the Holy Spirit.  Lallemant he returned to ever and again, and St. John of the Cross he never let go at all.  It was always with him, always read with renewed joy, and its wonderful lessons of divine wisdom, expressed as they are with the scientific accuracy of a trained theologian and the unction of a saint, were to Father Hecker a pledge of security for his own state of soul and a source of inspiration in dealing with others.

To the ordinary observer a knowledge of the men and women of to-day does not give rise to much hope of the widespread use of this spirituality.  But Father Hecker thought otherwise.  He ever insisted that it must come into general preference among the leading minds of Christendom; for independence of character calls for such a spirituality, and that independence is by God’s providence the characteristic trait of the best men and women of our times.  God must mean to sanctify us in the way He has placed us in the natural order.  He believed that the Holy Spirit would soon be poured out in an abundant dispensation of His heavenly gifts, and that such a renewal of men’s souls was the only salvation of society.  Some may think that he was over-sanguine; many will not interest themselves in such “high” matters at all.  But some of the wisest men in the Church are of his mind, notably Cardinal Manning.  And the signs of the times, if interrogated with regard to the problem of man’s eternal destiny, give no other answer than the promise of a new era in which the Holy Ghost shall reign in men’s souls and in their lives with a supremacy peculiar to this age.

The following extract from The Church and the Age, a compilation of Father Hecker’s later essays, shows his estimate of the form of spirituality we have been discussing, as bearing upon the regeneration of society in general: 

“The whole aim of the science of Christian perfection is to instruct men how to remove the hindrances in the way of the action of the Holy Spirit, and how to cultivate those virtues which are most favorable to His solicitations and inspirations.  Thus the sum of spiritual life consists in observing and yielding to the movements of the Spirit of God in our soul, employing for this purpose all the exercises of prayer, spiritual reading, the practice of virtues, and good works.

“That divine action which is the immediate and principal cause of the salvation and perfection of the soul, claims by right the soul’s direct and main attention.  From this source within the soul there will gradually come to birth the consciousness of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, out of which will spring a force surpassing all human strength, a courage higher than all human heroism, a sense of dignity excelling all human greatness.  The light the age requires for its renewal can come only from the same source.  The renewal of the age depends on the renewal of religion.  The renewal of religion depends on a greater effusion of the creative