“We do say, with great emphasis, that nothing under heaven should prevent a man from following God.  Unless a man can give up all and follow Christ, he is none of His.”

“Every true man is a genius.

“All genius is religious.

“The objective forms of genius are the expressions of the beautiful, the good, and the true; in one word—­God.

“He is a genius in whom the beautiful, the good, and the true permanently inhabit. . .

“The genius in every work of art is religious, whatever the subject may be.

“We repeat that every man is called to give expression to the highest, best, divinest in him; and to this, and to this only is he called.

“We add that the Catholic Church is the medium of this divine life, and that she has nurtured and encouraged men of genius in her bosom as a fond mother.

“We do not mean to say that the Church has converted men of ordinary stamp into geniuses, but that she has given the highest inspiration to the inborn capacity of genius, and so, to men thus gifted, has been the means by which they have become more than they could have been without her:  so, also, with the most ordinary men.

“We affirm that the influence of Protestantism upon the business world has been to make it much more unchristian than it was in the middle ages under the influence of Catholicism.”

At this period, when Isaac Hecker’s search had ceased, but when he had not yet entered into complete and formal possession of the truth, we find him looking back at his past almost as if it were a thing in which his interest was but curious and impersonal.  The thought of writing a history of it occurred to him, and he jotted down some brief notes, and made a partial collection of such letters and other memoranda, apart from the diary, as he found to have been preserved by his family.  But this scheme was merely one of the occupations with which he beguiled the necessary delay imposed on him by Bishop McCloskey’s absence.  One can easily believe that the plan he proposed to himself has deeply interested the present writer, who, though regretting that it was not followed out by Isaac Hecker himself, has yet been enabled by the diary and the letters to measurably fulfil its purpose.  He divided it into five periods, and, with a reminiscence of Wilhelm Meister, called it his Wanderjahr:

“The first should be named Youth, and give the ideal and the actual in youth.

“The second should be the struggle between the ideal and the actual.

“The third should be the mastery and supremacy of the ideal over the actual and material.

“The fourth should give the absolute union of the ideal and the eternal-absolute in their unconditioned existence.

“The fifth should give the eventual one-ness of the ideal-absolute with humanity and nature.

“Under these five heads I have in mind materials sufficient to make a volume, but lack the close application necessary to connect them.  I do not say it would be readable when done.  It would be the esoteric and exoteric history of my own life for ten years. . .