Walter Elliott

“ I long for action which shall realize the prophecies, fulfil the Apocalypse, bring the new Jerusalem down from heaven to earth, and collect the faithful into a true and holy brotherhood. To attain this consummation so devoutly to be wished, I would eat no flesh, I would drink no wine while the world lasted. I would become as devoted an ascetic as yourself, my dear Isaac. But to what end is all speculation, all dreaming, all questioning, but to advance humanity, to bring forward the manifestation of the Son of God? Oh, for men who feel this idea burning into their bones! ”

“ To have a conception of this all-embracing and direct action of God in the affairs of this world, and by the light of faith to see that the Church is the dwelling place of His holiness, majesty, mercy, and power, and is the medium of this action, at first stupefies, overwhelms, and, as it were, reduces the soul to nothing. By degrees and imperceptibly it is raised from its nothingness; timidly the soul opens its eyes and ventures to cast a glance, and then to contemplate the Divinity which everywhere surrounds it, as air and light do our bodies. ”

“ Mother, I cannot express the depth of gratitude I feel toward you for the tender care and loving discipline with which you brought me up to manhood. Without it, oh! what might I not have been? The good that I have, under God, I am conscious that I am greatly indebted to thee for; at times I feel that it is thou acting in me, and that there is nothing that can ever separate us. A bond which is as eternal as our immortality, our life, binds us together and cannot be broken. ”

“ Are we Christians if we act not in the spirit in which Christ acted? Shall we say: 'What shall we do?' Follow the spirit of Christ which is in you. 'Unless ye are reprobates, ye have it in you.' 'Be ye faithful, as I am,' said Jesus. 'Love one another as I have loved you.' Take up your cross and follow Him. Leave all, if the Spirit leads you to leave all. Do whatever it commands you. There will be no lack of action. Care not for the world; give up wealth, friends, those that you love, the opinions of all. Be willing to be despised, spit upon, crucified. ”

“ Just in proportion as we harbor pride, vanity, self-love—in a word, self-hood—just so far we fail in integrally resigning ourselves to God. Were we wholly resigned to God He would change all in us that is in discord with Him, and prepare our souls for union with Him, making us one with Himself. God longs for our souls greatly more than our souls can long for Him. Such is God's thirst for love that He made all creatures to love Him, and to have no rest until they love Him supremely. If my words are not to your soul God's words and voice, pay no heed to them. ”

“ Underneath all the persecutions, the oppression, the false action, the whole outwardly critical condition of the Church and society, there is an overpowering, counteracting, divine current, leading to an all-embracing, most complete, and triumphant unity in the Church. To see how all things—wicked men as well as the good, for God reigns over all—contribute to this end and are made to serve it, gives peace to the mind, repose to the soul, and excites admiration and adoration of the Divine action in the world. ”

“ Heavenly Father, as the lower depends on the light and warmth of the sun for its grace and beauty, so, and much more, do I depend on Thee for life and progress. O Lord! from the depths of my heart I would implore Thee to aid me in all good intentions. My heart overflows with its fulness of gratitude for what Thou hast done for me, and I know Thou wilt not shorten Thy hand. Thy beauty, Thy loveliness, O God! is beyond our finite vision, far above our expression. ”

“ He read every book, he read every periodical which promised to guide him ever so little to know by what road Divine Providence was moving men's minds towards the truth. His eyes were ever strained to read the signs of God's providence in men's lives. And his conclusion was always the same: proclaim it on the house-tops that no man can be consistent with his natural aspirations till he has become a Catholic; preach it on the street-corners that the Catholic religion elevates man far above his highest natural force into union with the Deity—intimate, conscious, and perpetual. ”

“ Nothing seems to take hold of my soul, or else it seeks nothing. Where it is I know not. I meet with no one else around me. I would that I could feel that some one lived in the same world that I now do. Something cloudy separates us. I cannot speak from my real being to others. There is no mutual recognition. When I speak, it is as if a burden accumulated round me. I long to throw it off, but I cannot utter my thoughts and feelings in their presence; if I do, they return to me unrecognized. Shall I ever meet with one the windows of whose soul will open simultaneously with mine? ”

“ More than ever did he study to fit himself for his apostolate. How, he asked himself, shall the living word be framed anew for our new people? How shall religious teaching be suited to the special needs of this age without detracting from the integrity and the venerable antiquity of the truth? He sought to answer these questions by recalling his own early difficulties, and by opening his soul to the voices of struggling humanity uttered everywhere around him. What men outside the Church were yearning for in matters social and religious was his incessant study. ”

“ The Lord has been good to me and my heart is filled with His warm love. Blessed be Thou, O God! for Thou hast given me a taste of Thy sweetness. Thou hast given me gratitude and thankfulness and an overflowing heart of praise. I would stand still and shout and bless God. It is God in us that believes in God. Without the light of God we should be in total darkness, and He is the only source of light. The more of God we have in us, the more we see beyond us. ”

“ Is the good we might do worth the labor? We cannot at times refuse a hearing to the question. Fortunately, it is easily made clear to us that the area over which influence travels is vastly more extensive than at first sight appears. The eye will not always discern the undulations of its spreading waves; but onward it goes, from one soul to another, far beyond our immediate ranks, and as each soul touched by it becomes a new motive power, it rolls forward, often with energy a hundred times intensified, long after the shadows of death have settled around its point of departure. ”

“ Yet my soul is Catholic, and that faith responds to my soul in its religious aspirations and its longings. I have not wished to make myself Catholic, but that answers on all sides to the wants of my soul. It is so rich, so full. One is in harmony all over—in unison with heaven, with the present, living in the natural body, and the past, who have changed. There is a solidarity between them through the Church. ”

“ Not minimizing in the least the dreadful evil of the absence of the supernatural, I am not afraid to give as my belief that there is among Americans as high an appreciation and as lively a realization of natural truth and goodness as has been seen in any people, and it seems as if Almighty God, intending a great age and a great people, has put here in America a singular development of nature's powers and gifts, both in man and out of man—with the further will, I have the faith, of crowning all with the glory of the supernatural. ”

“ A mission is a microcosm of the church as a moral force. It shows a powerful grasp of human nature and an easy supremacy over it. It is an energetic, calm, and clean-sweeping influence for good, bold in its choice of the most sublime truths of supernatural religion as the sole motives of repentance. And it uniformly achieves so complete a victory over the best-entrenched vices that non-Catholic prejudice is invariably shaken at the spectacle. And in America the pioneer work of the apostolate must be to remove prejudice. ”

“ God at times seemed to demand of me a frightful and heroic abandonment of my soul to His good pleasure. God alone knows how to exercise the soul in virtue, and the Holy Spirit is its only true master in the spiritual life. Not only did the spirit of God excite and elicit in me voluntary acts of self-abandonment, but often my soul was as if stripped of all support, and placed, as it were, over a dark and unfathomable abyss, and thus I was made to see that my only hope was to give myself up wholly to Him. ”

“ Jan. 11.—True life is one continuous prayer, one unceasing aspiration after the holy. I have no conception of a life insensible to that which is not above itself lofty. I would not take it on myself to say I have been 'born again,' but I know that I have passed from death to life. Things below have no hold upon me further than as they lead to things above. It is not a moral restraint that I have over myself, but it is such a change, a conversion of my whole being, that I have no need of restraint. Temptations still beset me—not sensual, but of a kind which seek to make me untrue to my life. ”

“ Human nature has never felt influences more deeply religious than those set at work by missions, recalling the effects of the preaching of the Apostles themselves. Remorse of conscience, loathing for sin, terror at the divine wrath, confidence in God, sympathy for our crucified Saviour, the ecstatic joy of the new-found divine friendship, utter contempt for the maxims of the world, iron determination to love God to the end—these are the sentiments which, by the preaching of missions, are made to dominate entire parishes in a degree simply marvellous. ”

“ The race of such souls has not died out in the Christian Church. The one truth, spoken once for all by the Incarnate Word, takes on for them new aspects and new tones. They are the pioneers of great movements. Nurtured in the Church, their ardor burns away mere conventionalities; born outside the Church, the light she carries is a beacon, and the voice she utters is felt as that of the true Mother. To adapt once more a pregnant sentence from young Hecker, of the truth of which he was himself an example: "It is God in them which believes in God."
But to return to Brownson. ”

“ Every time he looked at the Church he was greeted with the spectacle of unity and uniformity, of discipline and order. These are elements which always have been, and probably always will be, most attractive to the classes called educated, to men seeking for external notes of truth, flying from disorder, fearful of rebellion. But to Isaac Hecker, the only external note which deeply attracted him was that of universal brotherhood. If he were to bow his knee with joy to Jesus Christ, it would be because all, in heaven and earth or hell, should one day bend in union with him. ”

“ Consciousness and knowledge go together. Spontaneity and life are one. Knowledge is no gain, for it gives nothing. I can only know what has been given through spontaneity. Spontaneity is unity, one; knowledge is division of being. If Adam had not been separated he would doubtless not have sinned. 'The woman that Thou gavest me said unto me, Eat, and I did eat.' Still, through the seed of the woman, which will be the union restored, is the serpent to be bruised. ”

“ Such was the common austerity of the life that it took some ingenuity to inflict on a novice a mortification which had not grown stale by use in the case of one or more of the others. But in searching the interior of the soul the director could find tender places into which his weapon would be plunged to the bone. But it is more than probable that he misunderstood Brother Hecker, and that for a time he even suspected him of being under delusions. For several months, at any rate, he treated him at his weekly confession with the utmost rigor, producing indescribable mental agony. ”