later papers, in which, speaking of the
phenomena of modern spiritualism, he says that the same longing for
an assurance of personal immortality which leads so many into that
maze of mingled truth and error, had a great share in disposing his
mind to accept the authoritative doctrine of the Church, which here
as elsewhere answered fully the deepest longings of his soul.

We shall not attempt to follow the chronological order of the journal
with exactness, but in making our extracts shall pursue the order of
topics rather than of time. By the middle of April the question of
the Church had presented itself so unmistakably to Isaac Hecker, as
the necessary preliminary to further progress--to be settled in one
way or another, either set definitely aside as unessential or else
accepted as the adequate solution of man's problems, that his
struggles for and against it recur with especial frequency. Faber has
said somewhere that the Church is the touchstone of rational
humanity, and that probably no adult passes out of life without
having once, at least, been brought squarely face to face with it and
made to understand and shoulder the tremendous responsibility which
its claims impose. There would be no need of a touchstone if there
were no alloy in human nature, no feebleness in man's will, no
darkness in his understanding. Were that the condition of humanity,
the call to the supernatural order would be simply the summons to
come up higher, its symbol a beacon torch upon the heights. As it is,
the path may be mistaken. He whose feet have been set in it from
birth by Christian training may wilfully forsake it. He whose heart
is pure and whose aspirations noble, may be so surrounded by the
mists of inherited error and misapprehension that the light of truth
fails to penetrate them when it first dawns. The road is always
strait which leads any son of Adam to supernal joy in conscious union
with his Creator, even when his will is good and his desire unfeigned.

We shall find, therefore, that Isaac Hecker's struggles were many and
painful before he fully recognized and attained the necessary means
to the end he craved. They were characteristic also. He was looking
for the satisfaction of his rational aspirations rather than for the
solution of historical problems, although his mind was too clear not
to see that the two are inextricably bound up together. But inasmuch
as at the period of which we are writing, which was that of the