, or let them return
as soon as may be; let them give attention to what passes therein,
and they will observe the workings of the different spirits by which
we are actuated. Fifthly, let them lay bare the whole ground of their
heart to their superior or to their spiritual father. A soul which
acts with this openness and simplicity can hardly fail of being
favored with the direction of the Holy Spirit" (_Spiritual Doctrine,_
4th principle, ch. i. art. 3).

Father Hecker had himself suffered, and that in the earliest days of
his religious life, from want of explicit instruction about this
doctrine. Father Othmann, whom our readers remember as the
novice-master at St. Trond, was too spiritual a man to have been
ignorant of its principles. Yet he seemed to think that either no one
would choose it in preference to the method in more common use, or
that he would not find his novices ready for it. But to Father Hecker
it was all-essential. "When I was not far from being through with my
noviceship," he was heard to say, "I was one day looking over the
books in the library and I came across Lallemant's _Spiritual
Doctrine._ Getting leave to read it, I was overjoyed to find it a
full statement of the principles by which I had been interiorly
guided. I said to Pere Othmann: 'Why did you not give me this book
when I first came? It settles all my difficulties.' But he answered
that it had never once occurred to his mind to do so." Besides the
Scriptures, Lallemant, Surin, Scaramelli's _Directorium Mysticum,_
the ascetical and mystical writings of the contemplatives, such as
Rusbruck, Henry Suso (whose life he carried for years in his pocket,
reading it daily), Tauler, Father Augustine Baker's _Holy Wisdom_
(Sancta Sophia), Blosius, the works of St. Teresa, and those of St.
John of the Cross--these and other such works formed the literature
which aided Father Hecker in the understanding and enjoyment of the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. Lallemant he returned to ever and again,
and St. John of the Cross he never let go at all. It was always with
him, always read with renewed joy, and its wonderful lessons of
divine wisdom, expressed as they are with the scientific accuracy of
a trained theologian and the unction of a saint, were to Father
Hecker a pledge of security for his own state of soul and a source of
inspiration in dealing with others.

To the ordinary observer a knowledge of the men and women of to-day
does not give rise to