HIS LIFE AT CONCORD
"I HAVE been groping in darkness, seeking where Thou wast not, and I
found Thee not. But, O Lord my God, _Thou hast found me_--leave me
not."
These words are part of a long prayer written by Isaac Hecker in his
diary April 23, 1844, after his arrival at Concord, Mass. He appears
to have gone directly there from Carlisle, Pa., where he had spent
some days with the Rev. William Herbert Norris, whose published
letter to "A Sincere Enquirer" had excited in the young man a hope
that he might find in him a teacher whose deep inward experiences
would be complemented by the adequate external guaranty that he was
seeking. We have already noted that he was disappointed. He states
the reason very suggestively in a letter written at the time:
"Alas, that men should speak of those things they are most ignorant
of! What hopes did he not awaken in my bosom as I read his letter to
a Sincere Enquirer, and how were they blasted when I met him and
found that it was not he, but Hooker, Newman, Paul, etc.! It is a sad
fact that many believe, but very few give themselves up to what they
believe so that they may have the substance of their belief."
Isaac Hecker's business in Concord had, as usual, two sides.
Externally it meant going on with Greek and Latin, under the guidance
of the lately deceased George P. Bradford, a scholar of rare
acquirements, whose acquaintance he had made at Brook Farm the
previous year. The end he sought in this study was to fit himself for
"working in the field of the church." But as the question of which
church was not even yet fully settled in his mind, his search for the
true religion still remained his deepest and most inmost purpose.
Nevertheless, he was enjoying at this time one of his periods of
profound interior and exterior peace. "I feel," he writes, "that I am
growing in God's grace. To Him I look for support. Will He not impart
wisdom as well as love?"
His surroundings at Concord are so vividly described in the letters
he wrote to his family that we cannot omit quotations from them. The
first of these is dated at Brook Farm, and describes his efforts to
find a room after reaching the village. He seems to have gone at once
to Mr. Bradford's house on his arrival.
"April 22, '44.-. . . After supper we sallied forth again. We saw a
room, and what do you imagine they charged for it? Seventy-five
dollars a year!! This was out of the question. We went further and
found a room, good size, very good people, furnished, and to be kept
in order for eight dollars a quarter. This seemed reasonable to me,
and also to Mr. Bradford. I felt safe in telling the lady that I
thought I should take it. I requested Mr. Bradford to keep a look-out
for me while I was gone, and if we could not find a better place
before I returned I would accept this. This morning I left Concord to
come and see Charles Dana concerning the books I shall require, and
to see some of my friends. I got into Boston at ten o'clock, and
walked out here by dinner-time. All of the old set that are here were
delighted to see me. I have conversed with a few of them, and find
them more open to consider the claims of the Church than I had
anticipated."
"Concord, April 24, '44.--Dear Friends: This evening I can say that I
am settled, comfortably settled in every particular. All that is
needed for my comfort is here: a good straw bed, a large table,
carpet, washstand, book-case, stove, chairs, looking-glass--all, all
that is needful. And this for seventy-five cents a week, including
lights; wood is extra pay. This is the inanimate about me. The lady
of the house, Mrs. Thoreau, _is a woman._ The only fear I have about
her is that she is too much like dear mother--she will take too much
care of me. She has told me how she used to sit up nights, waiting
for a young man whom she had taken to board, to come home. He was a
stranger to her, but still she insists that she must treat all as she
would her own, and even with greater care. If you were to see her,
mother, you would be perfectly satisfied that I have fallen into good
hands, and met a second mother, if that is possible."
"April 25, 1:30 P.M.--I have just finished my dinner; it was _ein
herrliches Essen._ Unleavened bread (from home), maple-sugar, and
apples which I purchased this morning. Previous to taking dinner I
said my first lesson to Mr. Bradford in Greek and Latin.
"I am extremely well situated, and feel contented in myself, and
deeply grateful to you all for your goodness in helping me to pursue
the real purpose of my being. All we can do is to be faithful to God
and to the work He has given us to do, and, whatever end He may lead
us to, to have that central faith that 'all is for the best.' There
is only one life, and that is life in God; and only one death, and
that is separation from Him. And this life is not and cannot be
measured by the external eye. We must be fixed in God before we can
do anything rightly--study, labor, social, political or of any
kind. . . .
"I have written this letter full of nothingness; I will be more
settled the next time and do better. Send all your love to me--think
more of heaven and we shall grow happier. If once celestial love has
touched us, we cannot rest until it dwells and abides in our hearts.
To you all I send my warmest and purest love.--ISAAC."
"Concord, May 2, 1844.--Dear Friends: It was my intention not to
write home until I had received a letter from you; but as none has
yet come, and I am in want of a few things, I will write you
immediately.
"You can scarcely imagine how different my life is now from what it
was at home. It is like living in another world. It is possible that
you might not be suited with the conditions here, but to me they are
the very ones which are congenial to my present state of being. I am
alone from early dawn to late at night; no one to intrude upon my
quiet except Mr. Bradford, who occupies the hour between twelve and
one to hear my recitations, and Mrs. Thoreau a few minutes in making
my bed in the mornings. The rest of my time is devoted to study,
communion, and, a little of it, to reading. How unlike the life at
home!
"The thought just occurs to me that if such a life seems desirable to
you, how easily you could obtain it. What is it that costs so much
labor of mind and body? Is it not that which we consume on and in our
bodies? Then, if we reduce the consumption there will be less need of
production. Most of our labor is labor for the body. We are
treasuring up corruption for the day of death; is this not so? As we
rise in spirit above the body we shall bring all its appetites into
subjection to the moral law. . . .
"This is what I should like you to do for me. All the food that I
brought with me is gone, and as I would like to have my razor sent
on, and as the articles you can give me would be better than any I
can get here, you will be so kind as to send with it the following
list, if you think best: 1. Put in some hard bread. 2. A few
unleavened wheat biscuits, such as I used to make. 3. Some unleavened
Graham biscuits. 4. A five-cent or ten-cent loaf of bread, if you
think it will keep good until it gets here. 5. Get me a linen summer
frock-coat such as are worn--those loose ones. Dunster has my measure
and he can cut it for you. Let it be made. I have only a summer
jacket with me, and that is John's. 6. Do not forget the razor. You
can put in any other simple, solid food, if you wish to send any. Do
I ask too much from you? If so, you must be kind enough to tell me.
Your labor is already too great, and I am burdening you with
more. . . .
"How much my heart loves you all! How unkindly I have spoken to you
at times! You will forgive me and love me none the less, will you
not? May we live together more and more in the unity of love."
"May, 1844.--. . . My studies are pursued with the same spirit in
which they were commenced, and there seems to me no reason to fear
but that they will be continued in the same for some time to come.
However, I would affirm what has been affirmed by me for these two
years back, the only consistency that I can promise is submission to
the Spirit that is guiding me, whatever may be the external
appearance or superficial consequences to others. . . .
"How our astonishment should be excited to perceive that we have been
in such a long sleep, and that even now we see but dimly. Let us each
ask ourselves in whose business we are employed. Is it our Father's,
or is it not? If not, let us immediately turn to the business of our
Father, the only object of our life. Let us submit wholly to the
guidance of Love."
"TO MRS. CATHERINE J. HECKER. Concord, May 31, 1844.--You speak of my
situation as pleasant, and so it is to me. Though the house is
situated on the street of a village, the street is beautifully arched
with trees for some distance, and my room is very pleasant. One
window is wholly shaded by sweet honeysuckle, which is now in
blossom, filling the room with its mild fragrance. The little
humming-birds visit its flowers frequently without being disturbed by
my presence."
The diary, which runs side by side with these letters, was, as usual,
the recipient of more intimate self-communings than could be shared
with any friend. It shows that although he was now well-nigh
convinced of the truth of Catholicity, yet that he still felt a
lingering indecision, produced, perhaps, by a haunting memory of the
stern front of "discipline" he had encountered in Bishop Hughes. This
seemed like a phantom of terror to the young social reformer, whose
love of liberty, though rational, was then and ever afterwards one of
the passions of his soul. Yet we rarely find now in these pages any
statement of specific reasons for and against Catholicity such as
were plentiful during the period preceding his acquaintance with Mr.
Haight, Dr. Seabury, and Mr. Norris. He seems to shudder as he stands
on the bank and looks upon the flowing and cleansing stream; but his
hesitancy is caused not so much by any unanswered difficulties of his
reason as by his sensibilities, by vague feelings of alarm for the
integrity of his manhood. He feared lest the waters might cleanse him
by skinning him alive. Catholicity, as typified in Bishop Hughes, her
Celtic-American champion, seemed to him "a fortified city, and a
pillar of iron, and a wall of brass against the whole land."
Now, Isaac Hecker was built for a missionary, and the extreme view of
the primary value of highly-wrought discipline which he encountered
everywhere among Catholics, though not enough to blind him to the
essential liberty of the Church, was enough to delay him in his
progress to her. There can be little doubt that multitudes of men and
women of less discernment and feebler will than his, have been and
still are kept entirely out of the Church by the same cause.
Only at long intervals, as we near the last pages of the large and
closely-written book containing the first volume of his diary, do we
meet with those agonizing complaints of dryness, the distress of
doubt, the weary burden of insoluble difficulties, so common
heretofore. He seems, indeed, no longer battling; be victory is won;
but it remains to know what are the spoils and where they are to be
gathered. Of course there are interludes of his irrepressible
philosophizing on moral questions. And at the very end, under date of
May 23, 1844, we find the following:
"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."
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