"This afternoon brings me to the close of this book. How different are the emotions with which I close it from those with which I opened it at Brook Farm, now little more (a month) than a year ago! How fruitful has this year been to me! How strangely mysterious and beautiful! And now my soul foreshadows more the next year than ever it presaged before. My life is beyond my grasp, and bears me on will-lessly to its destined haven. Like a rich fountain it overflows on every side; from within flows unceasingly the noiseless tide. The many changes and unlooked-for results and circumstances, within and without, of the coming year I would no more venture to anticipate than to count the stars. It is to me now as if I had just been born, and I live in the Sabbath of creation. Every thing that I see I feel called on to give a name; it has a new meaning to me. Should this life grow—what? It is a singular fact that, although conscious of a more interior and potent force at work within, I am now more quiet and will-less than I was when it at first affected me. I feel like a child, full of joy and pliability; and all ambition of every character seems to have left me. I see where I was heretofore, and the degree of externality which was mixed with the influences that I co-operated with, an externality from which I now feel that I have been freed. It does seem to me that all worldly prospect that ever was before me is gone, and as if I were weak, very weak, in the sight of the world; so I really am. I feel no more potency than a babe. Yet I have a will-less power of love which will conquer through me, and which, O gracious Lord, I never dreamt of before."

In the middle of the above entry he thus notes an interruption, and records a lesson taught by the late New England spring: "George and Burrill Curtis came in, and I have just returned from a walk in the woods with them. May the buds within blossom, and may their fruit ripen in my prayers to God."

He was now, indeed, very near his goal, though even yet he did not clearly see it. And once more all his active powers deserted him. Study became impossible. His mind was drawn so strongly in upon itself that neither work nor play, neither books nor the renewed intercourse which at this period he sought with his old friends in Boston and at Brook Farm, could any longer fasten his attention. He opens his new diary with a record of the trial he has just made in order to discover "whether in mixing with the world I should not be somewhat influenced by their life and brought into new relations with my studies. But it was to no purpose that I went. . . . There was no inducement that I could imagine strong enough to keep me from returning. Ole Bull, whom I very much wished to hear again, was to play the next evening; and Parley Pratt, a friend whom I had not met for a great length of time, and whom I did wish to see, was to be in town the next day. There were many other things to keep me, but none of them had the least effect. I could no more keep myself there than a man could sink himself in the Dead Sea, and so I had to come home.

"I feel a strong inclination to doze and slumber, and more and more in these slumbers the dim shadows that appear in my waking state become clearer, and my conversation is more real and pleasant to me. I feel a double consciousness in this state, and think, 'Now, is not this real? I will recollect it all, what I saw and what I said'; but it flies and is lost when I awake. . . . I call this sleeping, but sleep it is not; for in this state I am more awake than at any other time."

A few days later, on June 5, he notes that

"Although my meals are made of unleavened bread and figs, and my drink is water, and I eat no more than supports my body, yet do I feel sinfully self-indulgent."

He resolves, moreover, to trouble himself no more about the fact that he cannot continue his studies. On this subject, and on the passivity to which he was now compelled, he had written as explicitly as he could to his friend Brownson, and on June 7 he received a response which had such an immediate result upon his future that we transcribe it entire:

"Mt. Bellingham, June 6, 1844.—My dear Isaac: I thank you for your letter, and the frankness with which you speak of your present interior state. You ask for my advice, but I hardly know what advice to give. There is much in your present state to approve, also much which is dangerous. The dreamy luxury of indulging one's thoughts and ranging at ease through the whole spirit-world is so captivating, and when frequently indulged in acquires such power over us, that we cease to be free men. The power to control your thoughts and feelings and to fix them on what object you choose is of the last necessity, as it is the highest aim of spiritual culture. Be careful that you do not mistake a mental habit into which you have fallen for the guidance of the All-wise. Is it not the very sacrifice you are appointed to make, to overcome this spiritual luxury and to become able to do that which is disagreeable? Where is the sacrifice in following what the natural tendencies and fixed habits of our mind dispose us to do? What victory have you acquired, what power to conquer in the struggle for sanctity do you possess, when you cannot so far control your thoughts and feelings as to be able to apply yourself to studies which you feel are necessary? Here is your warfare. You have not won the victory till you have become as able to drudge at Latin or Greek as to give up worldly wealth, pleasures, honors, or distinctions.

"But, my dear Isaac, you cannot gain this victory alone, nor by mere private meditation and prayer. You can obtain it only through the grace of God, and the grace of God only through its appointed channels. You are wrong. You do not begin right. Do you really believe the Gospel? Do you really believe the Holy Catholic Church? If so, you must put yourself under the direction of the Church. I have commenced my preparations for uniting myself with the Catholic Church. I do not as yet belong to the family of Christ. I feel it. I can be an alien no longer, and without the Church I know, by my own past experience, that I cannot attain to purity and sanctity of life. I need the counsels, the aids, the chastisements, and the consolations of the Church. It is the appointed medium of salvation, and how can we hope for any good except through it? Our first business is to submit to it, that we may receive a maternal blessing. Then we may start fair.

"You doubtless feel a repugnance to joining the Church. But we ought not to be ashamed of Christ; and the Church opens a sphere for you, and you especially. You are not to dream your life away. Your devotion must be regulated and directed by the discipline of the Church. You know that there is a large Roman Catholic population in our country, especially in Wisconsin. The bishop of that Territory is a German. Now, here is your work—to serve this German population. And you can do it without feeling yourself among foreigners. Here is the cross you are to take up. Your cross is to resist this tendency to mysticism, to sentimental luxury, which is really enfeebling your soul and preventing you from attaining to true spiritual blessedness.

"I think you would better give up Greek, but command yourself sufficiently to master the Latin; that you need, and cannot do without. Get the Latin, and with that and the English, French, and German which you already know, you can get along very well. But don't be discouraged.

"I want you to come and see our good bishop. He is an excellent man—learned, polite, easy, affable, affectionate, and exceedingly warm-hearted. I spent two hours with him immediately after parting with you in Washington Street, and a couple of hours yesterday. I like him very much.

"I have made up my mind, and I shall enter the Church if she will receive me. There is no use in resisting. You cannot be an Anglican, you must be a Catholic or a mystic. If you enter the Church at all, it must be the Catholic. There is nothing else. So let me beg you, my dear Isaac, to begin by owning the Church and receiving her blessing.

"My health is very good, the family are all very well; I hope you are well. Let me hear from you often. Forgive me if I have said anything harsh or unkind in this letter, for all is meant in kindness, and be assured of my sincere and earnest affection.

"Yours truly,

"O. A. BROWNSON."





CHAPTER XV

AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH

THE first effect of Brownson's letter was to throw its recipient into a state of great though brief perplexity. That final struggle, strange and painful, in which the soul for the last time contends against its happiness; in which it is drawn by an invincible attraction, knowing that it will yield yet striving still to resist; is one that must remain but half-comprehended by most of those to whom Catholic truth is an inheritance. And yet there is an explanation which Father Hecker himself would possibly have given. "Do you know what God is?" he said to the present writer in 1882, in that abrupt fashion with which he often put the deepest questions. "That is not what I mean," he went on, after getting a conventional reply: "I'll tell you what God is. He is the eternal Lover of the soul." That shudder of blind aversion which is a part of the experience of so many converts, is an instinctive testimony that the call to the truth is more than natural, while the overpowering attraction which attends it witnesses that nature must needs obey or perish. The Church, too, is not heard by the soul merely as the collective voice of many men and ages of men agreed upon the truth, but as a mystic personality which makes her the imperative ambassadress of Christ. For she is the Spouse of the Lamb, and in her the Incarnate Word obtains a voice which is no less single in its personality than multitudinous in its tones.

Much as Isaac Hecker had considered the matter, studying, reading, praying, assuring himself from time to time that if any church were true this was the one, and that to enter it was probably his duty, now that Brownson's weight was likewise thrown into the scale and it went down with a warning thud, he thrilled through with apprehension. "I feel like throwing all up," he wrote in the diary on the day the letter reached him. "Some cannot rest. How much better would it have been could I have remained in quietness at my daily pursuits, and not been led to where I now find myself."

Then he questions himself: "What have I against the Catholic Church? At this moment I cannot say that I have anything that is essential. And she meets my wants on every side.

"Oh, this is the deepest event of my life! I would have united myself to any one of the Protestant sects if I had found any that would have answered the demands of my nature. Why should I now hesitate when I find the Catholic Church will do so? Is not this the self-will which revolts against the involuntary will of the Spirit?

"The fundamental question is, Am I willing to submit my will to the guidance and direction of the Church? If she is the body of Christ; if she is the channel of the Holy Ghost; if she is the inspired body illumined by Christ's Spirit; in a word, if she is the Catholic Church; if I would serve God and humanity; if I would secure the favor of God, and heaven hereafter; why should I not submit to her?"

But however painful this final indecision may have been, it was of short duration. Brownson's letter reached Concord on Friday morning, and on Saturday Isaac Hecker went into Boston to see Bishop Fenwick and put himself under instruction. That done, his peace not merely returned, but he felt that it rested on more solid grounds than heretofore. Yet, curiously enough, it is at this point we come upon almost the first trace of his stopping seriously to consider the adverse sentiments of others with regard to any proposed action on his part. Now that he means to range himself, he turns to look back at the disorderly host which he is quitting, not so much, or at least not primarily for the sake of the order and regularity and solidity of that to which it is opposed, but because a true instinct has taught him that unity is the external mark of truth, as equilibrium is the test of a just balance. In his diary of June 11, 1844, after recording that he has just returned from Boston, where he has seen the bishop and his coadjutor, Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick, and received from the latter a note of introduction to the president of Holy Cross College, at Worcester, Mass., he adds:

"I intend to stay there as long as it seems pleasant to me, and then go on to New York and there unite myself with the Church.

"I sigh, and feel that this step is the most important of my life. My highest convictions, my deepest wants, lead me to it; and should I not obey them? There is no room to harbor a doubt about it. My friends will look upon it with astonishment, and probably use the common epithets, delusion, fanaticism, and blindness. But so I wish to appear to minds like theirs; otherwise this would be unsatisfactory to me. Men call that superstition which they have not the feeling to appreciate, and that fanaticism which they have not the spiritual perception to perceive. The Protestant world admires, extols, and flatters him who will write and speak high-sounding and heroic words; who will assert that he will follow truth wherever it leads, at all sacrifices and hazards; but no sooner does he do so than it slanders and persecutes him for being what he professed to be. Verily it has separated faith from works.

"This is a heavy task; it is a great undertaking, a serious, sacred, sincere, and solemn step; it is the most vital and eternal act, and as such do I feel it in all its importance, weight, and power. O God! Thou who hast led me by Thy heavenly messengers, by Thy divine grace, to make this new, unforeseen, and religious act of duty, support me in the day of trial. Support me, O Lord, in my confessions; give me strength and purity to speak freely the whole truth without any equivocation or attempt at justification. O Lord, help Thy servant when he is feeble and would fall.

"One thing that gives me much peace and joy is that all worldly inducements, all temptations toward self-gratification whatever, are in favor of the Anglican Church and in opposition to the Catholic Church. And on this account my conscience feels free from any unworthy motive in joining it. The Roman Catholic Church is the most despised, the poorest, and, according to the world, the least respectable of any; this on account of the class of foreigners of which it is chiefly composed in this country. In this respect it presents to me no difficulty of any sort, nor demands the least sacrifice. But the new relations in which it will place me, and the new duties which will be required of me, are strange to me, and hence I shall feel all their weight at once."

His premonitions were speedily fulfilled, though probably not in the extreme form which he anticipated. The spirit of courtesy which prevailed throughout his family doubtless prevented any but the mildest criticism on his action. But even that had hitherto been spared him. There had been anxiety and much questioning about his final course, but that it would end in this way does not seem to have been seriously apprehended. On the same day on which he made the entry just quoted he wrote the following letter to them:

"June 11, 1844.—On Saturday last I went into Boston and did not return until this morning (Tuesday). . . . My purpose in going was to see Bishop Fenwick of the Roman Catholic Church, to learn what are the preliminaries necessary for one who wishes to be united to the Church. I saw the bishop and his coadjutor, men of remarkable goodness, candor, and frankness. I was chiefly interested with his coadjutor, and spent some hours with him on Monday. And this is the result to which I have come: That soon, probably next week, I shall go from here to Worcester, where there is a Catholic college, and stay there for a few days, perhaps a fortnight, to see the place, become acquainted with their practical religious life and their system of intellectual instruction. From there I shall go on home to New York, and, after having gone through the requisite preliminaries, be united to the Roman Catholic Church in our city. . . . Before I make any unalterable step, I wish to see you all and commune with you concerning this movement on my part. . . .

"Whatever theories and speculations may be indulged in and cherished by those opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, their influence, however important they may seem, is not sufficiently vital to prevent me from being united to it. It satisfies and meets my deepest wants; and on this ground, setting aside any other for the moment, I feel like affirming, in the spirit of the man whom Christ made to see.* I know not whether this Church be or be not what certain men call it, but this I know: it has the life my heart is thirsting for, and of which my spirit is in great need.

[* John 9:24: We know this man is a sinner. He said therefore to them: If he be a sinner, I know not; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.]

"A case in point: The sermon of Dr. Seabury on the lamented death of Arthur Carey is as far from satisfying my heartfelt longings as Platonism would be to the Christian. Read the doctrine of the Catholic Church on the Communion of Saints in the Catechism of the Council of Trent attentively and devoutly, and you will see and feel the wide difference in doctrine and life between it and that held even by the high-church Anglican. It may be said in excuse for Dr. Seabury, that he has to be prudent and cautious on account of the state of mind of those whom he has to speak to. Well enough; but why should one go to a weak and almost dried-up spring when there is one equally near, fresh, always flowing and full of life? . . . There may be those, and I do not question there are many such good persons, who do not feel the deep demands of the spiritual nature as profoundly as others do, and that the Anglican Church fully satisfes all their needs. But even in her bosom there are many who think that if the Oxford tendencies are Anglican, she is very idolatrous and exceedingly superstitious, because they feel no need for so much discipline and ceremony, and such faith in the invisible . . . all reasons that can tempt one in my position are in favor of the Anglican Church, and it is a source of much joy that there is no conceivable inducement of a worldly or mixed nature for me to join the Roman Catholic Church. If there were I should distrust myself . . . It seems to me that the difference between my embracing the Roman Catholic Church and any other is the same as the difference between remaining as I am, and selling all that I have and following Christ."

His deference for his friends' opinions, though he made their views no condition of his action, is beautifully shown by the following words: "John, and all who feel like giving me advice, you will not hesitate in giving it freely and frankly. There are many reasons for my present course; it is impossible for me to put them all on paper. But when I return home and meet you all again, we will in love speak of this in common communion: until then I will not take any decisive step. I suppose you feel as little inclined to speak to others of the decision I have come to as I do to have it prematurely known."

To the brother whose heart was most his own he devotes the concluding words of the letter:

"What is brother George's mind respecting the need of receiving this diviner life in order to bring us into a closer communion with God and make us inhabitants of heaven? George, shall we go arm-in-arm in our heavenly journey as we have done in our earthly one?"

While awaiting an answer to this letter he began another, in which he summarizes more explicitly such of his reasons for becoming a Catholic as might appeal on ordinary grounds of controversy to his mother and his brother John, the latter of whom had recently become an Episcopalian. Our extracts, however, will be made from the passages more strictly personal and characteristic:

"Concord, June 14, 1844.—Until I hear from you I cannot say how you may view my resolution or feel regarding the decision I have come to, and therefore I am at a loss what to say to you respecting it. One thing must strike you as inexplicable: that I relinquish my studies here so suddenly. This arises from the fact that I have not kept you perfectly informed concerning the change my mind has for some time been undergoing with regard to the object and end of study, its office and its benefits. I kept silent, thinking that my views might be but temporary, and that it was unnecessary to trouble you with them. My simple faith is, in a few words, that we must first seek the kingdom of God, and then all necessary things will be given us. And this kingdom is not found through nature, philosophy, science, art, or by any other method than that of the Gospel: the perfect surrender of the whole heart to God."

We stop here to remark that such expressions as these are neither to be taken as evidences of a passing disgust for the drudgery of text-book tasks, nor as signs of an indolent disposition. They are the assertion of a principle which Father Hecker maintained throughout his life. He never felt the least interest in studies not undertaken as a result of some supernatural impulse, or pursued in view of some supernatural aim. He looked with the coldest unconcern upon such investigations of science as promise nothing toward solving the problems which perplex humanity on the moral side, or which do not contribute to the natural well-being of men. With the pursuit of any science which does promise such results he was in the fullest sympathy, and was himself an unwearied student. It was anything but intellectual indolence which caused him to put away his books. He was naturally of a busy temperament: if men who knew him but slightly might think him visionary, no man could know him at all and consider him a sluggard. We shall see in the sequel how, under extremely critical circumstances, the assertion of this principle was wrung from him by the constraining force of his interior guide. Much of what follows illustrates this trait of character.

The letter last quoted from had not yet been sent when the answer to his announcement of June 11 reached him, and he added a postscript. The only point in it to which he alludes or makes any direct reply is the gentle expression of his mother's disapprobation of his purpose:

"Your letter and draft, brother George, came this morning. You say mother would prefer my joining the Anglican Church. The reasons why she prefers this are such as would doubtless govern me if I did not feel still deeper and stronger reasons to overcome them. . . . My present convictions are deeper far than any I have ever experienced, and are not hastily decided upon."

Turning now to the diary, the entries made at this time seem especially characteristic:

"June 13, 1844.—I feel very cheerful and at ease since I have consented to join the Catholic Church. Never have I felt the quietness, the immovableness, and the permanent rest that I do now. It is inexpressible. I feel that essential and interior permanence which nothing exterior can disturb, and no act which it calls on me to perform will move in the least. It is with a perfect ease and gracefulness that I never dreamed of that I shall unite with the Church. It will not change but fix my life. No external relations, events, or objects can disturb this unreachable quietness or break the deep repose in which I am.

"The exoteric eye is double; the esoteric eye is single.

"The external world is divisional; the internal world is unity.

"The esoteric includes the exoteric, but the exoteric excludes the esoteric.

"The man can move all faculties, organs, limbs; but they cannot move the man.

"The Creator moves the creature, and the creature moves the created.

"We know God by looking towards Him with the single eye.

"To-morrow I go with R. W. Emerson to Harvard to see Lane and Alcott, and shall stay until Sunday. We shall not meet each other, for I can meet him on no other grounds than those of love. We may talk intellectually together, and remark, and reply, and remark again."

We give the reader from the diary the following estimate of a transcendentalist, mainly to serve as a background for the picture which Isaac Hecker drew of his own mind in the succeeding pages:

"June 14.—A transcendentalist is one who has keen sight but little warmth of heart; who has fine conceits but is destitute of the rich glow of love. He is en rapport with the spiritual world, unconscious of the celestial one. He is all nerve and no blood—colorless. He talks of self-reliance, but fears to trust himself to love. He never abandons himself to love, but is always on the lookout for some new fact. His nerves are always tight-stretched, like the string of a bow; his life is all effort. In a short period he loses his tone. Behold him sitting on a chair; he is not sitting, but braced upon its angles, as if his bones were of iron and his nerves steel; every nerve is drawn, his hands are closed like a miser's—it is his lips and head that speak, not his tongue and heart. He prefers talking about love to possessing it, as he prefers Socrates to Jesus. Nature is his church, and he is his own god. He is a dissecting critic—heartless, cold. What would excite love and sympathy in another, excites in him curiosity and interest. He would have written an essay on the power of the soul at the foot of the Cross. . . .

"That the shaping of events is not wholly in our own hands my present unanticipated movement has clearly demonstrated to me. . . I know of no act that I could make which would have more influence to shape my destiny than my union with the Catholic Church. . . . It is very certain to me that my life is now as it never has been. It seems that I live, feel, and act from my heart. That reads, talks, hears, sees, smells, and all. All is unity with me, all love. Instead of exciting thoughts and ideas, as all things have done heretofore, they now excite love, cheerful emotion, and gladness of heart.

"To the Spirit within I address myself: So long as I struggled against Thee I had pain, sorrow, anguish, doubt, weeping, and distress of soul. Again and again have I submitted to Thee, though ever reluctantly; yet was it always in the end for my good. Oh! how full of love and goodness art Thou to suffer in us and for us, that we may be benefited and made happy. It is from Thy own pure love for us, for Thy happiness cannot be increased or diminished, that Thou takest upon Thee all the suffering of the children.

"Lord, if I would or could give myself wholly up to Thee, nothing but pure joy, complete happiness, and exquisite pleasure would fill all my spirit, soul, and body. The Lord desires our whole happiness; it is we who hinder Him from causing it by our struggles against His love-working Spirit.

"Who is the Lord? Is He not our nearest friend? Is any closer to us than He when we are good? Is any further from us when we are wicked? His simple presence is blessedness. Our marriage with the Lord should be so complete that nothing could attract our attention from Him.

"We shall speak best to men when we do not reflect on whom we are talking to. Speak always as if in the presence of God, where you must be if you would speak to benefit your neighbor.

"If we are pure before God the eyes of men will never make us ashamed.

"We must be blind to all things and have our single eye turned toward God when we would act in any manner upon earth—when we would heavenize it."

Here ends the contemporary record of his life in Concord. The next letters are dated at Worcester; the next entry in the diary at New York. There remain, however, some interesting allusions to it in the articles in this magazine of 1887 concerning Dr. Brownson, and some conversations, still more graphic, in the pages of the memoranda.





CHAPTER XVI

AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH—CONTINUED

THE first Bishop of Boston, John Louis de Cheverus, who left that diocese to become successively the Bishop of Montauban and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, was, in the strictest sense, a missionary during his American episcopate. Thoroughly French in blood, in training, in manners, and in zeal, his penetrating intelligence not less than his saintly life and his tireless charity recommended him to men of all creeds and of none. His departure from Boston was regarded by all its citizens as a public misfortune, and by himself as cause for profound personal sorrow. He had learned there a lesson of liberty which he found it hard to forget when he went away. One of his biographers records that Charles X., whose offer to make him Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs Cheverus had declined, once questioned him concerning the liberty enjoyed by the Church in the United States. "There," said the archbishop in reply. "I could have established missions in every church, founded seminaries in every quarter, and confided them to the care of Jesuits without any one thinking or saying aught against my proceedings; all opposition to them would have been regarded as an act of despotism and a violation of right." "That people understand liberty, at least," returned the king; "when will it be understood among us?"

We have spoken of Bishop Cheverus because, at the time of Isaac Hecker's acquaintance with his successors, his influence was still felt in Boston.

His immediate successor was Benedict Joseph Fenwick, a Marylander, descended in direct line from one of the original English Catholic pilgrims who founded that colony under Lord Baltimore. During his episcopate the diocese grew amazingly. When he went to it, in 1826, although it comprised the whole of New England, it contained but two churches fit for divine service, and only two priests besides himself. When he died, in 1846, he left behind him two bishoprics where there had been but one; while in that of Boston alone there were then fifty churches, served by as many priests. Although conversions had not been rare, the increase was mainly due to immigration, which the great famine in Ireland was speedily to increase. The efforts of Bishop Fenwick and those of his coadjutor and successor were, in the nature of things, conservative rather than aggressive.

Bishop Fitzpatrick, also, was American by birth and training. A native of Boston, he was reared in its public grammar and Latin schools until the age of seventeen, when he began his studies for the priesthood, which he finished in France. Both of these prelates continued the tradition of Cheverus so far as their own persons were concerned. But while they easily won and retained the respect of their more intelligent Protestant fellow-citizens, the confidence they inspired as men was not ample enough to protect the Church over which they ruled when once it began to show signs of solid prosperity. Cheverus was not wrong in counting with assurance upon American love for and understanding of true liberty, but he doubtless owed more than he thought at the time to the insignificance and scanty numbers of his flock. There came a period, even in the career of his immediate successor, when liberty itself seemed but a feeble sapling which a strong wind of stupid bigotry might avail to root out and cast away; while the chronicle of Bishop Fitzpatrick's episcopate contains the record of convents invaded under forms of law, and of both convents and churches sacked and burned by "Native American" mobs, who were secure of their immunity from punishment. Such outrages, witnessed by the second and third Bishops of Boston, and the incessant conflict to which they were compelled with the bigotry which caused them and which protected their perpetrators, predisposed both them and their clergy to a distrustful attitude toward converts like Brownson and Hecker, in whom American traits of character were very conspicuous. Dr. Brownson has recorded in The Convert, p. 374, the fact that his entrance into the Church was delayed for months by his fear of explaining to Bishop Fitzpatrick the precise road by which he had approached it. He says:

"I really thought that I had made some philosophical discoveries which would be of value even to Catholic theologians in convincing and converting unbelievers, and I dreaded to have them rejected by the Catholic bishop. But I perceived almost instantly that he either was ignorant of my doctrine of life or placed no confidence in it; and I felt that he was far more likely, bred as he had been in a different philosophical school from myself, to oppose than to accept. I had, indeed, however highly I esteemed the doctrine, no special attachment to it for its own sake, and could, so far as it was concerned, give it up at a word without a single regret; but, if I rejected or waived it, what reason had I for regarding the Church as authoritative for natural reason, or for recognizing any authority in the bishop himself to teach me? Here was the difficulty. . . . My trouble was great, and the bishop could not relieve me, for I dared not disclose to him its source."

The reader will understand that we do not compare the course of Bishop Fitzpatrick in Brownson's case with that taken by him toward Isaac Hecker. The latter was a young man, unknown to the bishop save by what he may have said of his own antecedents, while Brownson was a well-known publicist, concerning whom some reserve was natural and prudent.

With Bishop Fenwick, who was already in failing health, the new candidate for admission to the fold seems to have had very little intercourse. As we have seen, the journal makes only a passing reference to him, but is more explicit with regard to his coadjutor. Certain points in their interview which remained ever fresh in his memory were, at the time, cast into the shade by his deep preoccupation with what may, perhaps, be called the spiritual as distinguished from the intellectual side of the Church. That in her which makes her the tender and bountiful mother of the simple was what chiefly attracted him, just as others are mainly drawn to her as the adequate teacher and guide of the intellect. If he found the door at which he was knocking something hard in turning on its hinges; if the vestibule into which he was ushered seemed a trifle narrower than he had expected at the entrance of a temple so world-wide; his satisfaction at having determined upon entrance made all other considerations for the moment dwindle. But that the impressions he received were permanent, in their suggestiveness at least, is witnessed by an article in this magazine for April, 1887, entitled "Dr. Brownson and Bishop Fitzpatrick," as well as by the several references to this period which occur in the memoranda.

In the article just named Father Hecker threw into a paragraph or two, which we subjoin, the substance of his first, and perhaps at this time his only, interview with Bishop Fitzpatrick:

"It was always difficult to detect how much of conviction and how much of banter there was in his treatment of men engaged in the actual intellectual movement of our times. I found such to be the case in my own intercourse with him. He always attacked me in a bantering way, but, I thought, half in earnest too. Hence I never found it advisable to enter into argument with him. How can you argue with a man, a brilliant wit and an accomplished theologian, who continually flashes back and forth between first principles and witticisms? When I would undertake to grapple with him on first principles he would throw me off with a joke, and while I was parrying the joke he was back again upon first principles.

"An illustration of his way of treating men and questions was his reception of me when I presented myself to him, some months before Dr. Brownson did, for reception into the Church. 'What truths were the stepping-stones that led you here?' he would have asked if he had had the temperament of the apostle. But instead of searching for truth in me he began to search for error. I had lived with the Brook Farm Community and with the Fruitlands Community, and before that had been a member of a Workingman's party in New York City, in all which organizations the right of private ownership of property had been a prime question. . . . But, as for my part, at the time Bishop Fitzpatrick wanted me to purge myself of communism, I had settled the question in my own mind, and on principles which I afterwards found to be Catholic. The study and settlement of the question of ownership was one of the things that led me into the Church, and I am not a little surprised that what was a door to lead me into the Church seems at this day to be a door to lead some others out. But when the bishop attacked me about it, it was no longer with me an actual question. I had settled the question of private ownership in harmony with Catholic principles, or I should not have dared to present myself as a convert. But I mention this because it illustrates Bishop Fitzpatrick's character.

"His was, indeed, a first-class mind both in natural gifts and acquired cultivation, but his habitual bearing was that of suspicion of error; as man and prelate he had a joyful readiness to search it out and correct it from his own point of view. He was a type of mind common then and not uncommon now—the embodiment of a purpose to refute error, and to refute it by condemnation direct, authoritative even if argumentative: the other type of mind would seek for truth amidst the error, establish its existence, applaud it, and endeavor to make it a basis for further truth and a fulcrum for the overthrow of the error connected with it.

"It will be seen, then, what kind of man Dr. Brownson first met as the official exponent of Catholicity, one hardly capable of properly understanding and dealing with a mind like his; for he was one who had come into the possession of the full truth not so much from hatred of error as from love of truth. Brownson's soul was intensely faithful to its personal convictions, faithful unto heroism—for that is the temper of men who seek the whole truth free from cowardice, or narrowness, or bias. He has admitted that the effect of his intercourse with the bishop was not fortunate. He confesses that he forced him to adopt a line of public controversy foreign to his genius, and one which had not brought him into the Church, and perhaps could not have done so."

The memoranda contain a more familiar account of this interview:

"I presented myself for instruction and reception into the Church at the episcopal residence, and was received by the old bishop, Fenwick. He questioned me on the essential doctrines and found me as I was; that is, firm as a rock and perfectly clear in my belief. Then he said, 'You had better see Bishop John.' I did so. He tried to get me started on questions of modern theology such as he suspected I might be (as he would doubtless think, knowing my antecedents) unsound on; for example, rights of property, etc. I refused to speak my sentiments on them. I said I had no difficulties about anything to submit to him. I knew the Catholic faith and wished to be received into the Church at once. I had come seeking the means to save my soul, and I wanted nothing from him but to be prepared for baptism."

More interesting than either of these narrations is the following conversation, recorded on July 4, 1884. Besides furnishing a very explicit answer to a question which may occur to some minds, as to why a man who always took such a hopeful view of human nature as Isaac Hecker did, should not have been repelled from Catholicity by the doctrine of original sin, it adds some further particulars to the meagre array of facts in our possession:

"Suppose," he was asked, "that the deliverances of the Council of Trent on original sin, and the theories of Bellarmine on that doctrine, had been offered you during your transition period: what would you have thought of them?"

"I would have received them readily enough. Why, the book I took to Concord to study was the Catechism of the Council of Trent, which has the strongest kind of statement of that doctrine. Bellarmine's formula of nudus and nudatus would have opened my eyes amazingly to a solution of the whole difficulty."*

[* Reference is here made to a very famous saying of Bellarmine's in explanation of a prevalent teaching on original sin. According to that teaching, if Adam had been originally constituted in a state of pure nature, devoid of supernatural gifts and graces, his spiritual condition might be described as naked—nudus. On the other hand, man as now born is nudatus, stripped of those gifts and graces, suffering the penal privation of them on account of Adam's sin.

"The corruption of nature," says Bellarmine, "does not come from the want of any natural gift, or from the accession of any evil quality, but simply from the loss of a supernatural gift on account of Adam's sin."]

The Catechism of the Council of Trent, to which Father Hecker so often refers, was the very best book he could have had for learning just what Catholicity is in doctrine and practice. It is unique in Catholic literature, being the only authoritative expression of the Church, in extended form, on matters of pastoral theology. Outside the dogmatic circle of doctrinal definition it enjoys the fullest and most distinct authorization. The express command of the council caused it to be prepared by a special congregation of prelates and divines, and it was promulgated to the episcopate to be translated into the language of the people and expounded to them by all pastors. It may be said of it that it is the only book which has the Catholic Church for its author. It is a book which never can grow old; and in witness of that perennial quality, it may be mentioned that Cardinal Newman said that he never preached without using it in preparation. It is an exponent of Catholic truth absolutely free from the danger of private, or national, or racial, or traditional bias—the very book Isaac Hecker was in need of. Its plentiful use of Scripture; its confident appeal to antiquity; its perfect clearness; its completeness; its tone of conviction no less than its attitude of authority; make it to such minds as his the very all-sufficient organ of truth. Furthermore, the entire system of doctrine and morals known to revealed religion finds here its adequate exposition. We are glad of an occasion to say these words, not merely to chronicle the usefulness of the book to Father Hecker, but also to recommend its restoration to its proper place, which both by merit and by authority is the first in the moral and pastoral literature of the Church.

"The truth is," continue the memoranda, "that original sin as taught by the Church would never have been a great difficulty to me: of course the Calvinistic doctrine is quite a different affair.

"I was led, after I got to work at the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in a way quite positive. For example, one thing I wanted was a satisfaction of that feeling and sentiment which has made so many persons Spiritualists. I found that in the Church there was no impassable barrier dividing the living from the departed. That was an intense delight to me.* The doctrine of penance, and the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Penance, had a wonderful beauty as soon as I found them. To be taught that God had somehow given men power to dispense His graces and mercies made me say, Oh, how delightful a doctrine that is, if I only could believe it! The doctrine of the Communion of Saints and that of the Sacrament of Penance were very pleasing to me. Hence, I soon saw that what I already had of truth and light; what my best nature and conscience and my clearest natural knowledge told me was truth; was but elevated and lifted up beyond all conception by these and other doctrines of the Church. From this I was soon in a position to appreciate the Church's claim to authoritative teaching. If she, and she alone, had taught such things, she must possess God's teaching authority.

[* Reference is here made to the Catholic doctrine of the Communion of Saints.]

"When, therefore, I went into Boston and saw Bishop Fitzpatrick (who is now, I hope, in the kingdom of heaven), he had little to do with me in the way of instruction. The Trinity and other fundamental doctrines I accepted readily on the authority of the Church. He was very anxious to argue with me about socialistic theories, on account of my having been at Brook Farm and Fruitlands. But I told him I had no such difficulties as he supposed; that I had only gone to these places in search of truth, not because I had formed any such theories as they generally held. He then asked me whether I would not prefer to be received into the Church in New York, where my friends were. I said I did not care; if he would give me a letter I would present it. He gave me one to Bishop McCloskey, who was then coadjutor in this city."

The reader may be interested in the terms in which the Catechism of the Council of Trent expresses the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. So far as that doctrine concerns the spiritual side of man it is expounded in these words:

"For the unity of the Spirit, by which the Church is governed, establishes among all her members a community of spiritual blessings, whereas the fruit of all the sacraments is common to all the faithful, and these sacraments, particularly baptism, the door, as it were, by which we are admitted into the Church, are so many connecting links which bind and unite them to Jesus Christ."

That it extends to the mystical and miraculous gifts so dear to Father Hecker, was thus explained to him:

"But the gifts which justify and endear us to God are not alone common: 'graces gratuitously granted,' such as knowledge, prophecy, the gifts of tongues and of miracles, and others of the same sort, are common also, and are granted even to the wicked; not, however, for their own, but for the general good; for the building up of the Church of God."

That the doctrine is the foundation of a real though not a legal community of material goods, was evident to our young social reformer from the following:

"In fine, every true Christian possesses nothing which he should not consider common to all others with himself, and should therefore be prepared promptly to relieve an indigent fellow-creature; for he that is blessed with worldly goods, and sees his brother in want, and will not assist him, is at once convicted of not having the love of God within him."

Besides giving him a letter to Bishop McCloskey, Bishop Fitzpatrick also furnished the young catechumen with one to the president of Holy Cross College, an institution which had been established at Worcester, Mass., in 1843 by Bishop Fenwick, and presented by him to the Society of Jesus, of which he had been a member. The following letter was written by Isaac to his family after he had arrived there; his stay was not long:

"Worcester, Mass., June, '44—Respecting the purpose which leads me to New York I have scarcely a word to say. Quietly, without excitement, I come with an immovable determination to be joined to the Roman Catholic Church. There is a conviction which lies deeper than all thought or speech, which moves me with an irresistible influence to take this step, which arguments cannot reach, nor any visible power make to falter. Words are powerless against it and inexpressive of it; to attempt to explain, or give to the intellectual mind the reasons why and wherefore, would be as impossible as to paint the heavens or to utter the eternal Word, the centre of all existence. It would be like asking, 'Wherefore is that which is?' the finite questioning the infinite; an impossibility. . . .

"No man by his own wisdom can find out God; and it is only by the grace of Heaven that we come to, and by the heart perceive, the true Church of Jesus Christ. Grace teaches us to feel and know that which before was unfelt, unknown, invisible. Perfect submission to His love breaks open all seals, unlocks all mysteries, and unfolds all difficulties. . . .

"No external event of any kind or character induces me to take this step. If what does is delusion, what to name my former life I am at a loss to know. . .

"The heads of the college here appear to be men of good character, devoted to the Church, innocent of the Protestant world of literature, philosophy, etc. The president is a very social, frank, warm-hearted man, of more extensive acquaintance in the world of letters."





CHAPTER XVII

ACROSS THE THRESHOLD

FROM Worcester Isaac went on to New York, stopping on the way to make a brief visit to the Fourierite community in New Jersey, known as the North American Phalanx. He probably had some personal acquaintances there whom he hoped to inoculate with his newly-found certitude. He reached home June 20, 1844, and five days later presented his letter to Bishop McCloskey. Concerning the acquaintance then begun, which, on the bishop's part, soon took the form of a discerning and wise direction, and eventually deepened into a life-long friendship, we shall have more to say hereafter. The diary chronicles their first meeting and gives the reason of the brief delay which ensued before Isaac was admitted to conditional baptism. The bulk of the entries made between this date and that of his formal reception into the Church, the first of August, contains spiritual doctrine of a kind so eminently characteristic of Father Hecker throughout his life that we continue to make extracts from it:

"New York, June 25, 1844.—This morning I went to see Bishop McCloskey. I found him a man of fine character, mild disposition, and of a broader education than any of the Catholics I have had the pleasure of meeting. He was acquainted with Brownson's writings and Emerson's, and personally knew Mr. Channing, whom he had met at Rome. He loaned me some books on matters pertaining to the Church. He is to be gone for a fortnight from New York, and I am to wait until he comes back before I take any further steps toward being united with the Church."

"July 5, 1844.—It is the duty of every man to do that which expresses the divine life which stirs within him, and to do nothing which is inconformable to it. So far as he falls short of this, so far he falls short of his duty, his perfection, and divine beauty. I think we may say with very great certainty that this is the only way to obtain happiness in this world and eternal felicity in the world to come. It is to this God calls us, but we—no, not truly we, but the Man of Sin—flatter ourselves, as he did Eve, that if we follow him we shall not die but become as gods. We, to-day, have the same temptation to overcome that Eve had.

"Oh, how much greater God would have us be than we are, and we will not! We must cast out the Man of Sin and submit to the Paradisiacal Man. This we are enabled to do, blessed be Heaven, by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

"What are the temptations which hold men back from following God and leading a divine life? In one word, the World. Pride, love of praise, riches, self-indulgence, all that refers and looks to time instead of eternity, heaven, God.

"We should encourage all that gives us an impulse heavenward, and deny all that tends to draw us down more into the body, sense, time. Man, alas! is weak, powerless, and unable to perform any good deed which will raise him to God without the free gift, the blessed grace of God the Holy Spirit. We all fail to act up to the divine grace which is given us. O Lord! forgive my manifold transgressions, and empower me to be more and more obedient to thy Holy Spirit. My inward man desires to follow Thy Spirit, but the appetites of my members ever war against and often subdue him. Strengthen him, O Lord! and enable him to govern my whole three-sphered nature. Send down Thy celestial love into my heart and quicken all my heavenly powers.

"It is very true that no man can serve two masters. Between God and Mammon there is no compromise, no mediator. Lord, make me fully sensible of this, and strengthen my resolution to follow Thee. I do look to the Church of Christ for help. Oh, may I find in it that which the Apostles found in Jesus!"

We cannot refrain from reminding the reader of the immature age, and almost total lack of education—in the ordinary meaning of the term—of the man who wrote these lofty and inspiring sentences. He was ignorant of everything but the most rudimentary truths of Catholicity; had never read an ascetic work; had never spoken on ascetical subjects with Catholics; had never read the life of a saint; and had no experience to draw from except his own. Yet mark the absolute certainty of his propositions and their uniform correctness. It should also be made known that these doctrines and sentiments, though written with the most evident haste, follow each other, page after page, without an erasure or a correction. The truths which had dropped upon his mind were, indeed, rudimentary, but so well adapted was the soil to receive the seed that the fruit was instant and mature. Seldom has spontaneity so well approved itself by its utterances.

"July 6.-The immediate effect of Christianity upon humanity has been to increase man's sensibility to the objects of the spiritual world. Poetry, music, the fine arts, are ennobling and spiritualizing only so far as they appeal to the nature of man divinized by the influence of the Divinity. Previous to the coming of Christ the tendency of the arts was, on the whole, rather to encourage licentiousness and sin than to elevate and refine human nature. The tendency of Christianity was to restore man to his primitive gracefulness, excellence, and beauty. Hence the expression of man in art—or, rather, of the divinity in man—became purer and more beautiful in its character. . . .

"In affirming Jesus to be the basis and life of modern civilization, nothing is detracted from the great and good men who preceded Him; nor" [is it denied] "that they have left traces of their genius upon modern society.

"When we speak of Jesus as God, we affirm Him to be the Source of all inspiration, from whom all, ancient and modern, have derived their life, genius, goodness, and divine beauty.

"Jesus quickened the spiritual powers of the soul which were deadened by the fall, and man again saw heaven, and angels descending and ascending to the throne of ineffable Love.

"All the promises of Jesus refer to gifts of spiritual power over inanimate matter, the animal creation, and the Man of Sin.

"Jesus came to give a spiritual life which would generate all knowledge and physical well-being. He came, not to teach a system of philosophy, however useful that might be; not to direct man how to procure food for his physical existence with the least possible exercise of physical strength, however necessary this might seem. But He came to give man a new nature which shall more than do all this; which will not only secure his well-being here, but his eternal felicity hereafter.

"As we rise above our time nature, and are united with our eternal nature, we feel more and more our indebtedness to Christ. It was to this He called us in all His words, and now calls us in the Spirit. . . .

"So long as low appetites are cherished, and selfish passions harbored, and vanity allowed a seat in our bosoms, so long will men be slaves to their stomachs, backs, and business. Every quickening of our sensibility toward love, heaven, equity, will lead us to change our circumstances so as to make them conformable to our new inward life.

"It is for us to be true to God, however unlike the world we may seem. It is in silence, in private, alone, that deeds can be done which shall outstrip those of the Alexanders and Napoleons in their eternal effects."

"July 7.—All that we contend for is that man should obey God, and co-operate in His work with his will and not against it. Interior submission to the Love Spirit is the answer to all questions concerning man's welfare, here and hereafter. Whatever a man is led to do in obedience to it is well done and godlike, though it lead him to offer up his only dear son.

"We do say, with great emphasis, that nothing under heaven should prevent a man from following God. Unless a man can give up all and follow Christ, he is none of His."

"Every true man is a genius.

"All genius is religious.

"The objective forms of genius are the expressions of the beautiful, the good, and the true; in one word—God.

"He is a genius in whom the beautiful, the good, and the true permanently inhabit. . .

"The genius in every work of art is religious, whatever the subject may be.

"We repeat that every man is called to give expression to the highest, best, divinest in him; and to this, and to this only is he called.

"We add that the Catholic Church is the medium of this divine life, and that she has nurtured and encouraged men of genius in her bosom as a fond mother.

"We do not mean to say that the Church has converted men of ordinary stamp into geniuses, but that she has given the highest inspiration to the inborn capacity of genius, and so, to men thus gifted, has been the means by which they have become more than they could have been without her: so, also, with the most ordinary men.

"We affirm that the influence of Protestantism upon the business world has been to make it much more unchristian than it was in the middle ages under the influence of Catholicism."

At this period, when Isaac Hecker's search had ceased, but when he had not yet entered into complete and formal possession of the truth, we find him looking back at his past almost as if it were a thing in which his interest was but curious and impersonal. The thought of writing a history of it occurred to him, and he jotted down some brief notes, and made a partial collection of such letters and other memoranda, apart from the diary, as he found to have been preserved by his family. But this scheme was merely one of the occupations with which he beguiled the necessary delay imposed on him by Bishop McCloskey's absence. One can easily believe that the plan he proposed to himself has deeply interested the present writer, who, though regretting that it was not followed out by Isaac Hecker himself, has yet been enabled by the diary and the letters to measurably fulfil its purpose. He divided it into five periods, and, with a reminiscence of Wilhelm Meister, called it his Wanderjahr:

"The first should be named Youth, and give the ideal and the actual in youth.

"The second should be the struggle between the ideal and the actual.

"The third should be the mastery and supremacy of the ideal over the actual and material.

"The fourth should give the absolute union of the ideal and the eternal-absolute in their unconditioned existence.

"The fifth should give the eventual one-ness of the ideal-absolute with humanity and nature.

"Under these five heads I have in mind materials sufficient to make a volume, but lack the close application necessary to connect them. I do not say it would be readable when done. It would be the esoteric and exoteric history of my own life for ten years. . .

"I would open the first chapter thus: Let men say what they will, God above us, the human soul, and all surrounding nature, are great realities, eternal, solemn, joyous facts of human experience."

In the fine passage that follows we have an anticipation of the prominent modern conception of Christianity, as a developing force in the history of man—closing an epoch and introducing a new species; or, as Father Hecker would have said in later years, raising man from his natural position as a creature of God to true sonship with Him through affiliation with Jesus Christ. The thought, as it stands in the diary, is eminently characteristic of Isaac Hecker, who always felt, in a measure beyond what is ordinary, his solidarity with all his kind, and a longing to keep in step with them on the line of their direct advance:

"July 12.—We make no question that God gave to all nations, previous to the birth of Jesus Christ, His beloved and only Son, dispensations of light and love in their great men, and led them from time to time to the stage of civilization to which they arrived. The Christian affirms that God is the Parent of humanity, the Father of every human being.* It would be in direct contradiction to his faith to deny this. But Jesus Christ came to introduce a new life, whose light and love should so surpass all that had been before Him as to make it appear as darkness by contrast. This life makes no war against the good and true that already existed in men, but it embraces, includes, and fulfils it all, and then adds more than men had dared to dream before His coming. That Christianity is of this high character, not only did its Author show by the example of His life and death, but it has shown itself to be so wherever it has come in contact with any of the older forms of religious faith and doctrine. It has exhibited a power that is superior to, and which overcomes, all that arrays itself against it. We do not deny that Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, Cato, etc., were good, great, and religious men, above the age in which they lived, and inspired be a life not only superior to that of their time but above that of a great part of Christendom, so-called. But we say that Christ gave to the world a life infinitely above theirs, and that, had they been His contemporaries, or ours, they would have been as far superior to their actual selves as the inspiration of Christianity is superior to that under which they lived."

[* "As some also of your own poets said: For we are also His offspring. Being, therefore, the offspring of God, we must not suppose the Divinity to be like unto gold or silver or stone, the graving of art and the device of man." (Acts 17:28, 29)]

Although there is authority for saying that the business partnership between Isaac Hecker and his brothers was not formally dissolved until he went away to Belgium in 1849, he seems never to have resumed any active share in it after his return from Concord. Now and again the old scruples about this apparent inactivity returned upon him, and we find him contracting his personal needs within a compass so narrow that his support shall be felt as the least possible burden. Thus he writes, on July 13, that his present state of suspension from all outward engagements cannot and should not be of long continuance. He adds:

"It is a clear and bounden duty that every one should in some way or other compensate the world for that which he consumes from its store. But I do not see how I can do this consistently with the present state of my mind. To be sure I have contracted my wants as respects eating as far as seems possible to me; somewhat in dress, but not as far as I should and can do. As for pleasures and many other causes of expenditure, I trust I am not immoderate. In this part of the world I do not see any prepared, congenial conditions. If I were in Europe, I should find in the Catholic Church institutions which I could enter for a time, until this period of my life would either fix itself permanently, or give place to another in which I could see my way more clearly. But here I am, and not in Europe. Some thoughts have arisen in my mind, and I will state them, as to what may come at some future time within the range of the possible:

"If I am joined to the Catholic Church, and there is such an institution in Europe, may I not go there and live for a time? Ah! is this possible?

"If we owned a spot of ground, I would be willing to go on it and engage as much of my time as possible in cultivating and improving it.

"Lastly, I do not know what effect the advice and influence of the Catholic Church may have upon my mind, and do have a slight hope that I may find the exact remedy that I need in my union with her.

"I feel the assurance that if I follow the Spirit of God, and place all my confidence in it, it will do for me what I dare not hope to do for myself."

A day or two later he jots down, casually as it were, one of those profound observations which are like pointers to his whole career. Occurring at this early period, when, as the reader may see hereafter, the germs of all his later thought and work were beginning to unfold, they are like rifts in the darkness which seemed to himself to lie about his future, and show plainly to the student of his life how straight and secure his path was amidst it all. He had been counselling himself to patience and entire reliance upon God's providence while waiting the opportunity "to create or procure the circumstances" necessary to the expression of his own individuality. He felt that this was the especial task to which all men were called. To use his own words:

"It is for this we are created; that we may give a new and individual expression of the absolute in our own peculiar character. As soon as the new is but the re-expression of the old, God ceases to live. Ever the mystery is revealed in each new birth. So must it be to eternity. The Eternal-Absolute is ever creating new forms of expressing itself."

In the next chapter we shall have occasion to give Father Hecker's choice of an epitaph for Dr. Brownson. We think that the sentences just quoted are worthy to be his own.

In the middle of July Bishop McCloskey returned to New York, and Isaac waited upon him without delay. Their first long conversation made it plain to the bishop that the young man had very little need of further preliminary instruction, and it was settled that conditional baptism should be administered to him within a fortnight. That the nature of Isaac Hecker's vocation also revealed itself to this prudent adviser is also evident from this entry, made in the diary as soon as the visit was ended:

"He said that my life would lead me to contemplation, and that in this country the Church was so situated as to require them all to be active. I did not speak further on this subject with him. He asked whether I felt like devoting myself to the order of the priesthood, and undergoing their discipline, self-denial, etc., and becoming a missionary. I answered that all I could say was that I wished to live the life given me, and felt like sacrificing all things to this; but could not say that the priesthood would be the proper place for me.

"I feel that if, for a certain length of time, and under the discipline of the Church, I could have the conditions for leading the life of contemplation, it would be what the Spirit now demands. Whether I shall not be compelled back to this if I attempt to follow some other way, I am not perfectly sure. The bishop intimated that in Europe there were brotherhoods congenial to the state of mind that I am in. If so, and I could remain there for a certain length of time, why should I not go? I will inquire further about it when next I speak with the bishop.

"There is a college at Fordham where there is to be a commencement to-morrow, which the bishop invited me to go and see. Perhaps I shall find this place to be suitable, and may be led to examine and try it. The Lord knows all; into His hands I resign myself."

His impressions of the Catholic college at Fordham he does not record. The next entry in the diary is, as usual, taken up with the large topics which for the most part excluded particular incidents from mention. What his strict abstinence from permitted pleasures, and the rigorous self-discipline which he had so long practised, meant to himself, may be partly gathered from the extract we are about to give. He says he does not call such denial,

"in strict language, the denial of our true, God-created, immortal self, but the denial of that which is not myself, but which has usurped the place of my true, eternal, heavenly, Adamic being. It is the restoration of that defaced image of God to its primitive divine beauty, grace, and sweetness. We must feel and possess the love and light from above before we have the disposition and power to deny the body and the wisdom of this world. If we have the Christ-spirit, we will fulfil the Christ-commands.

"Thus was it with man prior to his spiritual death, his fall. He lived in and enjoyed God, and was in communion and society with angels, not knowing good and evil. His life was spontaneous; his wisdom intuitive; he was unconscious of it, even as we would be of light were there no darkness. We should see it and be recipients of all its blessings without knowing its existence. But darkness came, and man knew. Alas! in knowing he lost all that he possessed before.

"Jesus came to restore man to that eternal day from which Adam fell."

About this time he mentions having spent a day in the woods with some friends, at Fort Lee; it is the only allusion we find to any sort of recreation or companionship with others. He sat alone for an hour, he says, in a pleasant spot which overlooked the Hudson and the high Palisade rocks, and "seemed to be in communion with the infinite invisible all around in all the deep avenues of the soul."

Four days before his baptism comes this anticipation of it:

"New York, July 27, '44.—I have commenced acting. My union with the Catholic Church is my first real, true act. And it is no doubt the forerunner of many more—of an active life. Heretofore I did not see or feel in me the grounds upon which I could act with permanence and security. I now do; and on this basis my future life will be built. What my actions may be, I care not. It was this deep eternal certainty within I did wish to feel, and I am now conscious that the lack of it was the reason for my inactivity.

"With this guide I ask no other, nor do I feel the need of the support of friends, or kindred, or the world. Alone it is sufficient for me, though it contradicts the advice of my friends and all my former life. It certainly seems to me absolute: if any error arises it will be from my disobedience."

"July 30.—The inward voice becomes more and more audible. It says: 'I am—obey!'

"The new clothes itself in new dress.

"What proof does a man give that he is if he does only what has been done?

"Can a man repeat the past with genius?

"One true act opens the passage to ten more.

"Man is left to his own destiny; religion but sanctifies it."

When the day comes at last, the Sacrament itself gets only the briefest chronicle. The door seems but a door. Passing through it, he finds himself at home, and apparently without one quickening of the pulse, or any cessation of his desire to penetrate all its secret chambers. The explanation of this is to be looked for in the presumption that his baptism in infancy had been valid. It was conferred by a Lutheran minister who must have been trained in Germany, and whose methodical adherence to the proper form might be counted on. In the sight of God, doubtless, he had never since been outside the Church. He was like a child stolen from the cradle, but in whom racial and family traits had been superior to an uncongenial environment.

"Friday, August 1, 1844, 1 P.M.—This morning we were baptized by Bishop McCloskey. To-morrow we attend the tribunal of confession."

Then he mentions a curious fact which recalls a similar experience of St. Catherine of Genoa: "We know not why it is we feel an internal necessity of using the plural pronoun instead of the singular."

But if conditional baptism left him silent, the Sacrament he certainly received the following day opened the flood-gates of his speech:

"August 2.—Penance! joy! unbounded love! Sweet Jesus, Thy love is infinite! Blessed faith! sweet love! I possess an internal glory, a glowing flame of love! Let my whole life be one act of penance! O dear Jesus, the life-giver! Oh, what a sweet thing it is to be in the way of loveful grace! Jesus, keep me near Thee! Oh, how great a condescension, Jesus is my Friend! Oh! who has the conception of Jesus being his Friend? O ancient faith, how dear, how good is God in giving us sinners thee! Blessed is the grace of God that leadeth sinners to thee! Oh, how thou hast comforted the soul! It would turn from thee, but thou strengthenest it. The cup was bitter, but infinitely more sweet is the joy thou givest. My soul is clothed in brightness; its youth is restored. O blessed, ever-blessed, unfathomable, divine faith! O faith of apostles, martyrs, confessors, and saints! Holy Mother of Jesus, thou art my mother. I feel in my heart thy tender love. O holy Mother, thou hast beheld me! Bless me, Virgin Mother of Jesus!"





CHAPTER XVIII

NEW INFLUENCES

BISHOP McCLOSKEY, afterwards the first American Cardinal, was coadjutor to Bishop Hughes from 1844 to 1847. He was living at the old Cathedral when Isaac Hecker first called upon him. He was still a young man, less than ten years separating him from the youthful catechumen. In temperament they were very different. The bishop, a man of routine in method and of no original views of principles, was so, nevertheless, by mental predisposition rather than by positive choice. He was a man of finished education; a dignified speaker, whose words read as impressively as they sounded. Although the two men were so unlike, the bishop could, at least after brief hesitation, fully appreciate Isaac Hecker; nay, could love him, could further his plans, and stand by him in his difficulties. Before we are done with this Life, the reader will see this more in detail.

Nor was Bishop McCloskey without light as a judge in spiritual matters. By nature calm and self-poised, and readily obedient to reason, the grace of his high office, his wide knowledge of men, his extensive reading, were doubtless supplemented by a special infusion of heavenly wisdom, due to his upright purpose and his spotless life. Though not timid, he was not conspicuous for courage; his refuge in difficulty was a high order of prudence, never cowardice; nor did he err either by precipitancy, by cruelty, or by rigidity of adherence to abstract rules of law. Father Hecker knew him thoroughly well, and admired him; more, he profited by his guidance, and that not only at this earliest period of their intercourse. It was by him that Isaac Hecker's vocation was, though not revealed, yet most wisely directed. Brownson told the young man that he ought to devote himself to the Germans in this country; Bishop Hughes advised him to go to St. Sulpice and study for the secular priesthood; Bishop McCloskey told him to become a religious.

Hitherto Isaac Hecker's environment had been entirely non-Catholic; the ebbing and flowing of a sea of doubt and inquiry upon which floated small boats and rafts which had been cast off from the good ship of Christ. Now that he was on board the ship itself, he found its crew and passengers sailing straight on toward their destined haven, paying small regard, as a rule, to the small craft and the shipwrecked sailors tossing on the wild waves around them, and only surprised when one or another hailed their vessel and asked to be taken on board. Nor did the attitude of non-Catholics, taking them generally, invite anything else. Isaac Hecker, passing into the Church, not only came into contact with its members, but was to be for some years exclusively in their company. But, though carried beyond the Ripleys, the Alcotts, the Lanes, the Emersons, and beyond the theories they in some sort stand for and represent, he had learned them and their lesson, and never lost his aptitude for returning to their company with a Catholic message. His farewell to that class did not involve loss of affectionate interest, for in mind he continually reverted to them. He knew that their peculiar traits were significant of the most imperative invitation of Providence to missionary work. He thought it was to that class, or, rather, to the multitude to whom they were prophets, that the exponent of Catholicity should first address himself. They possessed the highest activity of the natural faculties; they were all but the only class of Americans who loved truth for its own sake, that trait which is the peculiarity of the Catholic mind, and the first requisite for real conversion.

It may have been the latent strength of this conviction that, within a year after his reception into the Church, permanently affected the influence which Brownson had so long exerted over him. It ceased now to be in any sense controlling, and at no future time regained force enough to be directive. They found the Church together, went together into its vestibule, and were received nearly at the same time. And then the wide liberties of a universal religion gave ample scope and large suggestion for the accentuation and development of their native differences. Brownson was a publicist and remained so; Isaac Hecker was a mystic and remained so. To the mysticism of the latter was added an external apostolate; the public activity of the former was, indeed, apostolic, but upon a field not only different from any he would himself have spontaneously chosen, but quite unlike. Our reader already knows how grievous a loss to the public exposition of the Church in America this defection of Brownson's genius from its true direction seemed to Father Hecker. He never ceased to deplore it as a needless calamity, overruled in great measure, indeed, by the good Providence of God, but not wholly repaired.

Father Hecker's affection for Dr. Brownson never wavered, and his gratitude towards him was only deepened and made more efficacious with the lapse of time and the growth of his own spiritual experience. If they did not always agree, either in principles or in questions of policy, they always loved each other. The memoranda furnish an interesting proof of this abiding affection on the part of Father Hecker. He was asked:

"Don't you think we might have a memorial tablet to Dr. Brownson in our church?"

"Yes! Of all the men I ever knew, he had most influence over me."

"When you were in early life?"

"Yes, of course. Oh! in after life no man has had influence with me, but only God."

This meant, of course, the influence of master upon disciple, and not that of lawful authority or of fraternal love, to both of which Father Hecker was ever very sensitive.

Speaking at another time of Brownson, he quoted this sentence from The Convert as so perfect an epitome of the man that it should be put on his monument:

"I had one principle, and only one, to which, since throwing up Universalism, I had been faithful; a principle to which I had, perhaps, made some sacrifices—that of following my own honest convictions whithersoever they should lead me."

And just here is found one of those points of essential difference which it is interesting to note between these two men, so closely drawn together by Divine Providence at one period, and in such a relation that to the elder the function of guidance seemed to have been appointed. In unswerving fidelity to conviction they were on a par, but in native clearness of vision and instinctive aversion from error they were far less closely matched. Brownson in early life had tried, accepted, and preached various forms of aberration from true doctrine. One might say of him, that, having found himself outside the highway at his start, he gathered accretions from hedge and ditch as he struggled toward the true road, and went through an after process of sloughing them one by one. Perhaps that process ended in making him over-timid. It was otherwise with Isaac Hecker. He, too, had stopped to consider many doctrines which purported to be true; more than that, he had recognized in each the modicum of truth which it possessed. But the falsity with which this was overloaded was powerful enough to repel him, in spite of the truth he knew to be contained in it. He carried in himself the touchstone to which all that was akin to it beyond him responded of necessity. The Light which lights every man who comes into the world had not only never been darkened in him by sinful courses, but it seemed to burn with a crystal clearness which threw up into hideous and repellant proportions all that was offensive to it. Many voices had called him from without, but he had refused obedience unto any. He never submitted until his submission was full and not to be withdrawn. So, once in the Church, and enjoying her divine guarantee of external authority, he had few if any disquieting recollections of error to breed distrust of the light that shone within him. His soul was of that order to which truth speaks authoritatively and at first hand; of that soil from which institutions which are to stand spring by a true process of development, because it is the soil which first received their germs. Always it is the soul of man which is inspired, the mind of man that is enlightened. Then the teaching comes as record of the fact and the doctrine; then the institution solidifies about them, a perpetual witness that to many men and ages of men the same message has been handed down by its first recipients and has produced in them its proper results. The race of such souls has not died out in the Christian Church. The one truth, spoken once for all by the Incarnate Word, takes on for them new aspects and new tones. They are the pioneers of great movements. Nurtured in the Church, their ardor burns away mere conventionalities; born outside the Church, the light she carries is a beacon, and the voice she utters is felt as that of the true Mother. To adapt once more a pregnant sentence from young Hecker, of the truth of which he was himself an example: "It is God in them which believes in God."

But to return to Brownson. An entry in the journal, made nearly a year later, sums up the total impression which Brownson had made upon his young disciple:

"June 22, 1845.—0. A. B. is here. He arrived this morning. Though he is a friend to me, and the most critical periods of my experience have been known to him, and he has frequently given me advice and sympathy, yet he never moves my heart. He has been of inestimable use to me in my intellectual development. He is, too, a man of heart. But he is so strong, and so intellectually active, that all his energy is consumed in thought. He is an intellectual athlete. He thinks for a dozen men. He does not take time to realize in heart for himself. No man reads or thinks more than he. But he is greater as a writer than as a person. There are men who never wrote a line, but whose influence is deeper and more extensive than that of others who have written heavy tomes.

"It is too late for Brownson to give himself to contemplation and interior recollection. He is a controversialist; a doctor. The last he will be before long. Some have wondered why I should have contracted such a friendship for one whom they imagine to be so harsh and dictatorial. I have not felt this. His presence does not change me; nor do I find myself where I was not after having met him. He has not the temperament of a genius, but that of a rhetorician and declaimer. He arrives at his truths by a regular and consecutive system of logic. His mind is of a historical more than of a poetical mould.

"As a man, I have never known one so conscientious and self-sacrificing. This is natural to him. His love of right is supreme, and the thing he detests most is bad logic. It makes him peevish and often riles his temper. He defeats, but will never convince an opponent. This is bad. No one loves to break a lance with him, because he cuts such ungentlemanly gashes. He is strong, and he knows it. There is more of the Indian chief than of the Christian knight in his composition. But he has something of both, though nothing of the modern scholar, so called. His art is logic, but he never aims at art. By nature he is a most genuine and true man; none so much so. By no means E——" [Emerson?] "who ever prates about this thing. If he attempts embellishment, you see at once it is borrowed; it is not in his nature. There is a pure and genuine vein of poetry running through him, but it is not sufficient to tincture the whole flow of his life. He is a man of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rather than of the nineteenth. He is an anomaly among its scholars, writers, and divines. He is not thorough on any one subject though at home on all. What a finished collegiate education would have done for him I am baffled to conjecture. He is genuine, and I love him for that; it is the crown of all virtues. But I must stop. I only intended to mention that he is here."

The reader may well suppose that Father Hecker fully appreciated Brownson's literary genius. The English language in his grasp was a weapon to slay and a talisman to raise to life. Never was argumentation made more delightful reading; never did a master instruct more exclusively by the aid of his disciple's highest faculties than did Brownson. Habituated his whole life long to the ardent study of the greatest topics of the human understanding, he was able to teach all, as he had taught young Hecker, how to think, discern, judge, penetrate, decide about them with matchless power; and he clothes his conclusions in language as adequate to express them as human language well can be. Clearness, precision, force, purity, vividness, loftiness are terms applicable to Dr. Brownson's literary style. It may be that the general reading public will not study his works merely for the sake of his literary merits; the pleasures of the imagination and of narrative are not to be found in Dr. Brownson. But he certainly will win his way to the suffrages of the higher class of students of fine writing. And let one have any shadow of interest in the great questions he treats, and every page displays a style which is the rarest of literary gifts. The very fact that his writing is untinted by those lesser beauties which catch the eye but to impede its deepest glances, is in itself an excellence all the greater in proportion to the gravity of his topics. Absolutely free from the least obscurity, his diction is a magnetic medium uniting the master's personality, the disciple's understanding, and the essence of the subject under consideration. Cardinal Newman, some may believe, possessed this supreme rhetoric in perhaps even a higher degree than Brownson, but so much can be said of few other writers of English prose. George Ripley, whom Father Hecker deemed the best judge of literature in our country or elsewhere, assured him that there were passages in Dr. Brownson which could not be surpassed in the whole range of English literature.





CHAPTER XIX

YEARNINGS AFTER CONTEMPLATION

"COULD I but give up all my time to contemplation, study, reading, and reflection!"

Upon this aspiration as a background the whole matter of Isaac Hecker's vocation must be considered. In substance we have met with it very frequently already; in the shape just given it confronts us on the first page of the new diary begun a few days before his baptism. And as our reader accompanies us through the records he made during the year that still elapsed before he entered the Redemptorist Order, nothing, we think, will become more evident than that he was called to something beyond adhesion to the Church, the worthy reception of the sacraments, or even the ordinary sacerdotal state.

To make this still plainer at the start, it may be useful to describe briefly the special grounds whereon Isaac Hecker fought his life-long battles. These were, first: The validity of those natural aspirations which are called religious, and which embrace the veracity of reason in its essential affirmations. Second: Whether man be by nature guileless or totally depraved: Third, Whether religion be or be not intrinsically and primarily an elevating influence whose end is to raise men to real union with God.

To many inquirers after the true religion such preliminary doubts have been already settled, either by natural bent of mind or docility to previous training; and they pass on to consider apostolical succession, the primacy of Peter, the nature and number of the sacraments, and other matters wherein heresy errs by denial or by defect. But to Isaac Hecker all such points as these were, in a sense, subsidiary. He had asked admission into the Church because he found it to be the only teaching society on earth whose doctrines gave complete and adequate satisfaction to that fundamental craving of his nature which prompted his questions. She accredited herself to him as fully by that fact as she must have done to many a philosophic pagan among those who were the first disciples to the new faith preached by St. John or St. Paul. All else he accepted with an implicit, child-like confidence not different from that which moves the loyal descendant of ages of Catholic ancestors. It was clear to him that these accompanying doctrines and institutions must have been enfolded within the original germ, and must be received on the same authority, not by an analytic process and on their merits, one by one.

What he wanted was, in the first place, sustenance for what he invariably calls "the life" given him; and next, light to see in what way he was to put to use the strength so gained. The first effect of the sacraments was what one might call the natural one of making more visible the shadows which enveloped his path, as well as stimulating his instinctive efforts to pierce through them. After the rapturous joy which succeeded confession and absolution, a period of desolation and dryness heavier than he had ever known at once set in. Perhaps he had expected the very reverse of this. At all events, it was not many days before it drew from him the complaint that in leaving Concord he had also left behind him the great interior sweetness which had buoyed him up. On August 11 he writes:

"How hard it has been for me to go through with all these solemn mysteries and ceremonies without experiencing any of those great delights which I have [before] felt. Why is this? Is it to try my faith? O Lord! how long shall I be tried in this season of desolation? Are these [delights] never to return? Have I acted unworthily? What shall I do to receive these blessings again?"

Then he resolves to make a novena, fasting the while on bread and water, to entreat their renewal. But at once a better mood sets in and he adds:

"The highest state of perfection is to be content to be nothing. Lord, give me strength not to ask of Thee anything that is pleasant to me. I renounce what I have just asked for, and will try to do all without the hope of recompense. If Thou triest my soul, let it not go until it has paid the uttermost farthing."

"August 15, 1844.—To-day is the holyday of the Assumption of the dear, Blessed Mary, Mother of our Lord and Saviour Jesus. Oh! may I be found worthy of her regard and love."

"He that has not learned the bitterness of the drops of woe has not learned to live. One hour of deep agony teaches man more love and wisdom than a whole long life of happiness. . .

"In many faces I see passing through the crowded streets there seems a veiled beauty, an angel quickening me with purer life as I go by them in anxious haste. Do we not see the hidden worth, glory, and beauty of others as our own becomes revealed to us? Would the Son of God have been needed to ransom man if he were not of incomparable value?"

One of the dreams that at this time occupied Isaac's mind was that of undertaking a pilgrimage to Rome. He wrote to Henry Thoreau, proposing that they should go in company, and felt regret when his invitation was not accepted. His notion was to "work, beg, and travel on foot, so far as land goes, to Rome. I know of no pleasanter, better way, both for soul and body, than to make such a pilgrimage in the old, middle-age fashion; to suffer hunger, storm, cold, heat—all that can affect the body of flesh. If we receive hard usage, so much the better will it be for us. Why thump one's own flesh here? Let it be done for us by others, our soul, meanwhile, looking at higher objects. . . . I feel that I have the stuff to do it in me. I would love to work and beg my way to Rome if it cost me ten or fifteen years of my life."

Thoreau replied to this proposal that such a tour had been one of his own early dreams, but that he had outlived it. He had now "retired from all external activity in disgust, and his life was more Brahminical, Artesian-well, Inner-Temple like." So the scheme, which had secured Bishop McCloskey's approbation, although he had forcibly represented to young Hecker that to go absolutely destitute of money, and dependent for all things upon alms, would be impossible, was presently shelved. It was but one of the diversions with which certain souls, not yet enlightened as to their true course, nor arrived at the abandonment of themselves to Divine Providence, are amused. Their inactivity seems idleness to them, and they mistake the restless impulse which bids them be up and doing for the voice of conscience or the inspiration of heavenly wisdom; but it is neither. Sometimes it is a superfluity of natural energy seeking an outlet; sometimes it is the result of the strain placed upon nature by a very powerful influx of grace. The infusion of power from above is often greatly in excess of the light necessary for guidance in its use. This last rarely comes entirely from the inner touch of the Holy Spirit. In the lives of the Fathers of the Desert we read of a certain young brother, Ptolemy, who went astray from sound spirituality. When admonished he asserted that he need learn the spiritual life from none save the Holy Ghost, of whose inspirations any man of good will could be certain. He was told by the old monks that the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and the understanding of the same are two distinct things, and that this understanding is disclosed only to him whose will has been purified by the practice of obedience and humility. In truth, it is rarely that the inner voice of God does not call for an external interpreter, which, if it does no more than furnish a divinely authorized test and criterion, is none the less necessary. Moreover, the inner voice seldom provides ways and means for its own purposes. Father Hecker was ever a strenuous defender of this inner and outer unity of the Divine guidance, and his vocation was an illustration of it. However masterful the inner voice of God which called him away from the world, he was helpless till he heard its tones harmonized by the counsel of Bishop McCloskey. When he found that even with this backing secured, the external obstacles to his plan proved invincible, he was once more nonplussed. "If not this, what?" he asks himself.

"I feel deeply and strongly that the circle of family happiness is not sufficient for my nature, but what I can profitably do outside of this I have not the ability to say.

"That our real wishes are presentiments of our capabilities is a very true proverb, no doubt; but are we not most ignorant of what these are? It seems as though we are all unconsciously educated for unknown ends and purposes.

"I look upon myself as belonging to that class of decidedly unfortunate beings who have no marked talent for any particular pursuit. The words talent, genius, have for me no application whatever. I stand on the confines of both worlds, not feeling the necessity nor having the true valor to decide for either sphere.

"O heaven! why was this deep, ever-burning life given me, unless it be that I might be slowly and painfully consumed by it? All greatness is in the actor, not in the act. He whom God has blessed with an end in life, can earnestly labor to accomplish that end. But alas for that poor mortal whose existence only serves to fill up space in the world! How excruciating to him to be conscious of this! O Prometheus!

"Simply to be what God would have us, is to be greater than to have the applause of the whole world otherwise. All such statements as this are necessarily one-sided. Because there are always good and virtuous men in the world whose approbation is that of God.

"There is an instinct in man which draws him to danger, as in battle-fields; as there is also in the fly, drawing it to the flame of light. It is the desire of the spirit within, seeking for release."

"August 20, 1844.—Scarce do I know what to say of myself. If I accuse myself by the light given me, it would lead me to leave all around me. My conscience thus accuses me. And in partaking of worldly things and going into the company around me, my interior self has no pleasure, and I feel afterwards that the labor and time have been misspent. How to live a life which shall be conformable to the life wlthin and not separate from the persons and circumstances around me, I cannot conceive. I am now like one who tastes a little of this and then a little of that dish, while his time is wasted and his mind distracted from that pure enjoyment which is a foretaste of the bliss of the angels. I feel my primitive instincts and unvitiated tastes daily becoming more sensible to inspirations from above, from the invisible. The ideal world, the soul world, the kingdom of heaven within, I feel as if I were more a friend and citizen of O Lord! my heart would break forth in praise of the riches of the life given within! It seems that in this that we enjoy all, know all, and possess all. If we have Thee, O Lord! if Thou hast taken up Thy dwelling in us, we enjoy heaven within and paradise without!"