otion exclaimed, 'You treat him as a fool and despise him; the day
will come when you will think it an honor to kiss his hand.' At the
expiration of the second year (at Wittem) the question came up again,
what was to be done with me. My superior put this question to me, and
demanded of me under obedience to tell him in writing how, in my
belief, God intended to employ me in the future. Though the answer to
this question was no secret to me, yet to express it while in a
condition of such utter helplessness required me to make an act of
great mortification. There was no escape, and my reply was as follows:
It seemed to me in looking back at my career before becoming a
Catholic that Divine Providence had led me, as it were by the hand,
through the different ways of error and made me personally acquainted
with the different classes of persons and their wants, of which the
people of the United States is composed, in order that after having
made known to me the truth, He might employ me the better to point
out to them the way to His Church. That, therefore, my vocation was
to labor for the conversion of my non-Catholic fellow-countrymen.
This work, it seemed to me at first, was to be accomplished by means
of acquired science, but now it had been made plain that God would
have it done principally by the aid of His grace, and if (I were)
left to study at such moments as my mind was free, it would not take
a long time for me to acquire sufficient knowledge to be ordained a
priest. This plan was adopted."

A more explicit statement of the supernatural influences by means of
which God informed him of his mission was made in after years to
various persons, singly and in common. It was to the effect that the
Holy Spirit gave him a distinct and unmistakable intimation that he
was set apart to undertake, in some leading and conspicuous way, the
conversion of this country. That this intimation came to him while he
was at Wittem is also certain; but it is equally so that he had
premonitions of it during the novitiate. It was the incongruity of
such a persuasion being united to a helpless inactivity of mind in
matters of study that made Isaac Hecker a puzzle to his very self, to
say nothing of those who had to decide his place in the order. Father
Othmann, in bidding him farewell at St. Trond, had told him to become
_"un saint fou,"_ a holy fool; a direction based upon his excessive
abstraction of mind towards mystical things, and his co