“I would open the first chapter thus:  Let men say what they will, God above us, the human soul, and all surrounding nature, are great realities, eternal, solemn, joyous facts of human experience.”

In the fine passage that follows we have an anticipation of the prominent modern conception of Christianity, as a developing force in the history of man—­closing an epoch and introducing a new species; or, as Father Hecker would have said in later years, raising man from his natural position as a creature of God to true sonship with Him through affiliation with Jesus Christ.  The thought, as it stands in the diary, is eminently characteristic of Isaac Hecker, who always felt, in a measure beyond what is ordinary, his solidarity with all his kind, and a longing to keep in step with them on the line of their direct advance: 

“July 12.—­We make no question that God gave to all nations, previous to the birth of Jesus Christ, His beloved and only Son, dispensations of light and love in their great men, and led them from time to time to the stage of civilization to which they arrived.  The Christian affirms that God is the Parent of humanity, the Father of every human being.* It would be in direct contradiction to his faith to deny this.  But Jesus Christ came to introduce a new life, whose light and love should so surpass all that had been before Him as to make it appear as darkness by contrast.  This life makes no war against the good and true that already existed in men, but it embraces, includes, and fulfils it all, and then adds more than men had dared to dream before His coming.  That Christianity is of this high character, not only did its Author show by the example of His life and death, but it has shown itself to be so wherever it has come in contact with any of the older forms of religious faith and doctrine.  It has exhibited a power that is superior to, and which overcomes, all that arrays itself against it.  We do not deny that Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, Cato, etc., were good, great, and religious men, above the age in which they lived, and inspired be a life not only superior to that of their time but above that of a great part of Christendom, so-called.  But we say that Christ gave to the world a life infinitely above theirs, and that, had they been His contemporaries, or ours, they would have been as far superior to their actual selves as the inspiration of Christianity is superior to that under which they lived.”

[* “As some also of your own poets said:  For we are also His offspring.  Being, therefore, the offspring of God, we must not suppose the Divinity to be like unto gold or silver or stone, the graving of art and the device of man.” (Acts 17:28, 29)]

Although there is authority for saying that the business partnership between Isaac Hecker and his brothers was not formally dissolved until he went away to Belgium in 1849, he seems never to have resumed any active share in it after his return from Concord.  Now and again the old scruples about this apparent inactivity returned upon him, and we find him contracting his personal needs within a compass so narrow that his support shall be felt as the least possible burden.  Thus he writes, on July 13, that his present state of suspension from all outward engagements cannot and should not be of long continuance.  He adds: