ccurred to him, and he jotted down some
brief notes, and made a partial collection of such letters and other
memoranda, apart from the diary, as he found to have been preserved
by his family. But this scheme was merely one of the occupations with
which he beguiled the necessary delay imposed on him by Bishop
McCloskey's absence. One can easily believe that the plan he proposed
to himself has deeply interested the present writer, who, though
regretting that it was not followed out by Isaac Hecker himself, has
yet been enabled by the diary and the letters to measurably fulfil
its purpose. He divided it into five periods, and, with a
reminiscence of _Wilhelm Meister,_ called it his _Wanderjahr:_

"The first should be named Youth, and give the ideal and the actual
in youth.

"The second should be the struggle between the ideal and the actual.

"The third should be the mastery and supremacy of the ideal over the
actual and material.

"The fourth should give the absolute union of the ideal and the
eternal-absolute in their unconditioned existence.

"The fifth should give the eventual one-ness of the ideal-absolute
with humanity and nature.

"Under these five heads I have in mind materials sufficient to make
a volume, but lack the close application necessary to connect them. I
do not say it would be readable when done. It would be the esoteric
and exoteric history of my own life for ten years. . .

"I would open the first chapter thus: Let men say what they will, God
above us, the human soul, and all surrounding nature, are great
realities, eternal, solemn, joyous facts of human experience."

In the fine passage that follows we have an anticipation of the
prominent modern conception of Christianity, as a developing force in
the history of man--closing an epoch and introducing a new species;
or, as Father Hecker would have said in later years, raising man from
his natural position as a creature of God to true sonship with Him
through affiliation with Jesus Christ. The thought, as it stands in
the diary, is eminently characteristic of Isaac Hecker, who always
felt, in a measure beyond what is ordinary, his solidarity with all
his kind, and a longing to keep in step with them on the line of
their direct advance:

"July 12.--We make no question that God gave to all nations, previous
to the birth of Jesus Christ, His beloved and only Son, dispensations
of light and love in their great men, and led them from time to time