and renewing power of the Holy Spirit.  The greater effusion of the Holy Spirit depends on the giving of increased attention to His movements and inspirations in the soul.  The radical and adequate remedy for all the evils of our age, and the source of all true progress, consist in increased attention and fidelity to the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul.  ’Thou shalt send forth Thy spirit and they shall be created:  and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.’”

Lallemant’s answer to the difficulty of excess of personal liberty in this method has been already given.  Father Hecker’s own is as follows: 

“The enlargement of the [interior] field of action for the soul, without a true knowledge of the end and scope of the external authority of the Church, would only open the door to delusions, errors, and heresies of every description, and would be in effect only another form of Protestantism.  But, on the other hand, the exclusive view of the external authority of the Church, without a proper understanding of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit in the soul, would render the practice of religion formal, obedience servile, and the Church sterile.

“The solution of the difficulty is as follows:  The action of the Holy Spirit embodied visibly in the authority of the Church, and the action of the Holy Spirit dwelling invisibly in the soul form one inseparable synthesis; and he who has not a clear conception of this two-fold action of the Holy Spirit is in danger of running into one or the other, and sometimes into both, of these extremes, either of which is destructive of the end of the Church.  The Holy Spirit, in the external authority of the Church, acts as the infallible interpreter and criterion of divine revelation.  The Holy Spirit in the soul acts as the divine Life-giver and Sanctifier.  It is of the highest importance that these two distinct offices of the Holy Spirit should not be confounded.

“The increased action of the Holy Spirit, with a more vigorous co-operation on the part of the faithful, which is in process of realization, will elevate the human personality to an intensity of force and grandeur productive of a new era to the Church and to society—­an era difficult for the imagination to grasp, and still more difficult to describe in words, unless we have recourse to the prophetic language of the inspired Scriptures.”

“The way out of our present difficulties,” said Father Hecker, speaking of the conflicts of religion in Europe, “is to revert to a spirituality which is freer than that which Providence assigned as the counteraction of Protestantism in the sixteenth century—­to a spirituality which is, and ever has been, the normal one of the Christian inner life.  That era accentuated obedience, this accentuates no particular moral virtue, but rather presses the soul back upon Faith and Hope and Love as the springs of life, and makes the distinctive virtue fidelity to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, impelling the Christian to that one of the moral virtues which is most suitable to his nature and to the requirements of his state of life, and other environments.”