The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Father Hecker, by Walter Elliott

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Title: Life of Father Hecker

Author: Walter Elliott

Release Date: April 29, 2006 [EBook #18283]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF FATHER HECKER ***

Produced by David McClamrock

THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER

BY
REV. WALTER ELLIOTT
________________________

NEW YORK:
THE COLUMBUS PRESS
1891
________________________

Nihil obstat:
AUGUSTINUS F. HEWIT,
_Censor Deputatus._

Imprimatur:
M. A. CORRIGAN,
_Archiepiscopus Neo-Ebor._
________________________

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE reader must indulge me with what I cannot help saying, that I
have felt the joy of a son in telling the achievements and
chronicling the virtues of Father Hecker. I loved him with the sacred
fire of holy kinship, and love him still--only the more that lapse of
time has deepened by experience, inner and outer, the sense of truth
and of purity he ever communicated to me in life, and courage and
fidelity to conscience. I feel it to be honor enough and joy enough
for a life-time that I am his first biographer, though but a late
born child and of merit entirely insignificant. The literary work is,
indeed, but of home-made quality, yet it serves to hold together what
is the heaven-made wisdom of a great teacher of men. It will be found
that Father Hecker has three words in this book to my one, though all
my words I tried to make his. His journals, letters, and recorded
sayings are the edifice into which I introduce the reader, and my
words are the hinges and latchets of its doors. I am glad of this,
for it pleases me to dedicate my good will and my poor work to
swinging open the doors of that new House of God that Isaac Hecker
was to me, and that I trust he will be to many.

WALTER ELLIOTT
________________________

CONTENTS
________________________

CHAPTER
I.--CHILDHOOD
II.--YOUTH
III.--THE TURNING-POINT
IV.--LED BY THE SPIRIT
V.--AT BROOK FARM
VI.--INNER LIFE WHILE AT BROOK FARM
VII.--STRUGGLES
VIII.--FRUITLANDS
IX.--SELF-QUESTIONINGS
X.--AT HOME AGAIN
XI.--STUDYING AND WRITI