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In Father Hecker's case his perfect frankness led him, when among his own friends, to utter half-formed ideas, sometimes sounding startling and erroneous, but spoken with a view to get them into proper shape. At such times it required patience to know just what he meant, for he never found it the easiest to employ terms whose meaning was conventional.
THE earliest of the letters so fortunately preserved by the affection of Isaac Hecker's kindred is addressed to his mother, from Chelsea, and bears date December 24, 1842. After giving some details of his arrival, and of the kindly manner in which he had been received, he writes:*
I am not to-day without some experience of men and things, won from years and toils, and I do not alter one tittle my estimate of him, except to make it higher. To the priests of the future I recommend a serious study of Father Hecker's life. To them I would have his biography dedicated. Older men, like myself, are fixed in their ways, and they will not receive from it so much benefit.
Father Hecker's stay in Europe during the winter of 1869-70 and the following spring awakened in his soul aspirations towards a wide and enduring religious movement in the Old World, similar to that which he had started in the New. At the time he did not anticipate any personal share in it other than encouragement and direction from America.
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.
Patrick McCann. Father Hecker's beloved brother George died on February 14, 1888. He had been ailing for some time and Father Hecker went to see him frequently. . . . "George and I," he once said, "were united in a way no words can describe. Our union was something extremely spiritual and divine."
His was the profound conviction that, in the present age at any rate, the order of the day should be individual action every man doing his full duty, and waiting for no one else to prompt him. This, I take it, was largely the meaning of Father Hecker's oft-repeated teaching on the work of the Holy Ghost in souls.
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.
WE have now arrived at the last period of Father Hecker's life, the long illness which completed his meed of suffering and of merit, and gradually drew him down to the grave.
BEFORE summarizing and conveniently arranging Isaac Hecker's reasons for becoming a Catholic and narrating the accompanying incidents, we give the following profession of faith in the authority of the Spirit speaking within. It was written in the diary in the midst of his preparations for his baptism, and is an early witness of a permanent characteristic of Father Hecker's life.
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