ithout them was decided in the negative. They were not definitely
rejected in the beginning; but starting without them, the Fathers
were willing to allow experience to show whether or not they should
be resumed. The lapse of time but confirmed the view that the
voluntary agreement and the bond of fraternal charity were, under the
circumstances, preferable as securities for stability and incentives
to holiness.

There can be little doubt that Father Hecker's ideas on this feature
of the religious state had been greatly modified between the writing
of the _Questions of the Soul_ and the end of the struggle in Rome.
Much is said in that book of community life in the Catholic Church,
and generally as rendered stable and its spirit of sacrifice made
complete by the vows; and in the statement given in Rome to his five
chosen advisers, he says that one reason for writing the volume named
was to induce young men to enter the religious orders as the only
means of perfection--meaning orders under vows. But when he was
released from his own obligations and was confronted with the choice
of means for following his vocation, the horizon broadened away until
he could see beyond the institutions and traditions in which he had
lived since entering the novitiate at St. Trond. His ideas of
perfection in its relation to states of life underwent a change.
Therefore he said, Let us wait for the unmistakable will of God
before we bind ourselves with vows amidst a free people. He never
depreciated the evident value of these obligations; indeed, he seldom
was heard to speak of them. But he knew from close observation the
truth of the words of the Jesuit Avancinus:

"The net (St. Matthew 13:44) is the Catholic Church, or, to take a
narrower view, it means the station in which you are placed. As in a
net all kinds of fish are to be found, so in our position, as in all
others, there are good and bad Christians. . . . Should yours be a
sacred calling, you are not, on that account, either the better or
the more secure; your sanctity and your salvation depend on yourself,
not on your calling." (_Meditations,_ Fourteenth Friday after
Pentecost)

It never entered into the minds of the Fathers to question the
doctrine and practice of the Church concerning vows. But personal
experience proves the lesson of history, that what religion needs is
not so much holy states of life as holy men and Women.

Looking back into the past, Father Hecker saw St. P