Life of Father Hecker Part 15

Seabury, that he has to be prudent and cautious on account of the state of mind of those whom he has to speak to. Well enough; but why should one go to a weak and almost dried-up spring when there is one equally near, fresh, always flowing and full of life? . . . There may be those, and I do not question there are many such good persons, who do not feel the deep demands of the spiritual nature as profoundly as others do, and that the Anglican Church fully satisfes all their needs. But even in her bosom there are many who think that if the Oxford tendencies are Anglican, she is very idolatrous and exceedingly superst.i.tious, because they feel no need for so much discipline and ceremony, and such faith in the invisible . . . all reasons that can tempt one in my position are in favor of the Anglican Church, and it is a source of much joy that there is no conceivable inducement of a worldly or mixed nature for me to join the Roman Catholic Church. If there were I should distrust myself . . . It seems to me that the difference between my embracing the Roman Catholic Church and any other is the same as the difference between remaining as I am, and selling all that I have and following Christ."

His deference for his friends' opinions, though he made their views no condition of his action, is beautifully shown by the following words: "John, and all who feel like giving me advice, you will not hesitate in giving it freely and frankly. There are many reasons for my present course; it is impossible for me to put them all on paper.

But when I return home and meet you all again, we will in love speak of this in common communion: until then I will not take any decisive step. I suppose you feel as little inclined to speak to others of the decision I have come to as I do to have it prematurely known."

To the brother whose heart was most his own he devotes the concluding words of the letter:

"What is brother George's mind respecting the need of receiving this diviner life in order to bring us into a closer communion with G.o.d and make us inhabitants of heaven? George, shall we go arm-in-arm in our heavenly journey as we have done in our earthly one?"

While awaiting an answer to this letter he began another, in which he summarizes more explicitly such of his reasons for becoming a Catholic as might appeal on ordinary grounds of controversy to his mother and his brother John, the latter of whom had recently become an Episcopalian. Our extracts, however, will be made from the pa.s.sages more strictly personal and characteristic:

"Concord, June 14, 1844.--Until I hear from you I cannot say how you may view my resolution or feel regarding the decision I have come to, and therefore I am at a loss what to say to you respecting it. One thing must strike you as inexplicable: that I relinquish my studies here so suddenly. This arises from the fact that I have not kept you perfectly informed concerning the change my mind has for some time been undergoing with regard to the object and end of study, its office and its benefits. I kept silent, thinking that my views might be but temporary, and that it was unnecessary to trouble you with them. My simple faith is, in a few words, that we must first seek the kingdom of G.o.d, and then all necessary things will be given us. And this kingdom is not found through nature, philosophy, science, art, or by any other method than that of the Gospel: the perfect surrender of the whole heart to G.o.d."

We stop here to remark that such expressions as these are neither to be taken as evidences of a pa.s.sing disgust for the drudgery of text-book tasks, nor as signs of an indolent disposition. They are the a.s.sertion of a principle which Father Hecker maintained throughout his life. He never felt the least interest in studies not undertaken as a result of some supernatural impulse, or pursued in view of some supernatural aim. He looked with the coldest unconcern upon such investigations of science as promise nothing toward solving the problems which perplex humanity on the moral side, or which do not contribute to the natural well-being of men. With the pursuit of any science which does promise such results he was in the fullest sympathy, and was himself an unwearied student. It was anything but intellectual indolence which caused him to put away his books. He was naturally of a busy temperament: if men who knew him but slightly might think him visionary, no man could know him at all and consider him a sluggard. We shall see in the sequel how, under extremely critical circ.u.mstances, the a.s.sertion of this principle was wrung from him by the constraining force of his interior guide. Much of what follows ill.u.s.trates this trait of character.

The letter last quoted from had not yet been sent when the answer to his announcement of June 11 reached him, and he added a postscript.

The only point in it to which he alludes or makes any direct reply is the gentle expression of his mother's disapprobation of his purpose:

"Your letter and draft, brother George, came this morning. You say mother would prefer my joining the Anglican Church. The reasons why she prefers this are such as would doubtless govern me if I did not feel still deeper and stronger reasons to overcome them. . . . My present convictions are deeper far than any I have ever experienced, and are not hastily decided upon."

Turning now to the diary, the entries made at this time seem especially characteristic:

"June 13, 1844.--I feel very cheerful and at ease since I have consented to join the Catholic Church. Never have I felt the quietness, the immovableness, and the permanent rest that I do now.

It is inexpressible. I feel that essential and interior permanence which nothing exterior can disturb, and no act which it calls on me to perform will move in the least. It is with a perfect ease and gracefulness that I never dreamed of that I shall unite with the Church. It will not change but fix my life. No external relations, events, or objects can disturb this unreachable quietness or break the deep repose in which I am.

"The exoteric eye is double; the esoteric eye is single.

"The external world is divisional; the internal world is unity.

"The esoteric includes the exoteric, but the exoteric excludes the esoteric.

"The man can move all faculties, organs, limbs; but they cannot move the man.

"The Creator moves the creature, and the creature moves the created.

"We know G.o.d by looking towards Him with the single eye.

"To-morrow I go with R. W. Emerson to Harvard to see Lane and Alcott, and shall stay until Sunday. We shall not meet each other, for I can meet him on no other grounds than those of love. We may talk intellectually together, and remark, and reply, and remark again."

We give the reader from the diary the following estimate of a transcendentalist, mainly to serve as a background for the picture which Isaac Hecker drew of his own mind in the succeeding pages:

"June 14.--A transcendentalist is one who has keen sight but little warmth of heart; who has fine conceits but is dest.i.tute of the rich glow of love. He is _en rapport_ with the spiritual world, unconscious of the celestial one. He is all nerve and no blood--colorless. He talks of self-reliance, but fears to trust himself to love. He never abandons himself to love, but is always on the lookout for some new fact. His nerves are always tight-stretched, like the string of a bow; his life is all effort. In a short period he loses his tone. Behold him sitting on a chair; he is not sitting, but braced upon its angles, as if his bones were of iron and his nerves steel; every nerve is drawn, his hands are closed like a miser's--it is his lips and head that speak, not his tongue and heart. He prefers talking about love to possessing it, as he prefers Socrates to Jesus. Nature is his church, and he is his own G.o.d. He is a dissecting critic--heartless, cold. What would excite love and sympathy in another, excites in him curiosity and interest. He would have written an essay on the power of the soul at the foot of the Cross. . . .

"That the shaping of events is not wholly in our own hands my present unantic.i.p.ated movement has clearly demonstrated to me. . . I know of no act that I could make which would have more influence to shape my destiny than my union with the Catholic Church. . . . It is very certain to me that my life is now as it never has been. It seems that I live, feel, and act from my heart. That reads, talks, hears, sees, smells, and all. All is unity with me, all love. Instead of exciting thoughts and ideas, as all things have done heretofore, they now excite love, cheerful emotion, and gladness of heart.

"To the Spirit within I address myself: So long as I struggled against Thee I had pain, sorrow, anguish, doubt, weeping, and distress of soul. Again and again have I submitted to Thee, though ever reluctantly; yet was it always in the end for my good. Oh! how full of love and goodness art Thou to suffer in us and for us, that we may be benefited and made happy. It is from Thy own pure love for us, for Thy happiness cannot be increased or diminished, that Thou takest upon Thee all the suffering of the children.

"Lord, if I would or could give myself wholly up to Thee, nothing but pure joy, complete happiness, and exquisite pleasure would fill all my spirit, soul, and body. The Lord desires our whole happiness; it is we who hinder Him from causing it by our struggles against His love-working Spirit.

"Who is the Lord? Is He not our nearest friend? Is any closer to us than He when we are good? Is any further from us when we are wicked?

His simple presence is blessedness. Our marriage with the Lord should be so complete that nothing could attract our attention from Him.

"We shall speak best to men when we do not reflect on whom we are talking to. Speak always as if in the presence of G.o.d, where you must be if you would speak to benefit your neighbor.

"If we are pure before G.o.d the eyes of men will never make us ashamed.

"We must be blind to all things and have our single eye turned toward G.o.d when we would act in any manner upon earth--when we would heavenize it."

Here ends the contemporary record of his life in Concord. The next letters are dated at Worcester; the next entry in the diary at New York. There remain, however, some interesting allusions to it in the articles in this magazine of 1887 concerning Dr. Brownson, and some conversations, still more graphic, in the pages of the memoranda.

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CHAPTER XVI

AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH--CONTINUED

THE first Bishop of Boston, John Louis de Cheverus, who left that diocese to become successively the Bishop of Montauban and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, was, in the strictest sense, a missionary during his American episcopate. Thoroughly French in blood, in training, in manners, and in zeal, his penetrating intelligence not less than his saintly life and his tireless charity recommended him to men of all creeds and of none. His departure from Boston was regarded by all its citizens as a public misfortune, and by himself as cause for profound personal sorrow. He had learned there a lesson of liberty which he found it hard to forget when he went away. One of his biographers records that Charles X., whose offer to make him Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs Cheverus had declined, once questioned him concerning the liberty enjoyed by the Church in the United States. "There," said the archbishop in reply.

"I could have established missions in every church, founded seminaries in every quarter, and confided them to the care of Jesuits without any one thinking or saying aught against my proceedings; all opposition to them would have been regarded as an act of despotism and a violation of right." "That people understand liberty, at least," returned the king; "when will it be understood among us?"

We have spoken of Bishop Cheverus because, at the time of Isaac Hecker's acquaintance with his successors, his influence was still felt in Boston.

His immediate successor was Benedict Joseph Fenwick, a Marylander, descended in direct line from one of the original English Catholic pilgrims who founded that colony under Lord Baltimore. During his episcopate the diocese grew amazingly. When he went to it, in 1826, although it comprised the whole of New England, it contained but two churches fit for divine service, and only two priests besides himself. When he died, in 1846, he left behind him two bishoprics where there had been but one; while in that of Boston alone there were then fifty churches, served by as many priests. Although conversions had not been rare, the increase was mainly due to immigration, which the great famine in Ireland was speedily to increase. The efforts of Bishop Fenwick and those of his coadjutor and successor were, in the nature of things, conservative rather than aggressive.

Bishop Fitzpatrick, also, was American by birth and training. A native of Boston, he was reared in its public grammar and Latin schools until the age of seventeen, when he began his studies for the priesthood, which he finished in France. Both of these prelates continued the tradition of Cheverus so far as their own persons were concerned. But while they easily won and retained the respect of their more intelligent Protestant fellow-citizens, the confidence they inspired as men was not ample enough to protect the Church over which they ruled when once it began to show signs of solid prosperity. Cheverus was not wrong in counting with a.s.surance upon American love for and understanding of true liberty, but he doubtless owed more than he thought at the time to the insignificance and scanty numbers of his flock. There came a period, even in the career of his immediate successor, when liberty itself seemed but a feeble sapling which a strong wind of stupid bigotry might avail to root out and cast away; while the chronicle of Bishop Fitzpatrick's episcopate contains the record of convents invaded under forms of law, and of both convents and churches sacked and burned by "Native American"

mobs, who were secure of their immunity from punishment. Such outrages, witnessed by the second and third Bishops of Boston, and the incessant conflict to which they were compelled with the bigotry which caused them and which protected their perpetrators, predisposed both them and their clergy to a distrustful att.i.tude toward converts like Brownson and Hecker, in whom American traits of character were very conspicuous. Dr. Brownson has recorded in _The Convert,_ p. 374, the fact that his entrance into the Church was delayed for months by his fear of explaining to Bishop Fitzpatrick the precise road by which he had approached it. He says:

"I really thought that I had made some philosophical discoveries which would be of value even to Catholic theologians in convincing and converting unbelievers, and I dreaded to have them rejected by the Catholic bishop. But I perceived almost instantly that he either was ignorant of my doctrine of life or placed no confidence in it; and I felt that he was far more likely, bred as he had been in a different philosophical school from myself, to oppose than to accept.

I had, indeed, however highly I esteemed the doctrine, no special attachment to it for its own sake, and could, so far as it was concerned, give it up at a word without a single regret; but, if I rejected or waived it, what reason had I for regarding the Church as authoritative for natural reason, or for recognizing any authority in the bishop himself to teach me? Here was the difficulty. . . . My trouble was great, and the bishop could not relieve me, for I dared not disclose to him its source."

The reader will understand that we do not compare the course of Bishop Fitzpatrick in Brownson's case with that taken by him toward Isaac Hecker. The latter was a young man, unknown to the bishop save by what he may have said of his own antecedents, while Brownson was a well-known publicist, concerning whom some reserve was natural and prudent.

With Bishop Fenwick, who was already in failing health, the new candidate for admission to the fold seems to have had very little intercourse. As we have seen, the journal makes only a pa.s.sing reference to him, but is more explicit with regard to his coadjutor.

Certain points in their interview which remained ever fresh in his memory were, at the time, cast into the shade by his deep preoccupation with what may, perhaps, be called the spiritual as distinguished from the intellectual side of the Church. That in her which makes her the tender and bountiful mother of the simple was what chiefly attracted him, just as others are mainly drawn to her as the adequate teacher and guide of the intellect. If he found the door at which he was knocking something hard in turning on its hinges; if the vestibule into which he was ushered seemed a trifle narrower than he had expected at the entrance of a temple so world-wide; his satisfaction at having determined upon entrance made all other considerations for the moment dwindle. But that the impressions he received were permanent, in their suggestiveness at least, is witnessed by an article in this magazine for April, 1887, ent.i.tled "Dr. Brownson and Bishop Fitzpatrick," as well as by the several references to this period which occur in the memoranda.

In the article just named Father Hecker threw into a paragraph or two, which we subjoin, the substance of his first, and perhaps at this time his only, interview with Bishop Fitzpatrick:

"It was always difficult to detect how much of conviction and how much of banter there was in his treatment of men engaged in the actual intellectual movement of our times. I found such to be the case in my own intercourse with him. He always attacked me in a bantering way, but, I thought, half in earnest too. Hence I never found it advisable to enter into argument with him. How can you argue with a man, a brilliant wit and an accomplished theologian, who continually flashes back and forth between first principles and witticisms? When I would undertake to grapple with him on first principles he would throw me off with a joke, and while I was parrying the joke he was back again upon first principles.

"An ill.u.s.tration of his way of treating men and questions was his reception of me when I presented myself to him, some months before Dr. Brownson did, for reception into the Church. 'What truths were the stepping-stones that led you here?' he would have asked if he had had the temperament of the apostle. But instead of searching for truth in me he began to search for error. I had lived with the Brook Farm Community and with the Fruitlands Community, and before that had been a member of a Workingman's party in New York City, in all which organizations the right of private owners.h.i.+p of property had been a prime question. . . . But, as for my part, at the time Bishop Fitzpatrick wanted me to purge myself of communism, I had settled the question in my own mind, and on principles which I afterwards found to be Catholic. The study and settlement of the question of owners.h.i.+p was one of the things that led me into the Church, and I am not a little surprised that what was a door to lead me into the Church seems at this day to be a door to lead some others out. But when the bishop attacked me about it, it was no longer with me an actual question. I had settled the question of private owners.h.i.+p in harmony with Catholic principles, or I should not have dared to present myself as a convert. But I mention this because it ill.u.s.trates Bishop Fitzpatrick's character.

"His was, indeed, a first-cla.s.s mind both in natural gifts and acquired cultivation, but his habitual bearing was that of suspicion of error; as man and prelate he had a joyful readiness to search it out and correct it from his own point of view. He was a type of mind common then and not uncommon now--the embodiment of a purpose to refute error, and to refute it by condemnation direct, authoritative even if argumentative: the other type of mind would seek for truth amidst the error, establish its existence, applaud it, and endeavor to make it a basis for further truth and a fulcrum for the overthrow of the error connected with it.

"It will be seen, then, what kind of man Dr. Brownson first met as the official exponent of Catholicity, one hardly capable of properly understanding and dealing with a mind like his; for he was one who had come into the possession of the full truth not so much from hatred of error as from love of truth. Brownson's soul was intensely faithful to its personal convictions, faithful unto heroism--for that is the temper of men who seek the whole truth free from cowardice, or narrowness, or bias. He has admitted that the effect of his intercourse with the bishop was not fortunate. He confesses that he forced him to adopt a line of public controversy foreign to his genius, and one which had not brought him into the Church, and perhaps could not have done so."

The memoranda contain a more familiar account of this interview:

"I presented myself for instruction and reception into the Church at the episcopal residence, and was received by the old bishop, Fenwick.