like a
withering blast from the desert, was still the only attraction of his
soul, the only object of his love. He could no more keep his mind off
God now than he could before, and now God killed him, and then He
made him alive. The ideas of the Divine goodness, patience, mercy,
and love which formerly welled up in abundant floods at the thought
of God, at the same thought now were dried up and disappeared. "Oh!"
he once exclaimed, "if I could only be sure that I shall not be
damned!" This was said unawares while listening to the life of a
saint. The reader will, therefore, understand that Father Hecker's
inner trouble was not a state of mere aridity, a difficulty of
concentration of mind on spiritual things, or a vagrancy of thought;
it was a perpetual facing of his Divine Accuser and Judge, a
trembling woe at the sight of Infinite Majesty on the part of one for
whom the Divine love was the one necessary of life for soul and body.
Yet he knew that this was really a higher form of prayer than any he
had yet enjoyed, that it steadily purified his understanding by
compelling ceaselessly repeated acts of faith in God's love, purified
his will by constant resignation of every joy except God alone--God
received by any mode in which it might please the Divine Majesty to
reveal Himself. He was, therefore, willing, nay, in a true sense,
glad thus to walk by mere faith and live by painful love. "I should
deem it a misfortune if God should cure me of my infirmities and
restore me to active usefulness, so much have I learned to appreciate
the value of my passive condition of soul." This he said less than
three years before his death. And about the same time, to a very
intimate friend: "God revealed to me in my novitiate that at some
future time I should suffer the crucifixion. I have always longed for
it; but oh, now that it has come it is hard, oh, it is terrible!" And
this he said weeping.

One aspect of the Divine Majesty which threatened for years to
overpower him was the Last Judgment. "God has given me to see the
terrors of the day of judgment," he once said, "and it has tried me
with dreadful severity; but it is a wonderfully great privilege."
Humility grew upon him day by day. No one who knew him well in his
day of greatest power could think him a proud man, but his confidence
in his vocation, and in himself is God's representative, had been
immense. The following, from a memorandum, shows how he ended:

"I told him how