Life of Father Hecker | Page 2

children could
not refuse; it is, also, a most important service to generations present
and unborn, in whose deeds will be seen the fruits of inspirations
gathered from it. We are thankful that this biography has been written
by one who from closest converse and most intimate friendship knew
Father Hecker so thoroughly. He has given us in his book what we need
to know of Father Hecker. We care very little, except so far as details
may accentuate the great lines of a life and make them sensible to our
obtuse touch, where or when a man was born, what places he happened
to visit, what houses he built, or in what circumstances of malady or in
what surroundings he died. These things can be said of the ten thousand.
We want to know the thoughts and the resolves of the soul which made
him a marked man above his fellows and which begot strong influences
for good and great works, and if none such can be unfolded then drop
the man out of sight, with a "Requiescant in pace" engraven upon his
tombstone. Few deserve a biography, and to the undeserving none
should be given.
If it be permitted to speak of self, I might say that to Father Hecker I
am indebted for most salutary impressions which, I sorrowfully confess,
have not had in me their due effect; the remembrance of them, however,
is a proof to me of the usefulness of his life, and its power for good in
others. I am glad to have the opportunity to profess publicly my
gratitude to him. He was in the prime of life and work when I was for
the first time brought to observe him. I was quite young in the ministry,
and very naturally I was casting my eye around in search of ideal men,

whose footsteps were treading the path I could feel I, too, ought to
travel. I never afterwards wholly lost sight of Father Hecker, watching
him as well as I could from a distance of two thousand miles. I am not
to-day without some experience of men and things, won from years and
toils, and I do not alter one tittle my estimate of him, except to make it
higher. To the priests of the future I recommend a serious study of
Father Hecker's life. To them I would have his biography dedicated.
Older men, like myself, are fixed in their ways, and they will not
receive from it so much benefit.
Father Hecker was the typical American priest; his were the gifts of
mind and heart that go to do great work for God and for souls in
America at the present time. Those qualities, assuredly, were not
lacking in him which are the necessary elements of character of the
good priest and the great man in any time and place. Those are the
subsoil of priestly culture, and with the absence of them no one will
succeed in America any more than elsewhere. But suffice they do not.
There must be added, over and above, the practical intelligence and the
pliability of will to understand one's surroundings, the ground upon
which he is to deploy his forces, and to adapt himself to circumstances
and opportunities as Providence appoints. I do not expect that my
words, as I am here writing, will receive universal approval, and I am
not at all sure that their expression would have been countenanced by
the priest whose memory brings them to my lips. I write as I think, and
the responsibility must be all my own. It is as clear to me as noon-day
light that countries and peoples have each their peculiar needs and
aspirations as they have their peculiar environments, and that, if we
would enter into souls and control them, we must deal with them
according to their conditions. The ideal line of conduct for the priest in
Assyria will be out of all measure in Mexico or Minnesota, and I doubt
not that one doing fairly well in Minnesota would by similar methods
set things sadly astray in Leinster or Bavaria. The Saviour prescribed
timeliness in pastoral caring. The master of a house, He said, "bringeth
forth out of his treasury new things and old," as there is demand for one
kind or the other. The apostles of nations, from Paul before the
Areopagus to Patrick upon the summit of Tara, followed no different
principle.

The circumstances of Catholics have been peculiar in the United States,
and we have unavoidably suffered on this account. Catholics in largest
numbers were Europeans, and so were their priests, many of whom--by
no means all--remained in heart and mind and mode of action as alien
to America as if they had never been removed from the Shannon,