mercy, and love which formerly welled up in abundant floods at the thought of God, at the same thought now were dried up and disappeared.  “Oh!” he once exclaimed, “if I could only be sure that I shall not be damned!” This was said unawares while listening to the life of a saint.  The reader will, therefore, understand that Father Hecker’s inner trouble was not a state of mere aridity, a difficulty of concentration of mind on spiritual things, or a vagrancy of thought; it was a perpetual facing of his Divine Accuser and Judge, a trembling woe at the sight of Infinite Majesty on the part of one for whom the Divine love was the one necessary of life for soul and body.  Yet he knew that this was really a higher form of prayer than any he had yet enjoyed, that it steadily purified his understanding by compelling ceaselessly repeated acts of faith in God’s love, purified his will by constant resignation of every joy except God alone—­God received by any mode in which it might please the Divine Majesty to reveal Himself.  He was, therefore, willing, nay, in a true sense, glad thus to walk by mere faith and live by painful love.  “I should deem it a misfortune if God should cure me of my infirmities and restore me to active usefulness, so much have I learned to appreciate the value of my passive condition of soul.”  This he said less than three years before his death.  And about the same time, to a very intimate friend:  “God revealed to me in my novitiate that at some future time I should suffer the crucifixion.  I have always longed for it; but oh, now that it has come it is hard, oh, it is terrible!” And this he said weeping.

One aspect of the Divine Majesty which threatened for years to overpower him was the Last Judgment.  “God has given me to see the terrors of the day of judgment,” he once said, “and it has tried me with dreadful severity; but it is a wonderfully great privilege.”  Humility grew upon him day by day.  No one who knew him well in his day of greatest power could think him a proud man, but his confidence in his vocation, and in himself is God’s representative, had been immense.  The following, from a memorandum, shows how he ended: 

“I told him how courageous I felt. Answer: That is the way I used to feel.  I used to say, O Lord!  I feel as if I had the whole world on my shoulders; and all I’ve got to say is, O Lord!  I am sorry you’ve given me such small potatoes to carry on my back.  But now—­well, when a mosquito comes in I say, Mosquito, have you any good to do me?  Yes?  Then I thank you, for I am glad to get good from a mosquito.”

It will thus be seen that whatever diseases may have enfeebled Father Hecker’s body, his spirit suffered from a malady known only to great souls—­thirst for God.  This gave him rest neither day nor night, or allowed him intervals of peace only to return with renewed force.  Some men love gold too much for their peace of mind, some love women too much, and some power; men like Father Hecker love the Infinite Good too much to be happy in soul or sound in body unless He be revealed to them as a loving father.  And this knowledge of God once possessed and lost again, although it breeds a purer, a more perfectly disinterested love, leaves both soul and body in a state of acute distress.  “My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee, in a dry and desert land without water.”