ow
whether I should ever be delivered from it. Now, little by little God
is lifting it off from my soul. For ten years I have been under this
cloud. Oh, how terrible a suffering it has been!' This he said, his
hands covering his face; he had interrupted me to say it while I was
reading St. John of the Cross. 'Oh!' he added, 'how I could weep for
my sins,' and so on for a few more words."

The clouds soon settled down again. The following was noted a little
over a month after the above:

"Father Hecker said to me to-day: 'There was a time when I seemed to
know God so clearly and to be so conscious of His attraction that my
whole thought and wish was death; to break the chain of life to be
united to God in Paradise. Now it is altogether different; nothing
but darkness and depression.'"

Here is another memorandum, taken some time before the above:

"Father Hecker said: 'God is now visiting me with the profoundest
desolation of spirit. I have the most deadly terror of death; if I
yielded to it I should tremble from head to foot. Yet there is a
spell on me which makes me wish that I may die without sensible faith
and deprived of every present spiritual comfort. . . .' He also said
many things about his continued and unbroken desolation of spirit
these several years back. 'Yet,' said he, 'I never knew that God
would permit me to come so near to Him and see so much of Him as I
have.' Then he made me read to him the first chapter of the Book of
Job. . . . After he had gone to bed I read to him part of an article
in _The Month_ on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and he
discoursed meantime to me most profoundly on that topic. And he
added: 'One reason why I have always been so much interested in the
doctrine of the Holy Ghost acting in the soul is a practical one,
because I myself have never had any other director, though I have
more than once opened my mind entirely to others and profited by
their advice, but none was or could be really my director. Hence,
too, I am so much attracted to saints who have had to struggle on
alone like St. Catherine of Genoa, who was without a director for
twenty-five years.'"

Towards the close of October, 1888, two months before death, Doctor
Begen saw that the end was approaching. This was evident from a
sudden and general failure of strength, the appetite, not much at any
time, seeming now to vanish quite away, although Father Hecker's
strong will forced down a little nourishment. Thi