"The Spirit will lead you into solitude and silence if it has something to teach you.
"You must be born again to know the truth. It cannot be inculcated.
"To educate is to bring forth, not to put in. To put in is death; to flow out is life."
Lest the reader may have got an impression, from any of the extracts already given, that Isaac Hecker was puffed up by the pride of his own innocence, we transcribe what follows. It shows that he did not fall under the Apostle's condemnation: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It was written on the last Sunday of September, and, after this long outpouring of confession, longing, and weakness, the diary was not again resumed for nearly a month. The desire expressed in its second paragraph for the kind of spiritual refreshment which in after years he so often enjoyed under the name of a "retreat," seems noteworthy.
"September 24, 1843.—The human heart is wicked above all things. The enemy of man is subtle and watchful beyond conception. Instead of being on the way of goodness, I am just finding out the wickedness of my nature, its crookedness, its impurity, its darkness. I want deep humility and forgetfulness of self. I am just emerging out of gross darkness and my sight is but dim, so that my iniquities are not wholly plain to my vision.
"At present I feel as if a week of quiet silence would be the means of opening more deeply the still flowing fountains of divine life. I would cut off all relations but that of my soul with the Spirit—all others seem intrusions, worldly, frivolous. The inpouring of the Spirit is checked by so much attention to other than divine things. In the bustle and noisy confusion its voice is unheard.
"I feel that one of my greatest weaknesses, because it leads me to so much sin, is my social disposition. It draws me so often into perilous conversations, and away from silence and meditation with the Spirit. Lately I have felt almost ready to say that good works are a hindrance to the gate of heaven. Pride and self-approbation are so often mixed with them. I feel that nothing has been spoken against the vain attempt to trust in good works which my soul does not fully accord with. This is a new, a very new experience for me."
The foregoing must be understood in the sense of good works hindering better works. Isaac Hecker felt his noblest aspirations to be, for the moment at any rate, towards solitude and the passive state of prayer; and in this he was hindered by the urgency of his zeal for the propagation of philanthropic schemes and his great joy in communing with men whom he hoped to find like-minded with himself. The time came when he was able to Join the two states, the inner purifying the outer man and directing his energies by the instinct of the Holy Spirit. This entry goes on as follows:
"By practice of our aspirations, ideals, and visions, we convert them into real being.
"We should be able to say, 'Which of you convinceth me of sin?' before we are fit to preach to others in such a way that our preaching may have a practical effect upon society.