“What is love?  The motion of the pure will.

“What is light?  The shadow of love.

“What is force?  The power of love.

“Where does God dwell?  Where there is peace.

“Who is most like God?  He who knows he is the least like Him.

“What is the innermost of all?  Stillness.

“Who is the purest?  He who is most beyond temptation.

“What is the personality of man?  The absolute negation of
God.

“What is God?  The absolute affirmation in man.

“What is it to know?  It is to be ignorant.

“What should we desire?  Not to desire.

“What is the most positive answer?  Silence.

“What is the truest?  That which cannot be proven.”

“August 25, 1844.—­In silence, suffering without murmuring.  An eternal thirst, enduring without being quenched.  Infinite longings without being met.  Heart ever burning, never refreshed.  Void within and mystery all around.  Ever escaping that which we would reach.  Tortured incessantly without relief.  Alone—­bereft of God, angels, men—­all.  Hopes gone, fears vanished, and love dead within.  These, and more than these, must man suffer.”

“August 28, 1844.—­Is it not because I have been too much engaged in reading and paid too little attention to the centre that I have lost myself, as it were?  My position here distracts my attention and I lose the delight, intimate knowledge, and sweet consciousness of my interior life.  How can this be remedied?  I am constantly called of to matters in which I have no relish; and if I retreat for a short time, they rest on me like a load, so that I cannot call myself free at any moment.  I see the case as it stands, and feel I am losing my interior life from the false position in which I am placed.

“The human ties and the material conditions in which I am should unquestionably be sacrificed to the divine interior relation to the One, the Love-Spirit, which, alas!  I have so sensibly felt.  Can a man live in the world and follow Christ?  I know not; but, as for me, I find it impossible.  I feel more and more the necessity of leaving the society and the distracting cares of a city business for a silent and peaceful retreat, to the end that I may restore the life I fear I am losing.  Our natural interests should be subject to our human ties; our human ties to our spiritual relations; and who is he who brings all these into divine harmony?

“How shall I make the sacrifice which shall accomplish the sole end I have, and should have, in view?  Thrice have I left home for this purpose, and each time have returned unavoidably so, at least, it seems to me.  Once more, I trust, will prove a permanent and immovable trial.”

To some, a most striking incidental proof of his inaptitude for the ordinary layman’s life, is found in the subjoined extract from the memoranda.  Speaking of this period, Father Hecker said: