“A Belgian, and my confessor while I was at Clapham.  I was there, not ordained, nor yet making my studies.  I had been forced to give them up; I could not go on with them.  De Held did not know what to make of me, and he treated me harshly and cruelly.  Finally I went to him and told him my thoughts; I said I was absolutely certain I had a religious vocation; that he might compel me to take of the habit, but it would be like taking off my skin; and so on.  After that interview De Held changed toward me and was ever after my warm friend.  He was a very prominent member of the Congregation.  You know he came within a few votes of being Rector-major.  He was very warm in his sympathy with us during our trouble in Rome.  Well, Heilig, a German, was about coming over to England as superior.  He had been my director for two years.  Before he came he wrote me a letter that gave me indescribable pain.  He wrote that I must change—­that I was all wrong, and so on.  I answered that it was too late to change; that he had been my director for two years, knew me well, and had been cognizant of my state.  If he wanted me changed he must do it for me, for I did not see how to do it for myself.  When he came, De Buggenoms told him to have me ordained, set me to work at anything, and he (De Buggenoms) would be responsible for me in every respect.  Heilig complied.  I asked him afterwards why he wrote that letter.  ‘Because,’ said he, ’I thought you needed to be tried some more.’  ‘Why,’ said I, ’I have had nothing but trial ever since I came.’”

From this it would seem that the case was finally settled by Father Heilig after Father de Held’s departure for the Continent, which took place, as well as we can discover, some time in the summer of 1849.  Father Heilig’s letter, written from Liege, is before us; it is dated the 24th of March, 1849.  It is a complete arraignment of Isaac Hecker’s spiritual condition.  It is gentle, considerate, choice of terms, but condenses all that could be said to show that his young friend had been deluded by a visionary temperament, applying to himself what he had read in mystical treatises and the lives of the saints.  The letter was indeed a deadly blow.  Father Heilig had been Brother Hecker’s confessor for two years at Wittem, and had at least tacitly approved his spirit; and now came his condemnation.  No wonder that Isaac was profoundly distressed by it.  Yet his conviction of the validity of his inner life was not shaken for an instant.  Nor was the trial of long duration.  We have found a letter from Father Heilig dated two months later than the one we have been considering, and it is full of messages of reassurance and encouragement.  The intervention of De Buggenoms completed the work.  It is possible that Father Heilig had not simply a desire to test Brother Hecker’s humility, but, by studying the effect of the trial imposed, to remove doubts still lingering in his own mind.  Some words in both the letters referred to lead us to this inference.