apes. Another practice which Father Hecker often deprecated
was the binding of free and generous souls with all sorts of
obligations in the way of devotional exercises. This is forcing
athletes to go on crutches. The excuse for it all is that it really
does stagger human belief to accept as a literal matter of fact that
God the Holy Ghost personally comes to us with divine grace and gives
Himself to us; that He actually and essentially dwells in our souls
by grace, and in an unspeakably intimate manner takes charge of our
entire being, soul and body, and all our faculties and senses.

"By sanctifying grace," says St. Thomas (p. I, q. 33, art. 2), "the
rational creature is thus perfected, that it may not only use with
liberty the created good, but that it may also enjoy the uncreated
good; and therefore the invisible sending of the Holy Ghost takes
place in the gift of sanctifying grace and the Divine Person Himself
is given to us."

It is the soul's higher self, thus in entire union with the Spirit of
God, that Father Hecker spent his life in cultivating, both in his
own interior and in that of others. He insisted that in the normal
condition of things the mainspring of virtue, both natural and
supernatural, should be for the regenerate man the instinctive
obedience of the individual soul to the voice of the indwelling Holy
Spirit.

To what an extent this inner divine guidance has been obscured by
more external methods is witnessed by Monsignor Gaume, who places
upon the title-page of his learned work on the Holy Spirit the motto
"Ignoto Deo"--to the Unknown God!

Objections to this doctrine are made from the point of view of
caution. There is danger of exaggeration, it is said; for if in its
terms it is plainly Catholic, it may sound Protestant to some ears.
And in fact to those whose glances have been ever turned outward for
guidance it seems like the delusions of certain classes of
Protestants about "change of heart" and "inner light."

"But," says Lallemant (and the reader will thank us for a detailed
reply to this difficulty from so venerable an authority), "it is of
faith that without the grace of an interior inspiration, in which the
guidance of the Holy Spirit consists, we cannot do any good work. The
Calvinists would determine everything by their inward spirit,
subjecting thereto the Church herself and her decisions. . . . But
the guidance which we receive from the Holy Ghost by means of His
gifts presup