pent, comes creeping up into my throat and laps its dry tongue
with eagerness for its prey, but it often returns chagrined at its
discomfiture."

"That which tempts us we should deny, no matter how innocent it is in
itself. If it tempts, away with it, until it tempts no more. Then
partake of it, for it is then only that you can do so prudently and
with temperance."

"All our thoughts and emotions are caused by some agent acting on us.
This is true of all the senses and the spiritual faculties. Hence we
should by all possible means purify and refine our organism, so that
we may hear the most delicate, the sweetest, the stillest sounds and
murmurings of the angels who are about us. How much fuller and richer
would be our life if we were more acutely sensitive and finely
textured! How many exquisite delights nature yields which we are not
yet aware of! What a world surrounds us of which none but holy men,
prophets, and poets have had a glimpse!"

"The soul is a plate on which the senses daguerreotype indelibly
pictures of the outer world. How cautious should we be where we look,
what we hear, what smell, or feel, or taste! And how we should
endeavor that all around us should be made beautiful, musical,
fragrant, so that our souls may be awakened to a divine sense of life
without a moment's interruption!"

"O God, be Thou my helper, my strength and my redeemer! May I live
wholly to Thee; give me grace and obedience to Thy Spirit. May all
self be put from me so that I may enter into the glorious liberty of
the sons of God, Awaken me, raise me up, restore me, O Jesus Christ,
Lord, Heavenly King!"

In reading what next follows it must be remembered that at the time
when it was written Isaac Hecker had absolutely no knowledge of
Catholic mystical theology. It is since that day that English-speaking
Catholics have had access to the great authorities on this subject
through adequate translations. But what little he had learned from
other sources, combined with his own intuitional and experimental
knowledge of human capabilities for penetrating the veil, had already
furnished him with conclusions which nothing in his devoted study of
Catholic mystical writers forced him to lay aside:

"Belief in the special guidance of God has been the faith of all
deeply religious men. I will not dispute the fact that some men are
so guided, but will offer an explanation of it which seems to me to
reconcile it with the regular order of la