or is it not? If not, let us immediately turn to the business of our
Father, the only object of our life. Let us submit wholly to the
guidance of Love."

"TO MRS. CATHERINE J. HECKER. Concord, May 31, 1844.--You speak of my
situation as pleasant, and so it is to me. Though the house is
situated on the street of a village, the street is beautifully arched
with trees for some distance, and my room is very pleasant. One
window is wholly shaded by sweet honeysuckle, which is now in
blossom, filling the room with its mild fragrance. The little
humming-birds visit its flowers frequently without being disturbed by
my presence."

The diary, which runs side by side with these letters, was, as usual,
the recipient of more intimate self-communings than could be shared
with any friend. It shows that although he was now well-nigh
convinced of the truth of Catholicity, yet that he still felt a
lingering indecision, produced, perhaps, by a haunting memory of the
stern front of "discipline" he had encountered in Bishop Hughes. This
seemed like a phantom of terror to the young social reformer, whose
love of liberty, though rational, was then and ever afterwards one of
the passions of his soul. Yet we rarely find now in these pages any
statement of specific reasons for and against Catholicity such as
were plentiful during the period preceding his acquaintance with Mr.
Haight, Dr. Seabury, and Mr. Norris. He seems to shudder as he stands
on the bank and looks upon the flowing and cleansing stream; but his
hesitancy is caused not so much by any unanswered difficulties of his
reason as by his sensibilities, by vague feelings of alarm for the
integrity of his manhood. He feared lest the waters might cleanse him
by skinning him alive. Catholicity, as typified in Bishop Hughes, her
Celtic-American champion, seemed to him "a fortified city, and a
pillar of iron, and a wall of brass against the whole land."

Now, Isaac Hecker was built for a missionary, and the extreme view of
the primary value of highly-wrought discipline which he encountered
everywhere among Catholics, though not enough to blind him to the
essential liberty of the Church, was enough to delay him in his
progress to her. There can be little doubt that multitudes of men and
women of less discernment and feebler will than his, have been and
still are kept entirely out of the Church by the same cause.

Only at long intervals, as we near the last pages of the large and
closel