Life of Father Hecker Part 12

"Man is a mystic fact.

"What is most interior is ever mystical, and we should ever be in the centre of the circle of the mystic life.

"We must unfold the mystical in all our expressions, actions, thoughts, and motions.

"It is the mystic life only which can fully interest man. This is deeper than all conditions, behind all organs, faculties, and functions.

"We must listen to those who speak to us in the interior world, and hear the mystic man speak through us.

"The mystic man is ever youthful, fresh, and new.

"The mystic sphere is the kingdom of heaven within.

"I can neither study nor sit down and read for any length of time.

The inner man will not permit me. Ever he calls me from it to meditate and enjoy his presence.

"He says: I am all. Ask of me and I will give you more than has been written--more than you can ever find or dig out by study.

"Be my spokesman--this is your office. Submit to me--this is your glory. I have taken up my abode in you on condition that you will be faithful and submissive.

"You have no business to ask of me what I am going to set you about.

I am, and you know it--and this is enough for you to know.

"This is my condition of remaining with you--that you entertain me, and me alone, and no other on any pretext whatsoever. I am all, and this suffices. You have nothing to say, to do, or to be troubled about. Do only as I bid you, follow what I tell you, and be still.

"If you neglect me in any way, or forget me for any other object, now that you have enjoyed my confidence, love, and blessing, I will not abide with you any longer.

"I want all your time and to speak all that is to be said. You have no right to speak a word--not a word--of your own. You are not your own. You have given yourself up to me, and I am all. I will not leave you unless you leave me first, and even then I shall ever be the nearest to you, but you will not know it.

"I am your Friend; the One who loves you. I have discovered myself to you and will do so yet more. But the condition of so doing requires from you even more faith, tenderness, and submissiveness.

"Nothing is so real, so near, so full of enjoyment as I am to you, and you cannot leave me without giving up the greater for the less.

"I talk to you at all times and am near you at all seasons, and my joy is to be in your presence, to love you and to take delight in this love I bestow upon you. I direct your pen, speech, thought, and affections, though you know it not sensibly. But you shall know more clearly who I am, and all respecting me, if you but comply with my requirements. You need not fear: you cannot make any mistakes if you submit to be guided by me."

Isaac Hecker had now tried every form of philosophy. Whoever sailed with Brownson on that voyage which ended on the sh.o.r.es of Catholic truth, had explored the deep seas and sounded the shoal waters of all human reason; and young Hecker had been Brownson's friend and sympathizer since the years of his own earliest mental activity.

Pantheism, subjectivism, idealism, and all the other systems were tried, and when at last he was convinced that _Life is Real_ it was only after such an agony as must attend the imminent danger of fatal shipwreck.

He had, meantime, given a fair trial to philanthropy. Theoretically and practically, Isaac Hecker loved humanity; to make men happy was his ever-renewed endeavor; was, in truth, the condition on which his own happiness depended. For years this view of his life-task alternated with his search for exact answers to the questions his soul asked about man's destiny hereafter; or, one might rather say, social questions and philosophical ones borrowed strength from each other to a.s.sail him till his heart throbbed and his brain whirled with the agony of the conflict.

In a series of articles in _The Catholic World_ published in 1887, and before referred to, Father Hecker called Dr. Brownson's road to the Church the philosophical road. Finding that doctrines which his philosophical mind perceived to answer the deepest questions of the soul were taught only in one society, and there taught with authority, he argued validly that that society could lay claim to the right to teach. From the doctrine to the teacher, from the truth to the external authority that teaches it, is an inference of sound reason. This applies to Father Hecker's case also, for he was of a bent of mind truly philosophical, and he has placed on record the similarity of his philosophical difficulties with those of Brownson.

But in addition to philosophical questions, and far more pressing, were to Isaac Hecker the problems arising from the mystical occurrences of which his soul was the theatre. Were these real? that is, were they more than the vagaries of a sensitive temperament, the wanderings of a sentimental imagination, or, to use Father Hecker's own words, "the mere projections into activity of feelings entirely subjective; mystical impulses towards no corresponding objective realities, or, at any rate, with objects which it is not possible to bring into the field of the really knowable? Some will admit that religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness, affirming, however, the subjectivity of all purely spiritual life; and no more can be said, they insist, for the principles, metaphysical and logical, with which they are a.s.sociated in the spiritual life of man. Now, such a theory never leaves the soul that is governed by reason at rest. The problem ever and again demands solution: are these yearnings, aspirations, unappeased desires, or religious feelings--the ruling traits of the n.o.blest men and women--are they genuine, real, corresponding to and arising from the reality of certain objects external to the soul? I think that in the solution of this problem Dr. Brownson fought and won his greatest victory; at any rate, it was to me the most interesting period of his life. No wonder, since I had the same battle to fight myself, and it was just at this epoch that I came into closest contact with him. We fought this battle shoulder-to-shoulder."--_Catholic World,_ October, 1887, pp. 5-6.

Brownson's heavy heart was due to philosophical difficulties, and Isaac Hecker's to the same; but in addition the latter had a mystical experience to which Brownson was at that time, certainly, a stranger, and, as far as we know, he remained so; and these mystical difficulties demanded settlement far more imperatively than did the philosophical ones. Isaac Hecker's inner life must have an external adjunct of divine authority. Such aspirations of the soul for present union with G.o.d in love as he had, are more peremptory in demanding satisfaction than those of the logical faculty in demanding the ascertainment of the certain truth. Philosophy outside the Church is to the searcher after truth what St. Paul said the Law was to the Jews, a schoolmaster; but, to a soul in the condition of Isaac Hecker, the Holy Spirit is a spouse demanding union. Both Brownson and himself were men true to their convictions, courageous and unselfish. They were both firmly determined to have the truth and to have the whole of it, whether spoken _ex cathedra_ in the divine court of the innermost soul, or _ex cathedra_ by the supreme authority of G.o.d in the organism of the Christian Church. "Brownson was firmly persuaded," says Father Hecker, "and so am I, that the great fault of men generally is that they deem the life of their souls, thoughts, judgments, and convictions, yearnings, aspirations, and longings to be too subject to illusion to be worthy their attentive study and manly fidelity; that even mult.i.tudes of Catholics greatly undervalue the divine reality of their inner life, whether in the natural or supernatural order."

The philosophical difficulty was far less serious than the spiritual one. To the philosopher the fundamental truths of human reason are established as objective realities by processes common to every sane mind, and are backed by the common consent of men; and this is true also of the prime verities of ethics. But when a man finds himself subject to secret influences of the utmost power over him, able to cast him off or to hold him, to sicken his body and distress his soul, extending his views of the truth by flashes of light into vistas that seem infinite, making his love of right an ecstasy, his sympathy for human misery a pa.s.sion, controlling his diet and his clothing, ordering him here and there at will and knowing how to be obeyed--when, in a word, a man finds himself treated by G.o.d in a manner totally different from any one else he knows or ever heard of, it is plain that he must agonize for the possession of a divine sanction to which he can appeal in common with all men, and which must therefore exist in the external order. He longs, above all things, to test his secret in the light of day.

The problem that Isaac Hecker had to solve, as he described it himself, was whether his life was real--using the word "life" to denote its truest meaning, the interior life. We have been careful to make the reader aware of how deep and continuous were the inner touches of the Holy Spirit which led him on. Before applying for admission to the Church, there was no truth that he could believe more firmly than that he was the temple of the Holy Ghost. Of that he had the cert.i.tude which is called personal and the teaching of G.o.d which is most direct. Yet something was lacking, and therein lay his agony, for he knew that his fellow-men were ent.i.tled to all that he had of truth and virtue. The more distinct the Voice which spoke within, the more perplexing it became to hear no echo from without.

He felt sure that what was true and holy for him must be so for all, and yet he could not so much as make himself understood if he told his secret to others. To the born Catholic there is no such difficulty. He is so fully accustomed to the verification of the inner action of G.o.d, enlightening his mind and stinging his conscience, by G.o.d's external action in the Church, that he often confounds the two. He knows the Voice better by its echo than by its own tones. There are many good Catholics, but few enlightened mystics. This is not for lack of guidance, so far as doctrine is concerned, for accredited authors on such subjects are numerous and their teaching is uniform and explicit, besides being of the most intense interest to those for whose instruction it is adapted. These masters of spiritual doctrine not only dwell upon the interior life itself, but also on the external order of G.o.d in His Church which brings His interior teaching into proper relation with the exterior.

The interior life thus made integral is alone worthy of the term _real;_ is alone worthy of the description of St. Paul when he calls it "the witness of the Spirit." Now, as a witness who cannot be brought into open court to give his testimony might as well be dumb, and is as good as no witness, so the inner life, lacking the true external order of G.o.d, is cramped and helpless; and cramped and helpless Isaac Hecker was. Whatever he did, therefore, toward investigating religious evidences was done primarily as a search for the external criterion which should guarantee the validity of the inspirations of G.o.d within him, and at the same time provide a medium of union with his fellow-men.

Those whose advertence is not particularly aroused to the facts of their interior life, have for their main task either the study of the Church as a visible society, claiming continuity with one established by Christ; or, preceding that, the question whether such a society was ever founded by G.o.d. Now, although such questions must be settled by all, they are not the main task of men like Isaac Hecker. In their case the problem transcending all others is where to find that divine external order demanded for the completion of their inner experience.

Such men must say: If there is no external order of G.o.d in this world, then my whole interior life is fatally awry.

The captain whose voyage is on the track of the trade winds nevertheless needs more than dead reckoning for his course; he needs to take the sun at noon, to study the heavens at night, and to con his chart. To follow one's interior drift only is to sail the ocean without chart or compa.s.s. The sail that is wafted by the impulses of the divine Spirit in the interior life must have, besides, the guarantee of divine veracity in the external order to justify him.

This he needs, in order to safeguard him in the interior life itself, and to provide a common court of appeal between himself and his fellows, or otherwise he is in danger of fanaticism, and is certain of the mistrust of his fellow-men. No man, unsupported by external miracles, can claim to teach what is vouched for only by his own testimony; and this especially applies to purely subjective experiences. Isaac Hecker was a born teacher of men, and to be shut off from them by an isolated experience was to be robbed of his vocation. A soul like his, led to the truth along the path of social reform, will hail with delight a religion which organizes all humanity on a basis of equality, and at the same time verifies and explains the facts of each one's particular experience. Such a religion is to be longed for, not only because of its universal brotherhood, but also because it can decide between the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and the criminal conceits of pa.s.sion or the dreams of an imaginative temperament.

Many years afterwards Father Hecker thus stated the harmony between the inner and outer action of G.o.d in the soul's life:

"In case of obscurity or doubt concerning what is the divinely revealed truth, or whether what prompts the soul is or is not an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recourse must be had to the divine teacher or criterion--the authority of the Church. For it must be borne in mind that to the Church, as represented in the first instance by St. Peter and subsequently by his successors, was made the promise of her divine Founder that 'the gates of h.e.l.l should never prevail against her.' No such promise was ever made by Christ to each individual believer. 'The Church of the living G.o.d is the pillar and ground of truth.' The test, therefore, of a truly enlightened and sincere Christian will be, in case of uncertainty, the prompt.i.tude of his obedience to the voice of the Church.

"From the above plain truths the following practical rule of conduct may be drawn: The Holy Spirit is the immediate guide of the soul in the way of salvation and sanctification; and the criterion or test, that the soul is guided by the Holy Spirit, is its ready obedience to the authority of the Church. This rule removes all danger whatever, and with it the soul can walk, run, or fly, if it chooses, in the greatest safety and with perfect liberty, in the ways of sanct.i.ty."--_The Church and the Age,_ p. 35.

In transcribing the above we are reminded that St. Ignatius, who was the divine instrument in establishing and perfecting G.o.d's authority in the external order, yet left on record that so clearly had the Holy Spirit shown him by secret teaching the truths of religion, that, if all the Scriptures had been destroyed, his private revelations at Manresa would have sufficed him in their stead.

All that we have just been saying helps to answer the question why Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker did not set up systems of their own, and become Carlyles and Emersons or, especially in Father Hecker's case, Emanuel Swedenborgs or Edward Irvings. We find the following among the memoranda of conversations:

"June 30, 1886.--Why didn't I switch off from Christianity as Carlyle did? Because I hope that I was truer to natural reason; but chiefly because G.o.d had given me such an amount of infused lights and graces that I was forced to seek a guide or go off into extravagant fanaticism. They were ready to encourage me in the latter. George Ripley said to me, 'Hecker, what have you got to tell? Tell us what it is and we will accept it.'"

The impression a perfectly "independent thinker" made on him, as typified in Emerson, is told in an entry in his diary, dated April 24, 1844:

"I have had a few words with Emerson. He stands on the extreme ground where he did several years ago. He and his followers seem to me to live almost a purely intellectual existence. His wife I have understood to be a very religious woman. They are heathens in thought, and profess to be so. They have no conception of the Church: out of Protestantism they are almost perfectly ignorant. They are the narrowest of men, yet they think they are extremely 'many-sided'; and, forsooth, do not comprehend Christendom, and reject it. The Catholic accepts all the good they offer him and finds it comparatively little compared to that which he has."

That he recognized that the test of the character of his inner experiences, for good or ill, was to be finally found in what they led him to, is shown by the following pa.s.sage, already quoted, from the diary: "What I do I must do, for it is not I that do it; it is the Spirit. What that Spirit may be is a question I cannot answer.

What it leads me to do will be the only evidence of its character. I feel as impersonal as a stranger to it."

The aid which fidelity to the light of reason and the cherishing and obeying the inspirations of the Holy Spirit lends to the discovery of the fulness of truth is shown by the following extract from an article by Father Hecker in _The Catholic World_ of October, 1887:

"The man who establishes the historical ident.i.ty of the Church of to-day with the Apostolic college says the doctrines now taught must be true; the man who perceives the ident.i.ty of the Church's doctrines with his own highest aspirations also proves them true. The man who has become responsive to the primitive action of his reason says that the Church, which is its only authoritative exponent, must be a divinely appointed teacher. The infallible authority of the Church in her past, present, and future teaching is established by the necessity of the truths which she teaches for the welfare of the human race, by thus completing the outlines of natural truth drawn by the divine hand in human consciousness."

By this we see that, if the divine inner life had need of the divine outer life for its integrity, it is equally certain that in his case, and also in that of Dr. Brownson, the intimate action of G.o.d within was a pointer to the true Church of the Divine Word incarnate in the actual world of humanity: for Dr. Brownson chiefly in the intellectual order, for Isaac Hecker in both the intellectual and mystical. We have no fear of wearying the reader with the length of an extract of such value as the following:

"The one who reaches Catholicity by the philosophical road, as Brownson did, by no means pretends that the problem of human destiny can be solved by mere force of reason: Catholicity is not rationalism. Nor does he pretend that the product of reason's action, the knowledge of human immortality and liberty and of the being of G.o.d, place man apart from or above the universal action of G.o.d upon all souls by means of a visible society and external ordinances: Catholicity is well named; it is universal. But he knows that when a man is persuaded of a truth philosophically he is not called upon by his intelligence or his conscience to base it upon historical evidence; it is enough that he has one source of cert.i.tude in its favor. It may be a truth first known by revelation, but if the human intelligence is capable of receiving it in revelation it must have some element of kinship to the truths of pure reason. As in the order of nature men are like unto G.o.d, so is there a likeness between the truth of G.o.d naturally known and that known only by revelation.

"As there is an appet.i.te in the human heart which not all the treasures, honors, joys of nature can satisfy, so there is a void in the mind which all the truth within reach of the unaided natural faculties leaves unfilled. When a man without guile is brought face to face with truth he spontaneously desires union with it. Appet.i.te proves the existence of food, and the food affirms itself by satisfying the appet.i.te.

"Where there is question of a principle there is a cla.s.s of minds which must study the part a principle has played in history, and is mainly influenced for or against it from its effect on former generations of men. This cla.s.s follows the historical road. Another cla.s.s is so profoundly moved by the truths of revelation as soon as known, a.s.similates them so readily and perfectly, becomes so absorbed and lost in them, that the history of revelation is not of primary importance; it is only necessary in order to establish necessary facts, such as the divine inst.i.tution of an external society, and of other external aids. But with this philosophical cla.s.s of minds the truth stands sponsor for itself and is its own best witness. The impression produced by revelation here and now upon the soul without guile is one of the best probable proofs to that soul of the historical claims of the society to which G.o.d entrusted it. 'The Church Accredits Itself' was the t.i.tle of one of the most powerful articles Dr. Brownson ever wrote for this magazine.

"Both the historical and the philosophical processes are necessary, but each is more so to one cla.s.s of minds than to another. To the philosophical mind, once scepticism is gone and life is real, the supreme fact of life is the need of more truth than unaided reason can know. The more this need is felt, and the more clearly the deficiencies of natural reason are known, the better capable one is to appreciate the truths of revelation which can alone supply these deficiencies. In such a state of mind you are in a condition to establish revealed truth in a certain sense _a priori,_ and the method _a posteriori_ is then outranked. The philosopher outranks the historian. In minds of a speculative turn the historian is never considered of primary importance. The principles which its facts ill.u.s.trate are furnished him by human reason in philosophy, and by the divine reason in revelation. The historical mind has never been considered in the world of thought as sovereign. The philosopher is broad enough to study all ways leading to the full truth and joy of life, whether logical or traditional; but he knows that the study of principles is higher than that of facts. . . . No man can intelligently become a Catholic without examining and deciding the historical question. But back of this is the consideration that the truths the Church teaches are necessarily in harmony with my reason--nay, that they alone solve the problems of reason satisfactorily and answer fully to the wants of the heart. To some minds the truths standing alone compel a.s.sent; that is to say, the truths standing alone, and considered in themselves, demand the submission of my reason. Among these truths, thus imperative, not the least is the need of the very Church herself, viewed in her action on men and nations--viewed quite apart from the historical and Scriptural proof of her establishment by Christ. Once the mind is lifted above subjectivism and is face-to-face with the truth, union with the Church is only a question of time and of fidelity to conscience."--_Catholic World,_ November, 1887, "Dr. Brownson and Catholicity."

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CHAPTER XIII

HIS SEARCH AMONG THE SECTS