day. 3d, Or perhaps I shall be able to get up more steam and run it a while longer. Who knows?"

And in another letter from the same place:

"Even here, freed from all [labors], it often seems to me that a good breeze, if it struck me in the right place, would drive the soul out of my body, so lightly is it connected with it, so slightly do they hold together."

As already said, his trip to Egypt had given him a temporary relief, and this was due, so he supposed, to utter change of scene and to solitude. When it was over he wrote as follows:

"This trip has been in every respect much more to my benefit than my most sanguine expectations led me to hope. It seems to me almost like an inspiration, such have been its beneficial effects to my mind and body. In Nubia there reigned profound silence and repose, and in lower Egypt, although there is more activity and evidence of modern life, still it is quiet and tranquil. I feel somewhat like one who has been in solitude for three or four months."

"My daily regime," he writes to his brother and Mrs. Hecker, from Italy, "has not changed these two years which I have spent in Europe. If I rise before nine I feel it the whole day. In the morning I awake about seven for good, and take a cup of tea with some bread and butter. I then read; sometimes, not often, I write a note in bed, and rise about nine or ten. I take a lunch at twelve and dine at six. My appetite is not much at any time. My sleep, so so. [All through his illness he went to bed at nine or shortly after.] I feel for the most part like a man balancing whether he will keep on swimming or go under the water. Sometimes I take a nap two or three times a day—if I can get it. There are weeks when I do not and cannot put my pen to paper. To write a note is a great effort. . . . Though my strength is so little my mind is not unoccupied, and I keep up some reading."

Just in what way his spiritual difficulties accelerated his bodily decline it is hard to say, for he was generally extremely reticent as to his interior life. A few words dropped unawares and at long intervals, and carefully taken down at the time, give fleeting glimpses into a soul which was a dark chamber of sorrow, though it was sometimes peaceful sorrow. To this we can fortunately add some sentences written in an unusually confidential mood in letters from Europe. Before his illness he was over-joyful, or so it seemed to some to whom this trait of his was a temptation. "Why," it was said, "religion seems to have no penitential side to Father Hecker at all." From the day of his ordination until his illness began he might have made the Psalmist's words his own: "There be many that say, Who shall show us any good? Lord, Thou hast set upon us the light of Thy countenance, Thou hast put gladness in my heart." But now the light of that radiant joy had faded away, and the face of God, though as present as ever before, loomed over him dark, threatening, and majestic. He had studied spiritual doctrine too well not to be ready for this trial, nor had it been sent to him without warning. Nevertheless the sensible presence of God's love had been so vivid and constant that he could alternate the joy of labor with that of prayer with the greatest ease. And now it was an alternation, not of choice but of dire compulsion, between bitter, helpless inaction, and a state of prayer which was a mere dread of an all-too-near Judge. It seemed to him as if he had boasted, "I said in my abundance I shall not be moved for ever," and now he must end the inspired sentence, "Thou hast turned away Thy face from me and I became troubled." When this obscuration of the Divine Love first grew upon him the misery of it was intolerable and was borne with extreme difficulty. The pain was lessened at intervals as time passed on, and before a year had elapsed, his letters from Europe, though they did not before complain of desolation, now show its previous existence by hailing the advent of seasons of interior peace. But from beginning to end of this entire period of his life we have not found a word of his speaking of joy. And again, even the peace would go and the desolation return; the face of God, not any time smiling, had lost its calm regard and was once more bent frowning upon him. The following extracts from letters written from Switzerland in the autumn of 1874, and within a month of each other, tell of these alternations of storm and calm: