SELF-QUESTIONINGS
NOT finding any solution of his spiritual difficulties at either
Fruitlands or Brook Farm, Isaac Hecker turned his face once more
toward the home from which he had departed nearly a year before. He
expected little from this step, but his state of mind was now one in
which he had begun to anticipate, at any turn, some light on the
dispositions of Providence in his regard which might determine his
course for good and all. And, meantime, as patient waiting was all
that lay in his own power, it seemed the wisest course to yield to
the solicitations of his kindred and abide results in his own place.
He did not go there at once, however, after quitting Alcott's
community, but returned to Brook Farm for a fortnight. His journal
during this period offers many pages worthy of transcription.
It is possible that we have readers who may deem us too copious in
our quotations from this source. But, if wearisome to any, yet they
are necessary to those for whom this Life is especially written. The
lessons to be learned from Father Hecker are mainly those arising
from the interaction between God's supernatural dealings with him,
and his own natural characteristics. This fact, moreover, is typical
as well as personal, for the great question of his day, which was the
dawning of our own, was the relation of the natural man to the
regenerating influences of Christianity. This being so, it is plain
to our own mind that no adequate representation of the man could be
made without a free use of these early journals. They seem to us one
of the chief Providential results of the spiritual isolation of his
youth. He was in a manner driven to this intimate self-communing, on
one hand by his never-satisfied craving for sympathetic companionship,
and on the other by his complete unacquaintance with a kind of
reading which even at this point might have shed some light upon his
interior difficulties. In later years he enjoyed, in the study of
accredited Christian mystics, that kind of satisfaction which a
traveller experiences who, after long wanderings in what had seemed a
trackless desert, obtains a map which not only makes his whole route
plain, but assures him that he did not stray from well-known paths
even during his times of most extreme bewilderment.
That the diary has the character we here claim for it, and is not the
mere ordinary result of a morbid and aimless introspection, is
plainly shown by the speedy cessation of excessive self-analysis on
Father Hecker's part, after he had actually reached the goal to which
he was at this period alternately sweetly led and violently driven.
But it is also shown by the deep humility which is revealed precisely
by this sharp probing of his interior. Though he felt himself in
touch with God in some special way, yet it was with so little pride
that it was his profound conviction, as it remained, indeed,
throughout his life, that what he had all had or might have. But the
study of his interior thus forced upon him was far from a pleasing
task. "It is exceedingly oppressive to me to write as I now do," we
find him complaining; "continually does myself appear in my writing.
I would that my I were wholly lost in the sea of the Spirit--wholly
lost in God."
We preface the subjoined extract from the diary with the remark that
Father Hecker's reading of signs of the Divine will in men and events
often brought him to the verge of credulity, over which he was
prevented from stepping by his shrewd native sense. Though he
insisted all his life on interpreting them as signal flags of the
Divine wisdom, this did not hinder him from gaining a reputation for
sound practical judgment:
"Brook Farm, July 31, 1843.--Man is the symbol of all mysteries. Why
is it that all things seem to me to be instinct with prophecy? I do
not see any more individual personalities, but priests and oracles of
God. The age is big with a prophecy which it is in labor to give
birth to."
"My experience is different now from what it has been. It is much
fuller; every fibre of my being seems teeming with sensitive life. I
am in another atmosphere of sentiment and thought. . . . I have less
real union and sympathy with _her,_ and with those whom I have met
much nearer heretofore. It appears as if their atmosphere was denser,
their life more natural, more in the flesh. Instead of meeting them
on my highest, I can only do so by coming down into my body, of which
it seems to me that I am now almost unconscious. There is not that
sense of heaviness, dulness, fleshliness, in me. I experience no
natural desires, no impure thoughts, nor wanderings of fancy. Still,
I feel more intensely, and am filled to overflowing with love, and
with desire for union. But there is no one to meet me where I am, and
I cannot meet them where they are."
All his life Father Hecker was on the lookout for the great human
influences which run across those of religion, either to swell their
volume or to lessen their force. These are mainly the transmissions
of heredity, and the environments that are racial, temporal, epochal,
or local. This enduring tendency is foreshadowed in the following
extracts:
"August 2, 1843.--I have been thinking much of late about the very
great influence which nationality and the family progenitors have
upon character. Men talk of universality, impartiality,
many-sidedness, free judgment, unbiased opinion, and so on, when in
reality their national and family dispositions are the centre and
ground of their being, and hence of their opinions. They appear to be
most themselves when they show these traits of character. They are
most natural and earnest and at home when they speak from this link
which binds them to the past. Then their hearts are opened, and they
speak with a glow of eloquence and a peculiar unction which touch the
same chord in the breasts of those who hear them. It is well for man
to feel his indebtedness to the past which lives in him and without
which he would not be what he is. He is far more its creature than he
gives himself credit for. He reproduces daily the sentiments and
thoughts of the dim and obscure before. There are certain ideas and
aspirations which have not had their fulfilment, but which run
through all men from the beginning and which are continually
reproduced. There is a unity of race, called Humanity; one of place,
called Nationality; one of birth, called Kindred; one of affinity,
called Love and Friendship. By all these we are greatly influenced.
They all make their mark upon the man."
"The faculties which take cognizance of the inner world have been
awakened in only a few of the human race, and these, to distinguish
them, have been called prophets, miracle-workers, Providential men,
seers, and poets. Now, their privilege is that of all men in a
greater or less degree, just as is the case with regard to the
faculties which relate to the outward world. For when men in general
were as ignorant about the exterior world as they now are about the
interior, the men of science, the astronomers, the mathematicians,
the founders of the arts, were held to be miraculous, gods, and they
were deified. What any one man (and this is a most comfortable and
cheering thought) has been or has done, all men may in a measure be
or do, for each is a type, a specimen of the whole human race. If it
is said in reply, 'These miracles or great acts, which you hold as
actual, are mere superstitious dreams,' I care not. That would be
still more glorious for us, for then they are still to be performed,
they are in the coming time, these divine prophetic instincts are yet
to be actualized. The dreams of Orpheus, the inspired strains of the
Hebrew bards, and, above all, the prophecies of Christ, are before
us. The divine instincts will be realized as surely as there is a God
above who inspires them. It is the glory of God that they should be
so; it is His delight. This world must become heaven. This is its
destiny; and our destiny, under God, is to make it so. Prophecy is
given to encourage and nourish our hopes and feed our joys, so that
we may say with Job, 'I know that although worms shall eat this
flesh, and my bones become dust, yet at the latter day I shall see my
Redeemer face to face.'"
The sentences which follow can be paralleled by words taken from all
who have truly interpreted the doctrine of Christ by their lives or
their writings:
"To him that has faith all things are possible, for faith is an act
of the soul; thy faith is the measure of thy power."
"If men would act from the present inspiration of their souls they
would gain more knowledge than they do by reading or speculating."
"No man in his heart can ask for more than he has. Think of this
deeply. God is just. We have what we ought to have, even according to
our own sense of justice."
"The desire to love and be beloved, to have friends with whom we can
converse, to enter society which we enjoy--is it not best to deny and
sacrifice these desires? It may be said that, gratified, they add to
life, and the question is how to increase life, not how to diminish
it. But by denying them, would not our life gain by flowing in a more
heavenly direction?"
"We are daily feeding the demons that are in us by our wicked
thoughts and sinful acts; these are their meat and drink. I make them
gasp sometimes. My heart laughs quite merrily to think of it. When I
am hungry, and there is something tempting on the table, hunger, like
a serpent, comes creeping up into my throat and laps its dry tongue
with eagerness for its prey, but it often returns chagrined at its
discomfiture."
"That which tempts us we should deny, no matter how innocent it is in
itself. If it tempts, away with it, until it tempts no more. Then
partake of it, for it is then only that you can do so prudently and
with temperance."
"All our thoughts and emotions are caused by some agent acting on us.
This is true of all the senses and the spiritual faculties. Hence we
should by all possible means purify and refine our organism, so that
we may hear the most delicate, the sweetest, the stillest sounds and
murmurings of the angels who are about us. How much fuller and richer
would be our life if we were more acutely sensitive and finely
textured! How many exquisite delights nature yields which we are not
yet aware of! What a world surrounds us of which none but holy men,
prophets, and poets have had a glimpse!"
"The soul is a plate on which the senses daguerreotype indelibly
pictures of the outer world. How cautious should we be where we look,
what we hear, what smell, or feel, or taste! And how we should
endeavor that all around us should be made beautiful, musical,
fragrant, so that our souls may be awakened to a divine sense of life
without a moment's interruption!"
"O God, be Thou my helper, my strength and my redeemer! May I live
wholly to Thee; give me grace and obedience to Thy Spirit. May all
self be put from me so that I may enter into the glorious liberty of
the sons of God, Awaken me, raise me up, restore me, O Jesus Christ,
Lord, Heavenly King!"
In reading what next follows it must be remembered that at the time
when it was written Isaac Hecker had absolutely no knowledge of
Catholic mystical theology. It is since that day that English-speaking
Catholics have had access to the great authorities on this subject
through adequate translations. But what little he had learned from
other sources, combined with his own intuitional and experimental
knowledge of human capabilities for penetrating the veil, had already
furnished him with conclusions which nothing in his devoted study of
Catholic mystical writers forced him to lay aside:
"Belief in the special guidance of God has been the faith of all
deeply religious men. I will not dispute the fact that some men are
so guided, but will offer an explanation of it which seems to me to
reconcile it with the regular order of laws established by God. My
explanation would be that this guidance is not a miraculous power,
specially bestowed upon some men, but merely a higher degree of
ordinary divine guidance. Our ordinary life is inspired; the other is
only a higher degree of what is common to all. The evil which arises
from the contrary opinion is this: men who have received a higher
degree of insight believe that it is a special miraculous gift, and
that all they may say is infallibly true, whereas they still retain
their own individuality though raised to a purer state of being. They
have not been so raised in order to found new sects, or to cause
revolutions, but to fulfil the old, continue and carry it on as far
as they have been given light to do so. In forming new sects they but
reproduce their own individualities with all their errors. So
Swedenborg did, and Wesley, men of modern times who were awakened in
a greater degree than the mass of their fellows. Their mistake lay in
their attempt to make universal ends out of their individual
experiences. In the ordinary state no man does this, but these, being
lifted a little above the mass, became intoxicated. The only one, so
far as I have read, who has had humility equal to his inspiration was
Jacob Boehmen. Luther, Calvin, Fox, Penn, Swedenborg, Wesley, had
self in view. Selfism is mixed with their universalism. None has
spoken truth so pure and universal as Boehmen. He is the most
inspired man of modern times. He had more love and truth than all the
other mystics put together, and fewer faults than either one of them
taken singly."
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