hts, judgments, and convictions, yearnings, aspirations,
and longings to be too subject to illusion to be worthy their
attentive study and manly fidelity; that even multitudes of Catholics
greatly undervalue the divine reality of their inner life, whether in
the natural or supernatural order."

The philosophical difficulty was far less serious than the spiritual
one. To the philosopher the fundamental truths of human reason are
established as objective realities by processes common to every sane
mind, and are backed by the common consent of men; and this is true
also of the prime verities of ethics. But when a man finds himself
subject to secret influences of the utmost power over him, able to
cast him off or to hold him, to sicken his body and distress his
soul, extending his views of the truth by flashes of light into
vistas that seem infinite, making his love of right an ecstasy, his
sympathy for human misery a passion, controlling his diet and his
clothing, ordering him here and there at will and knowing how to be
obeyed--when, in a word, a man finds himself treated by God in a
manner totally different from any one else he knows or ever heard of,
it is plain that he must agonize for the possession of a divine
sanction to which he can appeal in common with all men, and which
must therefore exist in the external order. He longs, above all
things, to test his secret in the light of day.

The problem that Isaac Hecker had to solve, as he described it
himself, was whether his life was real--using the word "life" to
denote its truest meaning, the interior life. We have been careful to
make the reader aware of how deep and continuous were the inner
touches of the Holy Spirit which led him on. Before applying for
admission to the Church, there was no truth that he could believe
more firmly than that he was the temple of the Holy Ghost. Of that he
had the certitude which is called personal and the teaching of God
which is most direct. Yet something was lacking, and therein lay his
agony, for he knew that his fellow-men were entitled to all that he
had of truth and virtue. The more distinct the Voice which spoke
within, the more perplexing it became to hear no echo from without.
He felt sure that what was true and holy for him must be so for all,
and yet he could not so much as make himself understood if he told
his secret to others. To the born Catholic there is no such
difficulty. He is so fully accustomed to the verifica