ity, and from there to England,
where Father Hecker met him during his own residence at Clapham,
after his ordination. His letters followed Father Hecker for several
years, and breathe always the same unselfishness, the same simple
trust in human goodness, and the same fondness for speculations on
"the universal."

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CHAPTER IX

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