egular
duties of a city parish were added.

"I am hard at work," writes Father Hecker to a friend, in the very
midst of these labors, "in soliciting subscriptions for our convent
and temporary church. I have worked hard in my life, but this is
about the hardest. However, it goes. I had, a couple of weeks ago, a
donation of $200 from a Protestant. Yesterday a subscription of $90
from another. _Sursum Corda_ and go ahead, is my cry!" And, indeed,
he was full of courage and conscience in the future, all his letters
breathing a cheerful spirit.

Before giving Father Hecker's principles for community life, which we
will do in the next chapter, it may be well to say a few words more
about the attitude in which he and his companions had been placed, by
the action of the Holy See, toward the Catholic idea of authority.

Just as he was about to sail for America he wrote to his brother
George: "I return from Rome with my enthusiasm unchilled and my
resolution to labor for the conversion of our people intensified and
strengthened. I feel that the knowledge and experience which I have
acquired are most necessary for the American Fathers in their present
delicate position." And in truth his stay in Rome had prepared him
for the new responsibilities in store for him. His sufferings there
had purified his motives, his humiliations and his anguish had taught
him the need of reliance, total and loving, on Divine Providence. He
had studied authority in its chief seat, and he had done so with the
depth of impression which a man on trial for his life experiences of
the power of the advocates and the dignity of the judges. The result
of that trial was of infinite benefit. The test of genuine liberty is
its consonance with lawful authority, and in Father Hecker's case the
newest liberty had been roughly arraigned before the most venerable
authority known among men, tried by fire, and sent forth with Rome's
broad seal of approval.

Without doubt the chief endeavor of authority should be to win the
allegiance of free and aspiring spirits; but, on the other hand, no
one should be so firmly convinced of the rights of the external order
of God as the man who is called to minister to the aspirations of
human liberty.

No man ought to be so vividly conscious of the prerogatives of
authority as he who lays claim to a vocation to extol the worth of
liberty. It was, therefore, fitting that Father Hecker should learn
his lesson of the prerogativ