nd with perfect liberty, in the ways of
sanctity."--_The Church and the Age,_ p. 35.

In transcribing the above we are reminded that St. Ignatius, who was
the divine instrument in establishing and perfecting God's authority
in the external order, yet left on record that so clearly had the
Holy Spirit shown him by secret teaching the truths of religion,
that, if all the Scriptures had been destroyed, his private
revelations at Manresa would have sufficed him in their stead.

All that we have just been saying helps to answer the question why
Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker did not set up systems of their
own, and become Carlyles and Emersons or, especially in Father
Hecker's case, Emanuel Swedenborgs or Edward Irvings. We find the
following among the memoranda of conversations:

"June 30, 1886.--Why didn't I switch off from Christianity as Carlyle
did? Because I hope that I was truer to natural reason; but chiefly
because God had given me such an amount of infused lights and graces
that I was forced to seek a guide or go off into extravagant
fanaticism. They were ready to encourage me in the latter. George
Ripley said to me, 'Hecker, what have you got to tell? Tell us what
it is and we will accept it.'"

The impression a perfectly "independent thinker" made on him, as
typified in Emerson, is told in an entry in his diary, dated April 24,
1844:

"I have had a few words with Emerson. He stands on the extreme ground
where he did several years ago. He and his followers seem to me to
live almost a purely intellectual existence. His wife I have
understood to be a very religious woman. They are heathens in
thought, and profess to be so. They have no conception of the Church:
out of Protestantism they are almost perfectly ignorant. They are the
narrowest of men, yet they think they are extremely 'many-sided';
and, forsooth, do not comprehend Christendom, and reject it. The
Catholic accepts all the good they offer him and finds it
comparatively little compared to that which he has."

That he recognized that the test of the character of his inner
experiences, for good or ill, was to be finally found in what they
led him to, is shown by the following passage, already quoted, from
the diary: "What I do I must do, for it is not I that do it; it is
the Spirit. What that Spirit may be is a question I cannot answer.
What it leads me to do will be the only evidence of its character. I
feel as impersonal as a stranger to it."