herein I could say I live."

Those of our readers who are either versed in mystical theology or
who have any wide knowledge of the lives of the Church's more
interior saints, with neither of which Isaac Hecker had at this time
any acquaintance, will be apt to recall here St. Francis of Assisi
and his bride, the Lady Poverty, the similar occurrences related by
Henry Suso of himself, and the mystic espousals of St. Catharine. We
have in this relation not only the plainly avowed reason why he
accepted the celibate life, even before entering the Church or
arriving at any clear understanding of his duty to do so, but we have
something more. Not yet certain of his own vocation, the dream of a
virginal apostolate, including the two sexes, had already absorbed
his yearnings, never again to be forgotten. Neither priest nor
Catholic, save in the as yet unrevealed ordinance of God, he was no
longer free to invite any woman to marriage, no matter how deeply he
might be sensible of her feminine attraction. The union of souls?
Yes; for uses worthy of souls. The union of bodies? No; that would
only clip his wings and narrow his horizon. Thenceforward the test of
true kinship with him could only be a kindred aspiration after union
in liberty from merely natural trammels, in order to tend more surely
to a supernatural end.

This may seem to some a strange beginning to a life so simply and
entirely set apart from the active, or, at least, public union of the
sexes in apostolic labors. Strange or not, the reader will see it to
be more true as this biography proceeds, and its writer is not
conscious of any reluctance to make it known. Such an integral
supernatural mission to men was what he ever after desired and sought
to establish, though he only attained success on the male side. We
cannot deny that this diary, surprising to us in many ways, was most
so in this particular, although in this particular we found the
explanation of many words spoken by Father Hecker in his maturity and
old age, words the most sober and the most decided we ever heard from
him. He never for an hour left out of view the need of women for any
great work of religion, though he doubtless made very sure of his
auditor before unveiling his whole thought. He never made so much as
a serious attempt to incorporate women with his work, but he never
ceased to look around and to plan with a view to doing so. Among the
personal memoranda already mentioned are found evid