“Dreams of the future!  Exalted visions!  Beautiful, unspeakable hopes!  Deep, inarticulate longings that fill the conscious soul!  Ah! so sweet, so harmonious, so delightful, like an angel, like the bride of the pure and bright soul adorned for the nuptials, do I see the future beckoning me with a clear, transparent smile onward to her presence.  ‘Ah!’ my soul would say, ’we will meet, for I am in thy presence, and faithful in God may heaven grant me to be.’  The beauty, the grace, the love, the sweetness that attract me, are beyond all comparison.  Ah! thou eternal, ever-blooming virgin, the Future, shall I ever embrace thee?  Shall I ever see thee nearer to my heart?  I look at myself and I am bowed down low in grief; but when I cast my eyes up to thee, in seeing thee I am lost.  The grace and beauty I see in thee passes into my soul, and I am all that thou art.  I am then wedded to thee, and I would that it were an eternal union.  But ah! my eyes, when turned upon myself, lose all sight of thee, and meet nothing but my own spots and blemishes.  How canst thou love me?  I say; and for thy pure love I am melted into thee as one.”

He continues: 

“Lord, let me speak of my many and grievous sins; but oh! when I would do so, my mouth speaks nothing forth but Thy praises.

“I would offer my whole soul afresh to all that is, for the sake of the love of God. . . .  Lord, I am Thine, for Thou dost teach me this be Thy unutterable, ever-present love.”

“January 3.—­Last Saturday my confessor was not at home when I called.  I have waited until this morning, the Saturday following.  It is sad to me to wait to partake of the Blessed Sacrament.  How much joy, love, and sweetness it is to the soul!  I feel my soul to glow again with renewed love when I have partaken of the blessed communion of Christ.  This is my spiritual food.  It is the goodness, mercy, and love of God which keeps me from sadness.”

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CHAPTER XX

FROM NEW YORK TO ST. TROND

ISAAC HECKER’S zeal for social reform lent force to his strictly personal cravings for a more religious life; he longed for wider scope than individual effort could possibly bestow, and also for a supernatural point of vantage.  “If we would do humanity any good,” he writes in his diary while considering his vocation, “we must act from grounds higher than humanity; our standpoint must be above the race, otherwise how can we act upon humanity?” He also speaks of the fundamental necessity of “an impulse of divine love” actuating the reformer of social evils.  He addresses himself thus:  “If thou wouldst move the race to greater good and higher virtue, lose thyself in the Universal.  Be so great as to give thyself to something nobler than thyself if thou wouldst be ennobled, immortalized.”  In many pages of the last two volumes of his diary these notes of sympathetic love for his fellow-men