It takes an intimate knowledge of Catholicity to perceive the interior transformation of humanity by its supernatural aids. On the one hand, the influence of Isaac Hecker's Brook Farm surroundings was to persuade him to confide wholly in nature, which there was very nearly at its unaided best. On the other hand, the treasures of Catholicity for the inner life were hidden from him. Religion, in his conception of it—in the true conception of it—must be the binding of all things together, natural and supernatural. Hence we find him at times complaining that the Church is not sufficient for his wants. If it were not personal in its adaptation to him, it was little that it should be historical this, hierarchical that, or biblical the other. It must be his primarily, because he cannot live a rational and pure life without it. An ordinarily decorous life, if you will; free from lust or passion, and without gross unreason, but nevertheless tame, unprogressive, dry and unproductive, without any absolute certainty except that of the helplessness of man. Such a life seemed to him hardly more than a synonym for death. "The fact is," as he writes on a page now lying before us, "I want to live every moment. I want something positive, living, nourishing. I negative only by affirming."
The earliest entry in this diary has been already quoted in the first
CHAPTER of the present biography. On its second page occurs the following account of his impressions while in church on Easter Sunday:
"Monday, April 17, 1843.—Yesterday I went to the Catholic church at West Roxbury. It was Easter Sunday. The services were, to me, very impressively affecting. The altar-piece represented Christ's rising from the tomb, and this was the subject-matter of the priest's sermon. In the midst of it he turned and pointed to the painting, with a few touching words. All eyes followed his, which made his remarks doubly affecting. How inspiring it must be to the priest, when he is preaching, to see around him the Saviour, and the goodly company of martyrs, saints, and fathers! There may be objections to having paintings and sculptures in churches, but I confess that I never enter a place where there is either but I feel an awe, an invisible influence, which strikes me mute. I would sit in silence, covering my head. A sanctified atmosphere seems to fill the place and to penetrate my soul when I enter, as if I were in a holy temple. 'Thou standest in a holy place,' I would say. A loud word, a heavy footstep, makes me shudder, as if an infidel were desecrating the place. I stand speechless, in a magical atmosphere that wraps my whole being, scarcely daring to lift my eyes. A perfect stillness comes over my soul; it seems to be soaring on the bosom of clouds."
"Tuesday, April 18.—I confess that either the Church is not sufficient for my wants or I have not seen it in its glory. I hope it may be the latter. I do not want to say it, but I must own that it fills me no more. I contemplate it, I look at it, I comprehend it. It does not lead me to aspire. I feel that either it has nothing to give, or that what it has is not that for which my soul is aching. I know it can be said in reply that I cannot know what the Church has until I am in communion with it; that it satisfies natures greater than mine; that it is the true life of the world; that there is no true spirituality outside of it, and that before I can judge it rightly my life must be equal to it in purity and elevation. Much more might be said. But, after all, what is it? The Catholic shows up the Anglican; the Anglican retorts with an accusation of corruption, and even a want of purity; the Protestant, the Presbyterian, claim their own mission at the expense of consistency and good logic. . . .
"The whole fact, I suppose, is that if there is anything in Succession, Tradition, Infallibility, Church organism and form, it is in the Catholic Church, and our business will be to stop this controversy and call an Ecumenical Council which shall settle these matters according to the Bible, Tradition, and the light of the Church."
There is a touch of unconscious humor in the final paragraph which clamored for quotation. But it was plainly written in profound earnest.
"Thursday, April 20.—My soul is disquieted, my heart aches. . . Tears flow from my eyes involuntarily. My soul is grieved—for what? Yesterday, as I was praying, the thought flashed across my mind, Where is God? Is He not here? Why prayest thou as if He were at a great distance from thee? Think of it. Where canst thou place Him—in what locality? Is He not here in thy midst? Is His presence not nearest of all to thee? Oh, think of it! God is here. . . .
"Am I impious to say that the language used in Scripture for Christ's expresses the thoughts of my soul? Oh, could we but understand that the kingdom of heaven is always at hand to the discerner, and that God calls upon all to 'Repent, for ye shall not all disappear until it shall open. This generation shall not pass away.'"
Then follows a page of philosophizing on time and eternity, immensity and space, and "monads who may develop or fulfil their destiny in other worlds than this," a reminiscence, perhaps, of the lectures on such topics at which Mr. Curtis says Isaac used to "look in," hoping to "find an answer to his questions." Such speculations are a trait throughout the diary, though they are everywhere subordinate to the practical ends which dominantly interest him. A day or two later comes a passage, already given in a preceding chapter, in reference to certain prophetic dreams which it has been given him to see realized. And at once this follows: