tion of the
inner action of God, enlightening his mind and stinging his
conscience, by God's external action in the Church, that he often
confounds the two. He knows the Voice better by its echo than by its
own tones. There are many good Catholics, but few enlightened
mystics. This is not for lack of guidance, so far as doctrine is
concerned, for accredited authors on such subjects are numerous and
their teaching is uniform and explicit, besides being of the most
intense interest to those for whose instruction it is adapted. These
masters of spiritual doctrine not only dwell upon the interior life
itself, but also on the external order of God in His Church which
brings His interior teaching into proper relation with the exterior.
The interior life thus made integral is alone worthy of the term
_real;_ is alone worthy of the description of St. Paul when he calls
it "the witness of the Spirit." Now, as a witness who cannot be
brought into open court to give his testimony might as well be dumb,
and is as good as no witness, so the inner life, lacking the true
external order of God, is cramped and helpless; and cramped and
helpless Isaac Hecker was. Whatever he did, therefore, toward
investigating religious evidences was done primarily as a search for
the external criterion which should guarantee the validity of the
inspirations of God within him, and at the same time provide a medium
of union with his fellow-men.

Those whose advertence is not particularly aroused to the facts of
their interior life, have for their main task either the study of the
Church as a visible society, claiming continuity with one established
by Christ; or, preceding that, the question whether such a society
was ever founded by God. Now, although such questions must be settled
by all, they are not the main task of men like Isaac Hecker. In their
case the problem transcending all others is where to find that divine
external order demanded for the completion of their inner experience.
Such men must say: If there is no external order of God in this
world, then my whole interior life is fatally awry.

The captain whose voyage is on the track of the trade winds
nevertheless needs more than dead reckoning for his course; he needs
to take the sun at noon, to study the heavens at night, and to con
his chart. To follow one's interior drift only is to sail the ocean
without chart or compass. The sail that is wafted by the impulses of
the divine Spirit in