"Yours truly,
"O. A. BROWNSON."
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CHAPTER XV
AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH
THE first effect of Brownson's letter was to throw its recipient into a state of great though brief perplexity. That final struggle, strange and painful, in which the soul for the last time contends against its happiness; in which it is drawn by an invincible attraction, knowing that it will yield yet striving still to resist; is one that must remain but half-comprehended by most of those to whom Catholic truth is an inheritance. And yet there is an explanation which Father Hecker himself would possibly have given. "Do you know what God is?" he said to the present writer in 1882, in that abrupt fashion with which he often put the deepest questions. "That is not what I mean," he went on, after getting a conventional reply: "I'll tell you what God is. He is the eternal Lover of the soul." That shudder of blind aversion which is a part of the experience of so many converts, is an instinctive testimony that the call to the truth is more than natural, while the overpowering attraction which attends it witnesses that nature must needs obey or perish. The Church, too, is not heard by the soul merely as the collective voice of many men and ages of men agreed upon the truth, but as a mystic personality which makes her the imperative ambassadress of Christ. For she is the Spouse of the Lamb, and in her the Incarnate Word obtains a voice which is no less single in its personality than multitudinous in its tones.
Much as Isaac Hecker had considered the matter, studying, reading, praying, assuring himself from time to time that if any church were true this was the one, and that to enter it was probably his duty, now that Brownson's weight was likewise thrown into the scale and it went down with a warning thud, he thrilled through with apprehension. "I feel like throwing all up," he wrote in the diary on the day the letter reached him. "Some cannot rest. How much better would it have been could I have remained in quietness at my daily pursuits, and not been led to where I now find myself."
Then he questions himself: "What have I against the Catholic Church?
At this moment I cannot say that I have anything that is essential.
And she meets my wants on every side.
"Oh, this is the deepest event of my life! I would have united myself to any one of the Protestant sects if I had found any that would have answered the demands of my nature. Why should I now hesitate when I find the Catholic Church will do so? Is not this the self-will which revolts against the involuntary will of the Spirit?
"The fundamental question is, Am I willing to submit my will to the guidance and direction of the Church? If she is the body of Christ; if she is the channel of the Holy Ghost; if she is the inspired body illumined by Christ's Spirit; in a word, if she is the Catholic Church; if I would serve God and humanity; if I would secure the favor of God, and heaven hereafter; why should I not submit to her?"