experience no
natural desires, no impure thoughts, nor wanderings of fancy. Still,
I feel more intensely, and am filled to overflowing with love, and
with desire for union. But there is no one to meet me where I am, and
I cannot meet them where they are."

All his life Father Hecker was on the lookout for the great human
influences which run across those of religion, either to swell their
volume or to lessen their force. These are mainly the transmissions
of heredity, and the environments that are racial, temporal, epochal,
or local. This enduring tendency is foreshadowed in the following
extracts:

"August 2, 1843.--I have been thinking much of late about the very
great influence which nationality and the family progenitors have
upon character. Men talk of universality, impartiality,
many-sidedness, free judgment, unbiased opinion, and so on, when in
reality their national and family dispositions are the centre and
ground of their being, and hence of their opinions. They appear to be
most themselves when they show these traits of character. They are
most natural and earnest and at home when they speak from this link
which binds them to the past. Then their hearts are opened, and they
speak with a glow of eloquence and a peculiar unction which touch the
same chord in the breasts of those who hear them. It is well for man
to feel his indebtedness to the past which lives in him and without
which he would not be what he is. He is far more its creature than he
gives himself credit for. He reproduces daily the sentiments and
thoughts of the dim and obscure before. There are certain ideas and
aspirations which have not had their fulfilment, but which run
through all men from the beginning and which are continually
reproduced. There is a unity of race, called Humanity; one of place,
called Nationality; one of birth, called Kindred; one of affinity,
called Love and Friendship. By all these we are greatly influenced.
They all make their mark upon the man."

"The faculties which take cognizance of the inner world have been
awakened in only a few of the human race, and these, to distinguish
them, have been called prophets, miracle-workers, Providential men,
seers, and poets. Now, their privilege is that of all men in a
greater or less degree, just as is the case with regard to the
faculties which relate to the outward world. For when men in general
were as ignorant about the exterior world as they now are about the
interior,