“Who is the Lord?  Is He not our nearest friend?  Is any closer to us than He when we are good?  Is any further from us when we are wicked?  His simple presence is blessedness.  Our marriage with the Lord should be so complete that nothing could attract our attention from Him.

“We shall speak best to men when we do not reflect on whom we are talking to.  Speak always as if in the presence of God, where you must be if you would speak to benefit your neighbor.

“If we are pure before God the eyes of men will never make us ashamed.

“We must be blind to all things and have our single eye turned toward God when we would act in any manner upon earth—­when we would heavenize it.”

Here ends the contemporary record of his life in Concord.  The next letters are dated at Worcester; the next entry in the diary at New York.  There remain, however, some interesting allusions to it in the articles in this magazine of 1887 concerning Dr. Brownson, and some conversations, still more graphic, in the pages of the memoranda.

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CHAPTER XVI

AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH—­CONTINUED

THE first Bishop of Boston, John Louis de Cheverus, who left that diocese to become successively the Bishop of Montauban and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, was, in the strictest sense, a missionary during his American episcopate.  Thoroughly French in blood, in training, in manners, and in zeal, his penetrating intelligence not less than his saintly life and his tireless charity recommended him to men of all creeds and of none.  His departure from Boston was regarded by all its citizens as a public misfortune, and by himself as cause for profound personal sorrow.  He had learned there a lesson of liberty which he found it hard to forget when he went away.  One of his biographers records that Charles X., whose offer to make him Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs Cheverus had declined, once questioned him concerning the liberty enjoyed by the Church in the United States.  “There,” said the archbishop in reply.  “I could have established missions in every church, founded seminaries in every quarter, and confided them to the care of Jesuits without any one thinking or saying aught against my proceedings; all opposition to them would have been regarded as an act of despotism and a violation of right.”  “That people understand liberty, at least,” returned the king; “when will it be understood among us?”

We have spoken of Bishop Cheverus because, at the time of Isaac Hecker’s acquaintance with his successors, his influence was still felt in Boston.