Chapter I: Front Matter

THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER

BY REV. WALTER ELLIOTT ________________________

NEW YORK: THE COLUMBUS PRESS 1891 ________________________

Nihil obstat: AUGUSTINUS F. HEWIT, _Censor Deputatus._

Imprimatur: M. A. CORRIGAN, _Archiepiscopus Neo-Ebor._ ________________________

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE reader must indulge me with what I cannot help saying, that I have felt the joy of a son in telling the achievements and chronicling the virtues of Father Hecker. I loved him with the sacred fire of holy kinship, and love him still--only the more that lapse of time has deepened by experience, inner and outer, the sense of truth and of purity he ever communicated to me in life, and courage and fidelity to conscience. I feel it to be honor enough and joy enough for a life-time that I am his first biographer, though but a late born child and of merit entirely insignificant. The literary work is, indeed, but of home-made quality, yet it serves to hold together what is the heaven-made wisdom of a great teacher of men. It will be found that Father Hecker has three words in this book to my one, though all my words I tried to make his. His journals, letters, and recorded sayings are the edifice into which I introduce the reader, and my words are the hinges and latchets of its doors. I am glad of this, for it pleases me to dedicate my good will and my poor work to swinging open the doors of that new House of God that Isaac Hecker was to me, and that I trust he will be to many.

WALTER ELLIOTT ________________________

CONTENTS ________________________

CHAPTER
I.--CHILDHOOD
II.--YOUTH
III.--THE TURNING-POINT
IV.--LED BY THE SPIRIT
V.--AT BROOK FARM
VI.--INNER LIFE WHILE AT BROOK FARM
VII.--STRUGGLES
VIII.--FRUITLANDS
IX.--SELF-QUESTIONINGS
X.--AT HOME AGAIN
XI.--STUDYING AND WRITING
XII.--THE MYSTIC AND THE PHILOSOPHER
XIII.--HIS SEARCH AMONG THE SECTS
XIV.--HIS LIFE AT CONCORD
XV.--AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH
XVI.--AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH--(Continued)
XVII.--ACROSS THE THRESHOLD
XVIII.--NEW INFLUENCES
XIX.--YEARNINGS AFTER CONTEMPLATION
XX.--FROM NEW YORK TO ST. TROND
XXI.--BROTHER HECKER
XXII.--HOW BROTHER HECKER MADE HIS STUDIES AND WAS ORDAINED PRIEST
XXIII.--A REDEMPTORIST MISSIONARY
XXIV.--SEPARATION FROM THE REDEMPTORISTS
XXV.--BEGINNINGS OF THE PAULIST COMMUNITY
XXVI.--FATHER HECKER'S IDEA OF A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY
XXVII.--FATHER HECKER'S SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE
XXVIII.--THE PAULIST PARISH AND MISSIONS
XXIX.--FATHER HECKER'S LECTURES
XXX.--THE APOSTOLATE OF THE PRESS
XXXI.--THE VATICAN COUNCIL
XXXII.--THE LONG ILLNESS
XXXIII.--"THE EXPOSITION OF THE CHURCH"
XXXIV.--IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH
XXXV.--CONCLUSION

APPENDIX ________________________