"August 21, 1844. The object of education should be to place each individual mind in vital union with the One Universal Educator. . . .

"The only pleasure for man is his union with a priori principles."

"August 23, 1844.—If the animal passions are indulged, of course you must pay the cost. If you get a large family of children about you, and please your animal appetites with all sorts of luxury, and indulge your pride in all the foolish fashions of show, do not wonder that it cost all your time to uphold such an expensive life. This is necessary, unless you cheat some one else out of the hard-earned value of his labor. I cannot conceive how a Christian, under the present arrangements, can become wealthy without violating repeatedly the precepts of his religion. . . ."

"Where shall we find God? Within.

"How shall we hear the voices of angels? Listen with the inward ear.

"When are we with God? When we are no more with ourselves.

"When do we hear the music of heaven? When we are entirely silent.

"What is the effect of sin? Confusion.

"Where does God dwell? In silence.

"Who loves God? He who knows nothing and loves nothing of himself.

"What is prayer? The breath of silence.

"What is love? The motion of the pure will.

"What is light? The shadow of love.

"What is force? The power of love.

"Where does God dwell? Where there is peace.

"Who is most like God? He who knows he is the least like Him.

"What is the innermost of all? Stillness.

"Who is the purest? He who is most beyond temptation.

"What is the personality of man? The absolute negation of God.

"What is God? The absolute affirmation in man.

"What is it to know? It is to be ignorant.

"What should we desire? Not to desire.

"What is the most positive answer? Silence.

"What is the truest? That which cannot be proven."

"August 25, 1844.—In silence, suffering without murmuring. An eternal thirst, enduring without being quenched. Infinite longings without being met. Heart ever burning, never refreshed. Void within and mystery all around. Ever escaping that which we would reach. Tortured incessantly without relief. Alone—bereft of God, angels, men—all. Hopes gone, fears vanished, and love dead within. These, and more than these, must man suffer."

"August 28, 1844.—Is it not because I have been too much engaged in reading and paid too little attention to the centre that I have lost myself, as it were? My position here distracts my attention and I lose the delight, intimate knowledge, and sweet consciousness of my interior life. How can this be remedied? I am constantly called of to matters in which I have no relish; and if I retreat for a short time, they rest on me like a load, so that I cannot call myself free at any moment. I see the case as it stands, and feel I am losing my interior life from the false position in which I am placed.

"The human ties and the material conditions in which I am should unquestionably be sacrificed to the divine interior relation to the One, the Love-Spirit, which, alas! I have so sensibly felt. Can a man live in the world and follow Christ? I know not; but, as for me, I find it impossible. I feel more and more the necessity of leaving the society and the distracting cares of a city business for a silent and peaceful retreat, to the end that I may restore the life I fear I am losing. Our natural interests should be subject to our human ties; our human ties to our spiritual relations; and who is he who brings all these into divine harmony?

"How shall I make the sacrifice which shall accomplish the sole end I have, and should have, in view? Thrice have I left home for this purpose, and each time have returned unavoidably so, at least, it seems to me. Once more, I trust, will prove a permanent and immovable trial."

To some, a most striking incidental proof of his inaptitude for the ordinary layman's life, is found in the subjoined extract from the memoranda. Speaking of this period, Father Hecker said:

"Some time after my reception into the Church, I went to Bishop McCloskey and told him I had scruples against renting a seat in the Cathedral in Mott Street. 'If I do,' I said, 'I shall feel sore at the thought that I have set apart for me in the house of God a seat which a poor man cannot use.' I told him that for this reason I had knelt down near the doorway, among the crowd of transient poor people. Oh, how he eased my spirit by sympathizing with my sentiment, and satisfied me by declaring that the renting of pews was only from necessity, and he wished we could get along without it."

His relations with some of his former friends at Brook Farm still continued, though in a somewhat attenuated condition. From a long and appreciative letter sent him by Burrill Curtis, we make an extract, followed by Isaac's comments on it:

"October 13, 1844.—Your preparedness for any fate has been one of the chief attractions of your character to me, for I believe it is deeper than a mere state of mind. But, for all that, your restlessness is uppermost just now; not as a contradictory element, for it is not; but as a discovering power."

Isaac's journal, just at this time, was chiefly devoted to what he calls "the many smaller, venial sins which beset my path and keep me down to earth. Also to prescribe such remedies as may seem to me best for these thorns in the flesh." On October 26 he notes that he has received the letter just quoted, and remarks:

"It showed more regard for me than I thought he had. The truth is, I do not feel myself worthy to be the friend of any one, and would pass my life in being a friend to all, without recognizing their friendship towards me.

"To-day I have felt more humanly tender than ever. The past has come up before me with much emotion. ——- has been much in my thoughts.

"I have experienced those unnatural feelings which I have felt heretofore. I feel that the spirit world is near and glimmering all around me. The nervous shocks I have been subject to, but which I have not experienced for some time back, recurred this evening. I am known to spirits, or else I apprehend them."

He had taken up Latin and Greek again, and seems to have entered a class of young men under the tutorship of a Mr. Owen. The entry just quoted from goes on as follows:

"I do not devote as much time to study as I should, or as I might. I fear I shall never make anything of my studies. I do not endeavor with all my might. This study has thrown me into another sphere. I like it not. I feel apprehensive of something, of somewhat. Ten years from now will fix my destiny, if I have any."

Much good as he continued to receive from the sacrament of penance, he found a not altogether usual difficulty in preparing for it. Perhaps it was in the counsel he received there that he got courage to gird himself for his renewed attack upon the languages, for his delinquencies in this respect have the air of being the most tangible of the matters on his conscience.

"I must prepare for confession this week," he writes on November 5, 1844. "Oh! would that I could accuse myself as I should. Man is not what he should be so long as he is not an angel. Oh, dear God! give me Thy aid, and help me in my weaknesses. What sins can I accuse myself of now? First—oh, Love! give me light to accuse myself—to see my sins. This is my greatest sin; that I cannot accuse myself and am so wicked.

"Each day I omit a hundred duties that I should not. Lord, give me Thy Spirit, that I may be humble, meek, and sweet in all my walk and conversation. Fill my heart with Thy love."

In a little while he found himself able to study more diligently, and though he continually regrets the inroad this makes upon his interior life, he seems not only to have persevered, but to have taken considerable interest and an active part in the debates got up at regular intervals by the class he had joined. He notes that he has serious doubts whether it will be wise for him to express his full mind on some of the subjects brought up. His fellow-pupils were all Protestants, and some of them well-informed and talented young men. His views would be new to them, and so would many of his authorities for his statements of fact, and he thought it not unlikely that a commotion might sometimes be raised which would not at all commend itself to the teacher of the institution. He concluded, however, to throw prudence to the winds, and on controverted points to express his sentiments freely and frankly. There were some animated discussions, no doubt.

He was endeavoring at this time to retrench his hours of sleep to the narrowest dimensions compatible with health, and found it, we may note, the most difficult of his austerities. In other respects they remained severe, as this entry may witness:

"November 27, 1844.—I am sorely perplexed what to eat. Nuts, apples, and bread seem not a diet wholly suitable, and what to add I know not. Potatoes are not good; I think they were the cause of my illness last week. I do not wish to partake of anything that comes even remotely from an animal. Cooking, also, I wish, as far as possible, to dispense with. I would I could dispense with the whole digestive apparatus! Cheese, butter, eggs, milk, are for many reasons not a part of my diet."

The balance of this fourth volume of his diary, begun September 9, 1844, and ended January 2, 1845, is mainly occupied with addresses to his guardian angel. He was, as those who knew him will remember, always extremely devout to the angelic choirs. On his birthday this year he writes as follows:

"December 18, 1844.—Let me look back for a few moments and see where I stood last year this time (an incomprehensible length), and where I now stand. Then my path was dim, unfixed, unsettled. Then I was not so disentangled from the body and its desires as, I hope in God, I now am. In all I feel a consciousness that since then I have spiritually grown—been transformed. For my present I cannot speak. For my future, it seems I dare not speak.

"Dreams of the future! Exalted visions! Beautiful, unspeakable hopes! Deep, inarticulate longings that fill the conscious soul! Ah! so sweet, so harmonious, so delightful, like an angel, like the bride of the pure and bright soul adorned for the nuptials, do I see the future beckoning me with a clear, transparent smile onward to her presence. 'Ah!' my soul would say, 'we will meet, for I am in thy presence, and faithful in God may heaven grant me to be.' The beauty, the grace, the love, the sweetness that attract me, are beyond all comparison. Ah! thou eternal, ever-blooming virgin, the Future, shall I ever embrace thee? Shall I ever see thee nearer to my heart? I look at myself and I am bowed down low in grief; but when I cast my eyes up to thee, in seeing thee I am lost. The grace and beauty I see in thee passes into my soul, and I am all that thou art. I am then wedded to thee, and I would that it were an eternal union. But ah! my eyes, when turned upon myself, lose all sight of thee, and meet nothing but my own spots and blemishes. How canst thou love me? I say; and for thy pure love I am melted into thee as one."

He continues:

"Lord, let me speak of my many and grievous sins; but oh! when I would do so, my mouth speaks nothing forth but Thy praises.

"I would offer my whole soul afresh to all that is, for the sake of the love of God. . . . Lord, I am Thine, for Thou dost teach me this be Thy unutterable, ever-present love."

"January 3.—Last Saturday my confessor was not at home when I called. I have waited until this morning, the Saturday following. It is sad to me to wait to partake of the Blessed Sacrament. How much joy, love, and sweetness it is to the soul! I feel my soul to glow again with renewed love when I have partaken of the blessed communion of Christ. This is my spiritual food. It is the goodness, mercy, and love of God which keeps me from sadness."





CHAPTER XX

FROM NEW YORK TO ST. TROND

ISAAC HECKER'S zeal for social reform lent force to his strictly personal cravings for a more religious life; he longed for wider scope than individual effort could possibly bestow, and also for a supernatural point of vantage. "If we would do humanity any good," he writes in his diary while considering his vocation, "we must act from grounds higher than humanity; our standpoint must be above the race, otherwise how can we act upon humanity?" He also speaks of the fundamental necessity of "an impulse of divine love" actuating the reformer of social evils. He addresses himself thus: "If thou wouldst move the race to greater good and higher virtue, lose thyself in the Universal. Be so great as to give thyself to something nobler than thyself if thou wouldst be ennobled, immortalized." In many pages of the last two volumes of his diary these notes of sympathetic love for his fellow-men are mingled with yearnings for solitude. "This book," he writes on the last page of one of them, "has answered some little purpose; for when I wanted to speak to some one and yet was alone, it cost me no labor to scribble in it. It would give me great pleasure if I had a friend who would exchange such thoughts with me." He was soon to enter into that spiritual heritage which among its other treasures bestows the beatitude of the sage, "Blessed is the man who hath found a true friend."

Little by little a distinctly penitential mood came over him, and it occupies nearly the whole of the last volume of the diary with the most unreserved expressions of grief for sin, or, rather, for a state of sinfulness, since the specific mention of sins is nearly altogether wanting. We meet with page after page of self-accusation in general terms: "I am in want of greater love for those around me; I perform my spiritual duties too negligently; too little of my time is devoted to spiritual exercises. I feel all over sick with sin! Here is my difficulty, O Lord, and do Thou direct me: I am always in doubt, when I do not think of Thee alone, that I am sinning and that my time is misspent."

His protestations of sorrow are extremely fervent and very numerous; and as the Lent of 1845 approached he records his purpose of restricting himself to one meal a day. As he never ate meat, nor any "product of animal life," and drank only water, his "nuts, bread, and apples" once a day must have been his diet all through the penitential season. The reader will remember ein herrliches Essen at Concord: "bread, maple-sugar, and apples."

In the middle of February he opened his mind more fully to Bishop McCloskey, whom he continually calls his spiritual director. He had now to reveal the discoveries of holy penance, and to add to his other motives for leaving the world the dread of falling into mortal sin. He had, he tells us, misgivings as to whether he was ambitious or not. One of his spiritual states he thus alludes to:

"I will ask my confessor how it is—if it is so with others, that they feel no sense of things, no joy, no reality, no emotion, no impulse, nothing positive within or around," but only the consciousness of the need of a terrible atonement. This is accompanied by frantic prayers to God, invocations of the Blessed Virgin, St. Francis of Assisi and other saints. And he says that he has been told that he is scrupulous, and complains that at confession he can only accuse himself in general terms.

Complete abandonment to the divine will seems to have been the outcome of a season of much distress of soul, and bodily mortification. On April 2 he writes: "The last time I saw my director he spoke to me concerning the sacred ministry, and this is a subject I feel an unspeakable difficulty about. I told him that I desired to place myself wholly in his hands and should do whatever he directed. I do not wish to be any more than nothing. I give myself up. So far the Lord seems to be with me, and I hope that He will not forsake me in the future."

As might have been anticipated, Bishop McCloskey's advice was wise. Plainly, his own hope was that young Hecker should enter the secular priesthood, but there is no evidence in the numerous references to the matter in the diary, that this caused him to do more than make his young friend fully acquainted with that state of life. He had him call at the newly-opened diocesan seminary at Fordham and become acquainted with the professors. Bishop Hughes, whom he also consulted, urged him to go to St. Sulpice in Paris, and to the Propaganda in Rome, and make his studies for the secular priesthood. But they failed to win him to their opinion, and were too enlightened to seek to influence him except by argument. Father Hecker ever held the very highest views on the dignity of the priesthood, considering its vocation second to none. But while he was irresistibly inclined to a state of retirement quite incompatible with the duties of the secular priesthood in America, he also felt the most urgent need of constant advice and companionship for guidance in his interior life. These seemingly contradictory requirements he hoped to find united in a religious community, and Bishop McCloskey emphatically assured him that his anticipations would not be disappointed. In addition to this, Isaac Hecker had at least some premonitions of an apostolic vocation calling for a wider range of activity than can be usually compassed by the diocesan clergy. But we have often heard him say that the immediate impulse which induced his application to be made a Redemptorist was need of "intimate and careful spiritual guidance."

His director therefore became satisfied that he should become a religious, and turned his attention to the Society of Jesus, giving him the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier to read, and, doubtless, answered his inquiries about that order. "But," he said in after years, "I had no vocation to teach young boys and felt unfitted for a student's life"; added to this was the certainty of the postponement of any public activity on his part for many years if he became a Jesuit.

After mentioning that he had read the life of St. Francis Xavier, he says that an acquaintance had written him that a German priest, living in Third Street, wanted to see him. This was one of the Redemptorist Fathers who were newly established in the city. This priest, whose name is not given, undertook to assume direction of Isaac, and was very urgent with him to make a spiritual retreat with a view to deciding his vocation. "He is a very zealous person—too much so it seems to me," is the comment in the diary, and the answer was a refusal. But what he saw in the community pleased and attracted Isaac, for everything was poor and plain, and there was an air of solitude. However, he would by no means change his spiritual adviser, writing, "I strive to follow my spiritual director or else I should be fearful of my state. All my difficulties, sins, and temptations I make him acquainted with. . . . Though the world has no particular hold upon me, I give it up once and for all. It gives me pain to feel my perfect want of faith in myself as being in any way useful."

Meantime, on Trinity Sunday, he had been confirmed with his brother George, whose entrance into the Church is here first indicated; no other member of the family became a Catholic. Isaac took the additional name of Thomas on receiving this sacrament, in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Again he writes:

"I have tried to study to-day, but I cannot. Is it not the business of man to save his own soul, and this before all things? Does the study of Greek and Latin help a soul towards its salvation? Is it not quite a different thing from grace? Sometimes I feel strongly inclined to set aside all study, all reading, as superficial and not so important as contemplation and silence."

The time was coming when the Holy Spirit would do this in spite of him and in a way the reverse of pleasant. Meantime he worked away at his books and attended his classes at Cornelius Institute, which was the name of the private school he had been attending, till July 16, the commencement day. In recording his impressions of the school and the acquaintances there made, he says that with one possible exception the young men were of little interest to him, lacking earnestness of character. He does not name the teachers or give the location of the school. Yet he says his experience there had been useful "and chastened my hopes. I have seen by means of it much more clearly into the workings of Protestantism, its want of deep spirituality, its superficiality, and its inevitable tendency to no-religion."

As may be supposed, his visits to Third Street became frequent, and his acquaintance with the Fathers better established. This was especially true with regard to Father Rumpler, who was rector of the house, a learned and able man and one of mature spirituality. He was a German born and bred, with the hard ideas of discipline peculiar to a class of his countrymen though foreign to the genuine German character. He impressed young Hecker as a sedate man, wise and firm. The friendship then begun was maintained until Father Rumpler was deprived of his reason by an attack of acute mania several years later. But more than the friendship of Rumpler, as far as immediate results were concerned, was the providential circumstance of two other young Americans having applied to join the Redemptorists. To Isaac this was a stimulant of no ordinary power. Like himself, they were converts and very fervent ones; but, unlike him, they had come into the Church from Episcopalianism. Clarence A. Walworth, son of the Chancellor of the State of New York, was a graduate of Union College. He studied law in Albany and practised his profession for a short time, but finally undertook the ministry. After three years in the Episcopal seminary he became a Catholic. Those who know him now can see the tall and graceful youth, pleasing and kindly, with the face and voice and soul of an orator; for the force and charm of youth have not been weakened in receiving the dignity of old age.

James A. McMaster was of Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish parentage. His name is familiar to our readers as editor of the Freeman's Journal. Those qualities of aggressive zeal which made McMaster so well known to Catholics of our day were not wholly undeveloped in the tall, angular youth, still a catechumen, and intoxicated with the new wine of Catholic fervor. Young Mr. Walworth had been made a Catholic but a short time before, and McMaster was received into the Church by the Redemptorists in Third Street, his two young friends being present. While he was kneeling at the altar, candle in hand, piously reading his profession of faith to Father Rumpler, he accidentally set fire to Father Tschenhens' hair, one of the fathers assisting at the ceremony. Walking together afterwards in the little garden of the convent, Father Rumpler said to him: "Mr. McMaster, you begin well—setting fire to a priest." "Oh," answered he, "if I don't set fire to something more than that it will be a pity." These new friends of Isaac had applied to enter the Redemptorist novitiate and they had been accepted. This meant a voyage to Europe, for the congregation had not yet established a novitiate in America.

One Friday, then, during the last days of July—the exact date we have not been able to discover—Isaac Hecker was informed by Father Rumpler that Walworth and McMaster would sail for Belgium the evening of the next day. "I decided to join them," he said when relating the circumstances afterwards. "Father Rumpler was favorable, but puzzled. And I must first present myself to the Provincial, Father de Held, who was in Baltimore. I arrived in Baltimore at four o'clock in the morning on Saturday, travelling all night. Father de Held looked at me, as I presented myself, and said that he must take time to consider. I explained about the departure of the others that day. He ordered Brother Michael to get me a bowl of coffee from the kitchen, and me to hear his Mass. I heard the Mass and after that he examined me a little—asked me to read out of the Following of Christ in Latin, which I did. He gave me my acceptance, and I rushed back to New York by the half-past eight o'clock morning train. George had packed my trunk, and I sailed that day with the others."

The picturesqueness of the group was certainly not lessened by the accession of Isaac Hecker, whose leap to and from Baltimore, though hardly to be expected from a contemplative, was in accord with the sudden energy of his nature. One who saw him at the time says that "he had the general make-up of a transcendentalist, not excepting his long hair flowing down on his neck."

The ship was an American one named the Argo, and she was bound for London. The voyage was every way pleasant, lasting but twenty-five days from land to land, with bright skies, quiet sea, and fair winds. Their berths were in the waist of the ship, in the second cabin, all the places in the first cabin having been taken; this pleased them well, for they loved the poor man's lot. Isaac's passage money was paid by his brothers, and he was supplied by them and his mother with all sorts of conveniences; and these, of course, he made to conduce to the comfort of the entire party. The lower and larger berth of their little state-room was occupied by Walworth and McMaster, and Isaac took the upper and smaller one. None of them suffered from sea-sickness.

The young pilgrims were overflowing with happiness, as if they were going to the enjoyment of a rich heritage, as, indeed, in a spiritual sense they were. It was a first voyage to the Old World for all of them and they found everything interesting. They made friends with the crew, who were nearly all Yankee sailors, and who struck them as exactly like themselves, except that they were not religious; and they sought entertainment with such of the passengers as were congenial, though in this Isaac Hecker was more ready than his companions. Father Walworth tells an incident characteristic of both himself and his transcendental companion. He was admonishing young Hecker to be more reticent among the crew and was asked why. "You wouldn't like to kneel down and kiss the deck before all those sailors," said Walworth. "Why not?" was the reply. "Then do it." And down dropped Hecker to the deck and kissed it in all simplicity.

They had many topics of interest to occupy their time; Isaac favored such as were philosophical and social, his companions were absorbed by the Tractarian movement, its phases of thought and variety of persons, and all must have had much to tell of friends and relatives whom they hoped soon to see members of the Church. One night the harmony with their fellow-passengers was threatened with rupture. They were much annoyed by a violent dispute about the Trinity carried on in the adjoining cabin far into the night. McMaster finally lost patience, sprang out of bed, rushed among the disputants, and smote the table with a tremendous blow and shouted "Silence!" His remedy was efficacious; the theologians scattered and went to bed.

There was a marked difference between Isaac and his companions in controversial views. All three used their reason with the utmost activity, but he had travelled into the Church by the road of philosophy and they by that of history and Scripture. Their conversation must have been the exchange of intellectual commodities of very different kinds and for that reason expediting a busy commerce. They could profit by his bold and original views of principle and he was in need of their idea of the external integrity of organized religion. Then, too, they had much to say of the future, chiefly by way of conjecture, for no member of the order accompanied them. No one was superior and no superior was needed. As to devotional exercises each suited himself, kneeling down and saying his prayers night and morning and at other times, in his own way and words.

There was also difference in matters of devotion, for Isaac Hecker had little or no religious training, and as to the traditional forms of religious practice he was very backward. The others had long since familiarized themselves with all Catholic usages. Young Walworth taught young Hecker how to say the rosary and initiated him, doubtless, into other common practices, which he assumed with the simplicity and docility of the child of guileless nature that he was.

The ship, as we have said, was bound to London, but our party were too impatient to wait till the end of the voyage and left her at Portsmouth in the pilot's boat; the sea was running high, but so were their spirits, and although the boat was tossed about in a way to scare a landsman, they gladly went ashore and took the cars to London. We have before us a letter from Isaac Hecker to his brothers, dated the 29th of August, saying that they had been in London three days after a pleasant voyage, and expressing deep joy at nearing the place of retirement and prayer for which he had been longing. He asks them to write to Brownson and especially to assure his mother of his happiness.

McMaster insisted on visiting Newman at Littlemore, and afterwards gave a glowing account of his visit. He had been received by the great man, who did not enter the Church till a few months later, with the utmost kindness. He found him standing in his library, reading a book. He asked many questions about the tendency of men's minds in America, and was especially interested in Arthur Carey, with whose influence among American Episcopalians and early death the reader has been made acquainted. They lodged at a decent little inn over a pastry cook's shop and did not go sight-seeing to any extent. McMaster's companions did not wait for his return from Oxford, but when the packet sailed for Antwerp, which was Sunday, the 30th of August, they went down to Folkestone and took passage. They arrived the following morning, and, armed with a letter from Father Rumpler to a Madame Marchand, a warm friend of the congregation, they went straight to the nearest Church to inquire the way to her house. It happened to be the Jesuit church, and one of the fathers kindly guided them to the lady's house. She was delighted to serve them; gave them an excellent dinner, and, after they had visited Rubens' great picture, the Descent from the Cross, set them forth on their journey; but the "yea, yea and nay, nay" of Scripture, or rather jah, jah, nein, nein, was their only conversation with the good lady, for although young Walworth could speak French and Isaac German, she knew nothing but Flemish. Distances are not great in little Belgium, and so before night they were at St. Trond, a little city about thirty-five miles southeast of Antwerp and twenty miles from Liege. Here they were soon joined by Mr. McMaster, and their novitiate began. Isaac Hecker was now twenty-five years and nine months old.





CHAPTER XXI

BROTHER HECKER

THE Redemptorist novitiate at St. Trond, as well as the house of studies at Wittem, Holland, had been established be the immediate disciples of St. Clement Hofbauer. That great servant of God had introduced the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer into Austria and other parts of Germany several years before the time of which we write. A saint himself, and of wonderful missionary gifts, he was worthy of the title of second founder of the order of St. Alphonsus Liguori. St. Clement was the son of a Moravian peasant, and in early life had been a baker by trade. St. Alphonsus was still alive when Clement, while on a pilgrimage to Rome, was enrolled there in the Redemptorist novitiate. This event was auspicious of the future of the entire community, since his apostolate was the means of propagating the order among the northern nations, and giving to it some of its present dominant characteristics of Teutonic discipline; whereas in the land of its origin it has never fully recovered from the disasters which befell it during the lifetime of its founder. In Germany and the Low Countries, on the other hand, the children of St. Alphonsus and St. Clement were, at the time when the three Americans joined them, the most powerful preachers in the Church. Their vocation called them to give missions—spiritual exercises lasting from a week to a month—to the faithful in every part of Catholic Europe, not excepting France. Their fame was established as the foremost preachers of penance and of the Redeemer's love for sinners.

St. Trond was the novitiate of the Belgian Province, which embraced Belgium and Holland as well as the newly established convents in England and America. The Provincial was Father de Held, whom we saw in Baltimore while he was there on a tour of inspection of the American houses. He was an Austrian German, a man of noble presence, matured spirituality and an accomplished missionary. Father Hecker knew him well in after years, and always counted him as one who understood his spirit and approved his aspirations.

The convent in St. Trond was in a narrow street of the quaint little city; so narrow, indeed, that one almost fancied that he could touch both walls by stretching out his arms. It was a solid old structure, built in the first half of the fifteenth century by St. Colette for her Poor Clares, an ample guarantee of its conformity to the ideas of religious poverty. It was not architecturally fine, but was a curious and interesting building. Isaac in one of his letters home says that the house was very roomy, with long corridors having cells on each side. It abutted on a church which was open to the public and served by the fathers; a window in the convent chapel looked into the sanctuary. Attached to the house was a garden of three or four acres.

The country around the town is a typical Flemish landscape, flat, fertile, thickly dotted with farm buildings, and highly cultivated. The people are wholly Catholic. The town is an old one, and in its time has had some military importance. Our young novices often walked upon the ramparts which encircled it. In the neighborhood are structures which were built before the Christian era; quite near by was one of Caesar's round towers, as well as the deserted ruins of an ancient city named Leo. Curious old churches and monasteries might often be seen by the novices on their long walks into the country. All this antiquity was the more pleasing to the American novices because in their own land the forests, the rivers, and the everlasting hills are all that represent the distant past.

Besides twenty novices there were ten or twelve fathers at St. Trond, who either served the church or went about on missions; and there were also a number of lay brothers. By nationality the greater portion of the novices were Belgians and Hollanders, the others being mostly Germans. The language of the house was French, though Latin was sometimes used. Of course this was an added difficulty to Brother Hecker, as he was now called, for he knew practically nothing of that language, though he had studied it a little. But he attacked it resolutely and, as one of his companions said, learned it heels over head. He never feared to make mistakes, nor dreaded a smile at his expense, and as a consequence was soon able to talk to any one. But his French was always curious, and when he took his turn at reading during meals he gave the community some hearty laughs.

All the new-comers were invested with the Redemptorist habit about three weeks after their arrival, in September, 1845. "You can scarce imagine the happiness I felt on my arrival here," he writes to his mother in his first letter home. "For three days my heart was filled with joy and gladness. I was like one who had been transported to a lovelier, a purer, and a better world." He tells her that he had waited for a fortnight before writing, to learn the place, and then, after expressing his satisfaction with everything in such sentences as the above, he fills the rest of the letter with arguments in favor of the Catholic Church and exhortations to join it. Such was the burden of all of his letters home from both St. Trond and Wittem. We have ten written from the novitiate. An exception must be made as to one which describes in detail the daily order of life in the novitiate. It is addressed to his mother.

He tells her that the first bell rings at half-past four in the morning and the last at half-past nine at night. The time is divided between various common and private devotional exercises, including Mass, meditations, recitation of the office in common, study of the rule of the order, spiritual conferences, spiritual reading, and the like. Silence is broken only for an hour after dinner and another hour after supper. About an hour of out-door exercise is taken every day, and a long walk once a week and on feast-days. All of Thursday in each week and the more important feasts of the year are days of recreation, when silence need not be observed during the greater part of the day, and much relaxation is otherwise allowed. All Fridays are days of total silence and special devotion. The letter fails to mention the discipline, or flagellation, which was taken twice a week.

He ends thus: "The time of the novitiate is one year, and its object is to prove our vocation, and form the religious character—the heart. The exercises may seem too many to you, but to us they are quite otherwise. Their frequent changes prevent them from being monotonous, and their variety makes them agreeable. Our time passes without our taking count of it, and our joy is that of a pure conscience, and our happiness that of a clean heart."

It might seem a matter of peculiar difficulty for a free nature like Isaac Hecker's to conform to the stiff rules of such a system. But this was not the case, and a closer look into the matter shows that such a regimen is of much use to an earnest man, however free his character, at the outset of his spiritual career. Experience proves that one test of the genuineness of the interior disposition to serve God perfectly is readiness to surrender exterior peculiarities. There is nothing in the special graces of God which should hinder a placid acceptance of the routine of a novitiate. The merging of individual conduct into the common custom is the contribution which community life must exact from every member. If a man is to be a hermit he may act from individual impulses alone, though, even so, rarely without counsel. But if one would live and work with others, special graces and individual traits of character must not be allowed to interfere with a certain degree of uniformity. On the other hand, that uniformity should not be allowed to cripple the spontaneous action of natural independence, and the inspiration of graces which are personal.

It must be granted that with many souls a novitiate will tend to a routine use of religious aids. Yet it cannot be denied that its discipline forcibly concentrates the scattered purposes of life into one powerful stream. It contributes to symmetry of character. It furnishes efficacious tests of sincerity. It drills disorderly natures into regularity. It acquaints the beginner with the literature of his holy profession, and herein it is of priceless worth. And finally, it provides advisers of approved wisdom during the period of the spiritual life when counsel is most needed, as well as most gratefully accepted. But if it fails in each of these particulars, as no doubt it sometimes does, the novitiate may be said never to fail in detecting an inaptitude for the common life, if such exists; that is to say, a serious lack of the qualities which fit one to get along in peace with the brethren.

Into the novitiates of the religious orders, and into the seminaries which hold their place for the secular priesthood, the noblest men of our race have entered joyfully; some to be wedded to the Divine Spouse in the quiet seclusion of holy contemplation, and others, of the more militant orders, to be trained to follow worthily the standards of the apostolic warfare against vice and error.

The novice-master was puzzled by his three Americans, though Brother McMaster was easily comprehended—an over-frank temperament, impulsive, and demonstrative. Not only were his banners always hanging on the outward wall, but his plan of campaign also. The other two were a study, and Brother Hecker was a curiosity. Yet both were cheerful, obedient, earnest, courageous. The novice-master was annoyed at the Americans' incessant demand for the reason why of all things permitted, and the reason why not of all things prohibited; until at last Brother Walworth was named Brother Pourquoi. As to Brother Hecker, besides showing the same stand-and-deliver propensity, he occupied much of the time of conversation in philosophizing, plunging into the obscurest depths of metaphysical and ethical problems, using terms which were often quite unfamiliar to strictly orthodox ears, and exhibiting a fearless independence of thought generally conceded among Catholics only to practised theologians. Yet the novice-master was well pleased with both, though we shall see that his journey with Brother Hecker was for some time in the dark.

When the Fourth of July came around he learned that it was the great American holiday, and he called the three Americans to him and asked, "How do you celebrate your national holiday at home?" "By shooting off fire-crackers," they answered with a twinkle. This being out of the question, and the grand military parade which was next suggested also impracticable, Brothers Walworth and Hecker both exclaimed, "Ginger-bread!" "Take all you want," was the answer, "and go off on a long walk, and spend the day by yourselves." And of they went to wander among the ruins of the outposts of the old Roman republic, and make Fourth of July speeches in honor of the great new Republic beyond the sea. Those who have been novices themselves will not be surprised at the boyishness of these three manly characters under the circumstances.

Isaac Hecker's spirit was not anywise cramped by the routine exercises of the novitiate; he made them easily and well. He always seemed to his companions what he actually was, and what he described himself to be in his letters to New York, a cheerful and contented novice. But, as one of them since expressed it, he was not a "dude" novice, not the very pink of external perfection, and had a long period of interior trial. He did not exhibit at any time the least hesitancy about his vocation, for his mind was made up. Yet once, when he took a walk with Brother Walworth to visit a house of Recollects, Franciscans of the strict observance, both he and his companion were greatly struck by that charming poverty which the poor man of Assisi has bequeathed to his children; they did ask each other whether they had not made a mistake. This question, however, was but the expression of a shadowy doubt, vanishing as suddenly as it had come.

The novice-master was Father Othmann, and he was by universal testimony entirely competent for his place. He was himself the novitiate. Its austerities, and they were not trifling, its long and frequent prayer, its total seclusion from the world, all were refined and adjusted to each one by passing through his soul and being dispensed by his wisdom. Father Hecker regarded him as a very remarkable man. He was a student of character, and wise and sagacious in varying the application of religious influences according to temperament and spiritual gifts. Under him the danger of formalism, which occurs to one's mind immediately as the incessant round of exercises is mentioned, was rendered remote; for he gave his instructions, and especially used the chapter of faults, in a way to infuse into the souls of the novices the ever-recurring freshness of individual initiative. His model (after St. Alphonsus) was St. Francis de Sales. He followed him constantly in his doctrine and methods, and often spoke of him and quoted him. Of other methods and their advocates he spoke respectfully, but, however much they were in vogue, he did not follow them. Brother Hecker was a faithful student in his school and learned much from Father Othmann. The latter especially insisted on the principle of accepting Providence as the chief dispenser of mortifications. He had no objection to self-imposed spiritual exercises, but he did not positively favor them. He taught his young men that the traditional practices of devout souls as embraced in the routine of the novitiate, were good mainly to break the resistance of corrupt nature and render their souls pliant subjects of the Divine guidance in the interior life, as well as submissive to the order of God in the events of His external Providence.

The assistant novice-master, who took Father Othmann's place during his absence, was a Walloon. His name we have been unable to discover, but he was a holy priest, held up to the novices as their model and esteemed by them as the saint of the novitiate. He was a very pleasant man withal, and no doubt added in every way to the fruits of the long year of spiritual trial.

When Isaac Hecker presented himself as a novice he took his place among the youths learning the A, B, C of the spiritual life, while he himself had experienced for many months the most rare dealings of the Holy Ghost with the soul. This could not fail to come to the knowledge of Father Othmann, and, taken with the other peculiarities of his subject, to elicit his most skilful treatment. "Pere Othmann, my novice-master," said Father Hecker, in after years, "had a right to be puzzled by me, and so he watched me more than he did the others." He watched and studied him and gradually applied the two sovereign tests of genuine spirituality, obedience and humiliation. These were all the more efficacious in this case, because Brother Hecker was a man of great native independence of character and naturally of an extremely sensitive disposition.

Such was the common austerity of the life that it took some ingenuity to inflict on a novice a mortification which had not grown stale by use in the case of one or more of the others. But in searching the interior of the soul the director could find tender places into which his weapon would be plunged to the bone. But it is more than probable that he misunderstood Brother Hecker, and that for a time he even suspected him of being under delusions. For several months, at any rate, he treated him at his weekly confession with the utmost rigor, producing indescribable mental agony. Many years afterwards, and when near his death, Father Hecker once said to the writer: "While I was kneeling among the novices, outside Pere Othmann's room, waiting to go to confession, I often begged of God that it might be His will that I should die before my turn came, so dreadful an ordeal had confession become on account of the severity of the novice-master." Yet, as recorded in the memoranda, the victim was eager for the sacrifice when the knife was not actually lifted over him. "I begged the novice-master," he said on another occasion, "to watch me carefully, and when he saw me bent on anything to thwart me. I did not know any other way of overcoming my nature. He took me at my word, too. For example, once a week only we had a walk, a good long one, and we enjoyed it, and it was necessary for us. I enjoyed it very much indeed. So, sometimes when we were starting out, my thoughts bounding with the anticipated pleasure, he would stop me midway on the stairs: 'Frere Hecker,' he would say, 'please remain at home, and instead of the walk wash and clean the stair-way.' It would nearly kill me to obey, such was my disappointment, grief, humiliation."

In conjunction with these trials from without came a recurrence of resistless interior impulses. "During my novitiate," he is recorded as saying in 1885, "I found myself under impulses of grace which it seemed to me impossible to resist. One was to conquer the tendency to sleep. I slept on boards or on the floor. After a while I was able to do with five hours sleep, and often with only three, in the twenty-four. Pere Othmann was not unwilling for me to follow these impulses as soon as he became convinced of their imperative strength. Yet I now see that such practices were in a certain sense mistaken. They necessarily consumed in mortification vitality that I could now use, if I had it, in a more useful way. Still, how could I help it?"

The end of this period of his humiliations, which was not far from the end of his noviceship, is thus described: "One day after Communion I was making my half-hour thanksgiving in my room, when Pere Othmann came in and examined me about my form of prayer. Oh! it was just then that I had reached the passive state of prayer: I did nothing, Another did everything in my prayer. From that time, having put me down in the gutter, the novice-master raised me up to the pinnacle, whereas I should have been in neither place." On another occasion he told how the change of prayer had happened: "I was on my knees one day after Communion, making a regular thanksgiving, when suddenly God stopped me, and I was told not to pray that way any more. Question: How were you told—what words were spoken to you? Answer: Cease your activity. I have no need of your words when I possess your will. 'Tis I, not you, who should act. My action in you is more important than your thanks. I cease to act when you begin, and begin to act when you cease. Be still—tranquil— listen—suffer me to act. Abandon yourself to me, and I will take care of you."

When in Rome, in the winter of 1857-8, he was compelled by circumstances, which will be told in their place, to make a written summary of his spiritual experience. In it he says: "My novitiate was one of sore trials, for the master of novices seemed not to understand me, and the manifestation of my interior to him was a source of the greatest pain. After about nine or ten months he appeared to recognize the hand of God in my direction in a special manner, conceived a great esteem (for me), and placed unusual confidence in me, and allowed me without asking it, though greatly desired, daily Communion. During my whole novitiate no amount of austerity could appease my desire for mortification, and several gifts in the way of prayer were bestowed on me."

On March 6, 1886, while in a state of almost utter physical prostration, he communicated to the writer the following: "Forty years ago, in my novitiate, God told me that I was to suffer in every fibre of my being." "Perhaps," was remarked, "you have not suffered all yet." Answer: "Perhaps not, but God has kept His promise in every limb, member, and function of my body." It may become necessary to refer again to these interior experiences. We leave them with the remark that his novitiate was characterized by a continuance of Divine interferences similar to those which had occurred at intervals from the time he was driven from home and business to seek the fulfilment of his aspirations.

The following is the record of a brave soul's failure to become a Redemptorist. It is given in a letter dated September 14, 1846: "Brother McMaster, who returns to the U.S., gives me the opportunity of writing a few lines to you," etc. It was a profound disappointment for Mr. McMaster to be obliged to return home a layman, and it shocked his companions. It is a little singular that Father Othmann told him that his vocation was not to be a religious, but an editor. He carried with him Brother Hecker's messages of affection to his friends and relatives, and rosaries of Isaac's own making for his mother and his brother George.

Writing to the latter, on August 26, 1846, after some tender and affectionate words, he says: "I have now nearly eight weeks until the time of taking the vows. Oh that it were but eight minutes, nay, eight seconds, when I shall be permitted, with the favor and grace of God, to consecrate my whole being and life to His sole service! Millions of worlds put on top of one another could not purchase from me my vocation. We make fifteen days' retreat before we take the vows. You must recommend me very particularly to the Rt. Rev. Bishop McCloskey; tell him the time of my taking the vows (Feast of St. Teresa, October 15), and give him my humble request to remember me at that time in his prayers."

On the feast of St. Teresa, October 15, 1846, therefore, the two American novices took their vows, and became members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. On the very morning of that event, at half-past eight, Brother Hecker wrote a letter to his mother, in which he goes over all of his trials and experiences in following the Divine guidance since he first quitted business. He breathes intense affection in every word, and writes in a solemn mood. We would give the letter to the reader entire, but that he has already learned what it narrates. It ends thus: "Dear mother, in half an hour I go to the chapel to consecrate my whole being for ever to God and His service. What peace, what happiness this gives me! To live alone for His love, and to love all for His love, in His love, and with His love!"

After the ceremony was over he wrote as follows to his brother John:

"DEAR BROTHER JOHN: This day, with the special grace of God, I have taken the holy vows of the Catholic religion, which are obedience, poverty, chastity, and final perseverance. These vows bind me to the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer for my natural life, and the Congregation in the same manner to me. Thanks to God for His kind Providence. My vocation is once for all, for ever settled, firmly fixed. During the year and more of my novitiate I have not had any temptation against my vocation, nor any desire on my part to return to the world.

"As you were not certain whether I would return after the novitiate or not, I suppose you left my name in connection with yours and brother George's in the firm. But now that this (separation) is certain, would it not be best for you to destroy that agreement we made with each other some time ago, that no future difficulty can or may arise? All this I leave to your judgments; and as for me, dear brothers John and George, in respect to the business, you may regard me as though I had never been connected with it, nor had any title or claim upon it whatever. I am simply your dear brother Isaac, who loves you from the depth of his heart. This love, be assured, will never be diminished by any event; whatever happens will only give me new motives to love you the more. My conduct is under your inspection, yours especially, dear John, as being the eldest of us three, and I trust your sincere love for me will not let any word or action of mine pass unnoticed which may be the least unpleasant to you.

"My love, my gratitude, and my prayers to and for you all. Remember me to all my friends.

"Your brother, ISAAC.

"St. Trond, October 15, 1846.

"I have forgotten to say that if you have not already made use of the things that I left, such as clothing, you should do so."

In bidding adieu to the novitiate we think Father Hecker's last meeting with his old novice-master, as we find it recorded in the memoranda, will be of interest: "Pere Othmann was one of my best friends. Shortly before he died I happened to be in France (this was after leaving the Redemptorists), and I heard that he was extremely ill at the Redemptorist house at Nancy. I wrote to him that if he wished I would call and see him. He answered me at once, begging me to come immediately, as he desired above all things to see me before he died. So I made a journey to Nancy, and we had some hours of pleasant conference together, and I bade him farewell."





CHAPTER XXII

HOW BROTHER HECKER MADE HIS STUDIES AND WAS ORDAINED PRIEST

THE day after the taking of the vows, Brothers Hecker and Walworth started by stage-coach for the house of studies, at Wittem in Dutch Limburg. The route lay nearly east through a country pleasant on account of the fertility of its soil and the industry of its inhabitants, and interesting from its churches, monasteries, and curious old villages. The travellers crossed the Meuse at Maestricht and reached their destination before nightfall. Wittem is a small town, thirty miles east of St. Trond and about ten west of Aix-la-chapelle. This part of Holland is entirely Catholic, and its people possess a fervor which has sent missionaries to the ends of the earth. Everywhere shrines were to be seen by the roadsides. The country is not so level as that west of the Meuse, and the Redemptorist students often made excursions among the hills, our young Americans admiring the shepherds guarding their flocks, with their crooks and their dogs.

The house of studies was an old Capuchin monastery, large and plain and very interesting. The friars had buried their dead under the ground floor, which enabled the students to dig up an abundant supply of skulls as memento moris till the rector forbade it. The students were more numerous at Wittem than the novices had been at St. Trond. They were mostly Dutchmen, with a sprinkling of Belgians and a few Germans; but the language of the house was French or Latin. We have not been able to make quite sure of the name of the Rector; possibly it was Father Heilig, who certainly was there at this time, either in charge of the house or as one of the professors. The Master of Studies was Father L'hoir, who soon became one of Brother Hecker's dearest friends.

The two Americans found their fellow-students men of fine character and every way lovable, being earnest and devoted religious. They admired their thorough proficiency in all classical and literary studies, the result of old-world method and application. Mentally and physically they were splendid men. The whole race of Flemings and Dutch was found by our young recruits to be a grave and powerful people, although exceptional cases of mercurial temperament were not rare. Some curious individuals were to be found among them, as is more the case in European nationalities in general than in our own. Both Americans were much liked and respected by all their new-found brethren, though Brother Hecker, for reasons soon to be told, was sometimes ridiculed in a way that distressed him. Brother Walworth, having studied much before entering the order, was placed at once in the theological department and Brother Hecker in the philosophical. The former was even dispensed from one year of his theology, taking but two years of the three which formed the full course. The difference of studies separated the two companions almost wholly from each other, members of the two departments not being allowed even to speak together except on extraordinary occasions.

All went smoothly with Brother Walworth. Not so with Brother Hecker, who was expected to make two years of philosophy and meantime to increase his stock of Latin. But his faculties had been subjected to spiritual experiences of so absorbing a nature that he found study impossible. And when Brother Walworth was in due course ordained priest, in August, 1848, his companion was stuck fast where he had begun. It need not be said that so earnest a soul made every effort to study, but all was in vain. In the statement made in Rome ten years later, and referred to before, we find the following:

"My wish was to make a thorough course (of studies) and begin with philosophy. This the superior granted. My intellect in all scientific (scholastic) matters seemed stupid, it was with great difficulty that its attention could be kept on them for a few moments, and my memory retained of these things nothing. At the close of the first year (at Wittem) all ability to pursue my studies had altogether departed. This state of things perplexed my superiors, and on being asked what they could do with me, my answer was, 'One of three things: make me a lay brother; send me to a contemplative order which does not require scientific (scholastic) studies; or allow me to pursue, at my free moments, my studies by myself.' Instead of either of these they gave me charge of the sick, which was my sole (regular) occupation for the whole year following. During this year my stupidity augmented and reduced me to a state next to folly, and it was my delight to be treated as a fool. One day, when my fellow-students were treating me as such, and throwing earth at me, an ancient father, venerated for his gifts and virtues, suddenly turned around to them and with emotion exclaimed, 'You treat him as a fool and despise him; the day will come when you will think it an honor to kiss his hand.' At the expiration of the second year (at Wittem) the question came up again, what was to be done with me. My superior put this question to me, and demanded of me under obedience to tell him in writing how, in my belief, God intended to employ me in the future. Though the answer to this question was no secret to me, yet to express it while in a condition of such utter helplessness required me to make an act of great mortification. There was no escape, and my reply was as follows: It seemed to me in looking back at my career before becoming a Catholic that Divine Providence had led me, as it were by the hand, through the different ways of error and made me personally acquainted with the different classes of persons and their wants, of which the people of the United States is composed, in order that after having made known to me the truth, He might employ me the better to point out to them the way to His Church. That, therefore, my vocation was to labor for the conversion of my non-Catholic fellow-countrymen. This work, it seemed to me at first, was to be accomplished by means of acquired science, but now it had been made plain that God would have it done principally by the aid of His grace, and if (I were) left to study at such moments as my mind was free, it would not take a long time for me to acquire sufficient knowledge to be ordained a priest. This plan was adopted."

A more explicit statement of the supernatural influences by means of which God informed him of his mission was made in after years to various persons, singly and in common. It was to the effect that the Holy Spirit gave him a distinct and unmistakable intimation that he was set apart to undertake, in some leading and conspicuous way, the conversion of this country. That this intimation came to him while he was at Wittem is also certain; but it is equally so that he had premonitions of it during the novitiate. It was the incongruity of such a persuasion being united to a helpless inactivity of mind in matters of study that made Isaac Hecker a puzzle to his very self, to say nothing of those who had to decide his place in the order. Father Othmann, in bidding him farewell at St. Trond, had told him to become "un saint fou," a holy fool; a direction based upon his excessive abstraction of mind towards mystical things, and his consequent incapacity for mental effort in ordinary affairs. Once, at least, during those two eventful years at Wittem, Father Othmann visited the place, and when he saw Brother Hecker he embraced him and exclaimed, "O here is the spouse of the Canticles!" His farewell injunction on parting at St. Trond had been perforce complied with.

It must have taken more than ordinary penetration to perceive anything but a kind of grandiose folly in Brother Hecker. The impulse to talk about the conversion of America, to plan it and advocate it, to proclaim it possible and prove it so, and to philosophize on the profoundest questions of the human reason, was irrepressible. This he did with an air of matured conviction and with the impact of conscious moral authority, but in terms as strikingly eccentric as the thoughts were lofty and inspiring, and in execrable French, the declaimer being known as minus habens in his studies and utterly incapable. All this was the very make-up of folly; and Brother Hecker was no doubt thought a fool. But how holy a fool he was his superiors soon discovered. We find the following among the memoranda:

"Pere L'hoir was my superior in the studentate. He was a holy man and a good friend, but he was surprised at my state of prayer. He asked me how it could happen that I, a convert of only a few years, should have a state of prayer he had not attained though in the Church all his life and striving for perfection. I told him that it was God's will to set apart some men for a certain work and specially prepare them for it, and cause them, as He had me, to be brought under the influence of special Divine graces from boyhood. L'hoir then began to send anybody with difficulties to me, and God gave me grace to settle them. Then murmurs arose that he was too much under my influence, and he was removed from his position over the studies. But afterwards they replaced him; he was very efficient in his place."

The confidence of his superiors in Brother Hecker was shown by their causing him to receive tonsure and minor orders at the end of his first year at Wittem, though he had made no progress whatever in his studies.

The following notes are found in the memoranda:

"The time in my whole life when I felt I had gained the greatest victory by self-exertion was when, after weeks of labor, I was able to recite the Pater Noster in Latin.

"My memory finally failed me in my studies to that degree that at last I took all my books up-stairs to the library and told the prefect of studies I could do no more to acquire knowledge by study.

"Question. How long were you unable to study? Answer. Two years in Holland and one year in England. I never went to class those years. I was a kind of a scandal, of course, in the house. When I got a lucid interval of memory I studied, though much of the time I hadn't a book in my room. Yet, when they came to ordain me, I knew enough and was sent at once to the work of the ministry."

That his stupidity was not blameworthy is shown by the sympathy of Isaac's superiors; that it was not natural is known to our readers by their acquaintance with his native ability exhibited in his journals and letters. The difficulty was confined almost wholly to study; to fix his attention on the matter in the text-books, or to grasp it and hold it in memory, was beyond his power. Meantime his letters to his friends in New York and elsewhere were full of life. He kept a copy of a carefully written one, addressed to an old-time friend of the Brook Farm community. It is a model of brief statement of great truths, and proves that the social difficulty can only be fully remedied by the Catholic Church, which has an elevating force incomparably more powerful than any other known to humanity. The method used and the choice of arguments are peculiarly Isaac Hecker's own, and the tone, though affectionate, is one of authority, as that of an exponent of evident truth. His letters to his mother and his brothers are full of controversy, abounding in appeals to Scripture, to the voice of conscience, to the dictates of reason; and although the tone is one of deep affection, the attacks on Protestantism are keen, and the use of facts and persons as illustrations full of intelligence. Most of the letters which we have found were addressed to his mother, for whose conversion he had an ardent longing. With one of them he sends her a little manuscript treatise on true Bible Christianity which he had himself prepared. We give the reader extracts from two letters, the first from one to his brother John and the second from one to his mother:

"Your lamentation, dear John, on my separation from you, excites in me a great astonishment. To justify this separation it seems to me that you have only to open a page of the Gospels of Christ, and to read it with a sincere belief in the words and a generous love of the Saviour. As for me, I regret nothing so much as that I have not a thousand lives to sacrifice to His service and love. Yes, I love you all more than I ever did, and I would count nothing as a cost for your present and eternal good. Yet, by the grace of God, I love my Saviour infinitely, infinitely, infinitely more. Alas! when will those who profess to be Christians learn the significance of Christ's Gospels and His blessed example. I am not ignorant nor insensible of the love we owe to our parents and relatives—no, I am not insensible of this love; but in me it is all in Christ, as I would wish yours were. . . . I embrace you, dear brother, in the love of our crucified Lord."

"DEAR MOTHER: There have been times when, considering the wickedness of the world, sensible of its miseries and my own, and at the same time beholding obscurely and as it were tasting the things of heaven, I have longed and wished to be separated from the body. But when coming back to myself, and thinking that with the aid of grace I can still increase in God's love and hence love Him still more in consequence for all eternity, I feel willing to love and suffer until the last day, if by this I should acquire but one drop more of Divine love in my heart. And so it is, as St. Paul declares, that we should count the trials here as nothing compared with the glory that awaits us. Now, all these considerations, dear mother, join together to increase my desire to see you in the communion of the Holy Catholic Church, to which God has singularly given so many means of growing in grace," etc., etc.

Notwithstanding these marks of active intelligence, Brother Hecker could not study, except by fits and starts. Often he could not get through the common prayers, and in ordinary conversation his tongue would sometimes be tangled among the words of a sentence before he was half through with it. The reader has already learned that the penalties of utter stupidity were not unknown to the unwritten law of the Wittem studentate, notwithstanding that the young men were devout religious; and hence Brother Hecker must have had many hours of anguish. But we cannot suppose that his native cheerfulness was quite suppressed. His dulness of mind was accompanied, or rather was the result of, the close embraces of Divine love. It was the bitter part of that intimate communion with God which is granted to chosen souls. No doubt he was profoundly humiliated by the disgrace involved in his failure to study, but he was willing to suffer that external degradation which was the complement of and the means of emphasizing, the teaching of the Holy Spirit in his interior, as well as the means of purifying his soul more and more perfectly. In after years he related an instance of his lightness of heart, a natural quality which he shared with his companion, Brother Walworth. The bishop of some neighboring diocese, Aix-la-chapelle, if we remember rightly, happening to visit the house at Wittem, was told of the two American students. He conversed with them in the recreation, the language being French. Then he said: "I know how to read English, but I have never heard it spoken; can you not speak a little piece for me?" "Certainly," was the answer. After a moment's consultation the two young men in all seriousness recited together "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," etc. No wonder that the prelate was astonished at the peculiar sound of English. Then he asked them for a song. "Oh of course," was the answer, and they sang in unison "The Carrion Crow," with full chorus and imitations.

Besides taking care of the sick, for which he was admirably fitted by nature, Brother Hecker made himself generally useful about the house. He spent much time working among the brothers in the kitchen, and the writer has heard him say that for nearly the whole of his stay in Wittem he baked the bread of the entire community. He also carried in the fuel for the house, using a crate or hod hoisted on his back.

In August, 1848, Brother Walworth was ordained priest, and it was decided that he and Brother Hecker, together with two young Belgian priests, Fathers Teunis and Lefevre, should proceed to England, the Redemptorists having been recently introduced there. As the cassock is not worn in the streets in England they were sent from Wittem to Liege and there equipped with clerical suits, the tailor being cautioned not to be too ecclesiastical in the cut of the garments. He produced a ridiculous compromise between a fashionable frock-coat and a cassock, the waist being high and tight and the tails full and flowing, and flopping about the young clerics' heels. As they journeyed from Liege to Amsterdam, and thence to London, people stopped and stared at them in their stylish array, and some laughed at them. In this instance Brother Hecker's chagrin was not overcome by his sense of the ludicrous, for he was naturally very sensitive of personal unbecomingness, and although not precisely a martinet for clerical exactness, he had strict notions of propriety.

The new Redemptorist foundation was at Clapham, three miles south of London Bridge. The house was a large, old-fashioned mansion and had been owned by Lord Teignmouth, a notorious anti-Catholic bigot. Some of the larger rooms had been thrown together into one, and this was used temporarily as a public chapel. Just as the young Redemptorists arrived, Father Petcherine was preaching to the congregation. He was a Russian convert, and the new-comers were astonished at his good English and his eloquence. He was one of the many extraordinary men who adorned the order at that time. He was master not only of his native tongue, but of English, German, Italian, French, and modern Greek, and could preach well in all of these languages. Clapham was reached on September 23, 1848, and shortly afterwards Father Walworth was sent to do missionary as well as parish work in Worcestershire, and remained there the greater part of the two years which were spent by our Americans in England.

From Clapham Brother Hecker wrote, on September 27, 1848:

"I am at present, dear mother, in a newly-established house in the city of London, having come here by order of my superiors to continue and finish my studies. Bodily I am nearer to you than I was, and naturally speaking I am much more at home here than I was on the Continent. But this is of little or no moment, for a good religious should find his home where he can best execute the will of his Divine Master. And would you not, dear mother, rather see me in China than in the United States if, by being there, I should be more agreeable to our Blessed Saviour, who left the house of His Father to save us poor abandoned sinners upon the earth? Our house here is situated somewhat out of the dense and busy part of the city, at Clapham; a fine garden is attached to it, and even in a worldly view I could not desire it to be more agreeable. And did not our Lord promise to give those who would leave all to follow Him, 'a hundred fold more in this world and life everlasting in the world to come'? Alas! how many profess to believe in the Bible and have no faith in the words which our Lord spoke," etc., etc.

The difficulties of Wittem were not abated at Clapham; rather they were aggravated by Brother Hecker having to deal with new superiors. "I remember seeing Hecker at Clapham, looking hopelessly into his moral theology," said Father Walworth to the writer. Father Frederick de Held, whom we left in Baltimore, had returned to Europe, being Provincial of the Belgian Province, which at that time included the English as well as the American missions. It must have seemed strange to him that Brother Hecker had been sent to England; he had no house of studies to put him into and could give him no regular course of instruction. We cannot even surmise what word was sent to Father de Held about this curious young man, whom early one summer's morning three years before he had seen flitting into Baltimore and out of it, taking with him the Provincial's leave to enter the novitiate. Perhaps the case had been sent to him because it was too perplexing for any authority less than his to settle. At any rate, it placed him in an awkward position, to decide the case of this lone applicant for orders, who had made no studies and could make none, and yet who was of so marked a character, so full of life, so zealous, working willingly about the church, eagerly working in the kitchen, talking deep philosophy and forming plans for the conversion of nations. His case was peculiar. The difficulty was not confined to the question of divinity studies. Brother Hecker's general education was scant, and his English [sic] was still faulty. And yet he was silently asking ordination in a preaching order, for which a thorough education is a prerequisite. Father de Held, therefore, is not to be condemned for his harshness as wanting in sympathy or in judgment of character. Gold is tried by fire, and fire is an active agent and a painful one. But Brother Hecker soon found both solace and assistance in a new friend.

We quote from the memoranda:

"Father de Held was superior at Clapham and for a year he treated me as Henry Suso says a dog treats a rag—he took me in his teeth and shook me. At last I went to him and begged him to settle my case one way or the other: ordain me, or make a lay brother of me, or take off my habit and dismiss me to another order; though I told him that would be like taking off my skin. Father de Buggenoms then went my surety. He had been my confessor at Clapham and was then absent. But he wrote to De Held that he would guarantee my conduct if ordained. De Held then changed and became my fast and constant friend."

This is the first mention we find of Father de Buggenoms. Father Hecker ever venerated him and cherished his memory as that of a saintly friend and benefactor.

On another occasion we find a fuller account of the same events:

"Only for Father de Buggenoms I should not have been ordained at all."

"Who was De Buggenoms?"

"A Belgian, and my confessor while I was at Clapham. I was there, not ordained, nor yet making my studies. I had been forced to give them up; I could not go on with them. De Held did not know what to make of me, and he treated me harshly and cruelly. Finally I went to him and told him my thoughts; I said I was absolutely certain I had a religious vocation; that he might compel me to take of the habit, but it would be like taking off my skin; and so on. After that interview De Held changed toward me and was ever after my warm friend. He was a very prominent member of the Congregation. You know he came within a few votes of being Rector-major. He was very warm in his sympathy with us during our trouble in Rome. Well, Heilig, a German, was about coming over to England as superior. He had been my director for two years. Before he came he wrote me a letter that gave me indescribable pain. He wrote that I must change—that I was all wrong, and so on. I answered that it was too late to change; that he had been my director for two years, knew me well, and had been cognizant of my state. If he wanted me changed he must do it for me, for I did not see how to do it for myself. When he came, De Buggenoms told him to have me ordained, set me to work at anything, and he (De Buggenoms) would be responsible for me in every respect. Heilig complied. I asked him afterwards why he wrote that letter. 'Because,' said he, 'I thought you needed to be tried some more.' 'Why,' said I, 'I have had nothing but trial ever since I came.'"

From this it would seem that the case was finally settled by Father Heilig after Father de Held's departure for the Continent, which took place, as well as we can discover, some time in the summer of 1849. Father Heilig's letter, written from Liege, is before us; it is dated the 24th of March, 1849. It is a complete arraignment of Isaac Hecker's spiritual condition. It is gentle, considerate, choice of terms, but condenses all that could be said to show that his young friend had been deluded by a visionary temperament, applying to himself what he had read in mystical treatises and the lives of the saints. The letter was indeed a deadly blow. Father Heilig had been Brother Hecker's confessor for two years at Wittem, and had at least tacitly approved his spirit; and now came his condemnation. No wonder that Isaac was profoundly distressed by it. Yet his conviction of the validity of his inner life was not shaken for an instant. Nor was the trial of long duration. We have found a letter from Father Heilig dated two months later than the one we have been considering, and it is full of messages of reassurance and encouragement. The intervention of De Buggenoms completed the work. It is possible that Father Heilig had not simply a desire to test Brother Hecker's humility, but, by studying the effect of the trial imposed, to remove doubts still lingering in his own mind. Some words in both the letters referred to lead us to this inference.

Father L'hoir had not forgotten his young friend, who received a letter from him a couple of months after leaving Wittem, which breathes in every word the tenderest utterance of friendship; and a year after, another one similarly affectionate, congratulating him on his ordination. This Father L'hoir must have been a noble soul to write so lovingly; we wish that space permitted us to give his letters to the reader.

Amongst the papers left by Father Hecker we found one carefully preserved, bearing date at St. Mary's, Clapham, the feast of St. Raphael (Oct. 24) 1848, a month after his arrival there. It is a manuscript of thirty-nine closely-written pages of letter-paper. It is an account of conscience made, no doubt, to Father de Held, though its preparation may have occupied some of his time before leaving Wittem. We will make some extracts. It begins thus:

"Before commencing what is to follow, I cannot resist making the confession of my feebleness and incapacity to express even conveniently those things which I feel it my duty to relate, that I may walk with greater security and quicker step in the way of God. It would not surprise me if one who has not taken the pains to investigate this matter sufficiently should doubt indeed whether such singular graces, seeing the faults I daily commit and my many imperfections, had really been given to such an individual. A similar remark to this was made by my last director. But this is a cause of much joy and consolation to me; (that is to say) that my interior life is hid and unknown to others except those who direct me. All that I can adduce in behalf of its truth and credibility are these words of sacred Scripture: Spiritus ubi vult spirat (the Spirit breatheth where He will); and, ubi autem abundavit delictum, superabundavit gratia (but where sin abounded there did grace more abound.)