It is because of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every regenerate soul that Father Hecker so vigorously maintained that the freedom of the individual is a golden opportunity for the Catbolic apostolate, according to the text “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”  Freedom, he affirmed, was in absolute consonance with Catholic doctrine.  But he furthermore insisted that it has become the world-wide aspiration of men by interposition of Divine Providence and with a view to their higher sanctification; and however grossly abused, it is yet a direct suggestion to an apostolate whose prospects are in the highest degree promising.  And this is the answer to the question which reasonable persons may well ask, namely:  Why should the new institution differ so radically from the old ones, which were certainly works of God?  Because the change of men’s lives in the entire secular and natural order is in the direction of personal liberty and independence, and this change is a radical one.  “The Eternal-Absolute is ever creating new forms of expressing itself.”  If, indeed, men’s aspirations for liberty and intelligence be all from the powers of darkness, then let every longing for freedom be repressed and condemned, crushed by authority in the state, anathematized by the Church.  But if men are yearning to be free, however blindly, because God by their freedom would make them holier, then let us hail the new order as a blessing; and let those who love freedom and are worthy of it use its privileges to advance themselves and their brethren nearer to immediate union with the Holy Spirit.

It has been seen that the important question whether the end of the new community would be better attained with the usual religious vows or without them was decided in the negative.  They were not definitely rejected in the beginning; but starting without them, the Fathers were willing to allow experience to show whether or not they should be resumed.  The lapse of time but confirmed the view that the voluntary agreement and the bond of fraternal charity were, under the circumstances, preferable as securities for stability and incentives to holiness.

There can be little doubt that Father Hecker’s ideas on this feature of the religious state had been greatly modified between the writing of the Questions of the Soul and the end of the struggle in Rome.  Much is said in that book of community life in the Catholic Church, and generally as rendered stable and its spirit of sacrifice made complete by the vows; and in the statement given in Rome to his five chosen advisers, he says that one reason for writing the volume named was to induce young men to enter the religious orders as the only means of perfection—­meaning orders under vows.  But when he was released from his own obligations and was confronted with the choice of means for following his vocation, the horizon broadened away until he could see beyond the institutions and