“CHARLES LANE.

“Regards to the Doctor and all friends.  The Shakers have kindly inquired for you, and they still take much interest in our life.  Have you seen the last Dial? The Present is good, but surely not good enough.  I hope to write a more universal letter in response to your next, for which I wait.”

Poor Lane, failing to find any equally confiding and generous friend to shoulder with him the personal debts of the founder of Fruitlands, was compelled at last to let the farm “lapse into individuality” and to see “the idea suspended.”  In his next and “more universal letter” he announces that the experiment is ended in consequence of Mrs. Alcott’s refusal to remain on the place through the winter.  Lane went over to the neighboring Shaker community, and from there to England, where Father Hecker met him during his own residence at Clapham, after his ordination.  His letters followed Father Hecker for several years, and breathe always the same unselfishness, the same simple trust in human goodness, and the same fondness for speculations on “the universal.”

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CHAPTER IX

SELF-QUESTIONINGS

NOT finding any solution of his spiritual difficulties at either Fruitlands or Brook Farm, Isaac Hecker turned his face once more toward the home from which he had departed nearly a year before.  He expected little from this step, but his state of mind was now one in which he had begun to anticipate, at any turn, some light on the dispositions of Providence in his regard which might determine his course for good and all.  And, meantime, as patient waiting was all that lay in his own power, it seemed the wisest course to yield to the solicitations of his kindred and abide results in his own place.  He did not go there at once, however, after quitting Alcott’s community, but returned to Brook Farm for a fortnight.  His journal during this period offers many pages worthy of transcription.

It is possible that we have readers who may deem us too copious in our quotations from this source.  But, if wearisome to any, yet they are necessary to those for whom this Life is especially written.  The lessons to be learned from Father Hecker are mainly those arising from the interaction between God’s supernatural dealings with him, and his own natural characteristics.  This fact, moreover, is typical as well as personal, for the great question of his day, which was the dawning of our own, was the relation of the natural man to the regenerating influences of Christianity.  This being so, it is plain to our own mind that no adequate representation of the man could be made without a free use of these early journals.  They seem to us one of the chief Providential results of the spiritual isolation of his youth.  He was in a manner driven to this intimate self-communing, on one hand by his never-satisfied craving for sympathetic