Читать книгу Life of Father Hecker - Walter Elliott - Страница 15

Christ was the model of the Brook-Farmers, as He had become that of Isaac Hecker. They did not know Him as well as they knew His doctrine. They knew better what He said than why He said it, and that defect obscured His meaning and mystified their understandings. That all men were brethren was the result of their study of humanity under what they conceived to be His leadership; that all labor is honorable, and entitled to equal remuneration, was their solution of the social problem. While any man was superfluously rich, they maintained, no man should be miserably poor. They were reaching after what the best spirits of the human race were then and now longing for, and they succeeded as well as any can who employ only the selvage of the Christian garment to protect themselves against the rigors of nature. Saint-Simon was a far less worthy man than George Ripley, but he failed no more signally. Frederic Ozanam, whose ambition was limited in its scope by his appreciation of both nature and the supernatural, succeeded in establishing a measure of true fraternity between rich and poor throughout the Catholic world.

There can be no manner of doubt that although Father Hecker in after life could good-naturedly smile at the singularities of Brook Farm, what he saw and was taught there had a strong and permanent effect on his character. It is little to say that the influence was refining to him, for he was refined by nature. But he gained what was to him a constant corrective of any tendency to man-hatred in all its degrees, not needed by himself to be sure, but always needed in his dealing with others. It gave to a naturally trustful disposition the vim and vigor of an apostolate for a cheerful view of human nature. It was a characteristic trait of his to expect good results from reliance on human virtue, and his whole success as a persuades of men was largely to be explained by the subtle flattery of this trustful attitude towards them. At Brook Farm the mind of Isaac Hecker was eagerly looking for instruction. It failed to get even a little clear light on the more perplexing problems of life, but it got something better—the object-lesson of good men and women struggling nobly and unselfishly for laudable ends. Brook Farm was an attempt to remove obstructions from the pathway of human progress, taking that word in the natural sense.

Even afterwards, when he had known human destiny in its perfect supernatural and natural forms, and when the means to compass it were in his possession and plainly competent for success, his memory reproduced the scenes and persons of Brook Farm in an atmosphere of affection and admiration, though not unmingled with amusement. He used not infrequently to quote words heard there, and cite examples of things done there, as lessons of wisdom not only for the philosopher but also for the ascetic. He was there equipped with the necessary external guarantee of his inner consciousness that man is good, because made so by his Creator—inclined indeed to evil, but yet a good being, even so inclined. Nothing is more necessary for one who is to be a teacher among a population whose Catholicity is of blood and family tradition as well as of grace, than to know that there is virtue, true and high in its own order, outside the visible pale of the Church. Especially is this necessary if Catholics in any age or country are to be fitted for a missionary vocation. That this is the vocation of the Church of his day was Isaac Hecker's passionate conviction. He was able to communicate this to Catholics of the old stock as well as to influence non-Catholics in favor of the Church; perhaps even more so. More than anything else, indeed, Brook Farm taught him the defect of human nature on its highest plane; but it taught him also the worthiness of the men and women of America of the apostle's toil and blood. The gentle natures whom he there knew and learned to love, their spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good, their minds at once innocent and cultivated, their devotion to their high ideal, the absence of meanness, coarseness, vulgarity, the sinking of private ambitions, the patience with the defects of others, their desire to establish the communism of at least intellectual gifts—all this and much more of the kind fixed his views and affections in a mould which eminently fitted him as a vessel of election for apostolic uses.

Before passing to the study of Isaac Hecker's own interior during the period of his residence at Brook Farm, it is our pleasant privilege to communicate to our readers the subjoined charming reminiscence of his personality at the time, from one who was his associate there:

"West New Brighton, S.I., February 28, 1890.—DEAR SIR: I fear that my recollections of Father Hecker will be of little service to you, for they are very scant. But the impression of the young man whom I knew at Brook Farm is still vivid. It must have been in the year 1843 that he came to the Farm in West Roxbury, near Boston. He was a youth of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing in the Dial.

"Hecker, or, as I always called him and think of him, Isaac, had apparently come to Brook Farm because it was a result of the intellectual agitation of the time which had reached and touched him in New York. He had been bred a baker, he told me, and I remember with what satisfaction he said to me, 'I am sure of my livelihood because I can make good bread.' His powers in this way were most satisfactorily tested at the Farm, or, as it was generally called, 'the Community,' although it was in no other sense a community than an association of friendly workers in common. He was drawn to Brook Farm by the belief that its life would be at least agreeable to his convictions and tastes, and offer him the society of those who might answer some of his questions, even if they could not satisfy his longings.

"By what influences his mind was first affected by the moral movement known in New England as transcendentalism, I do not know. Probably he may have heard Mr. Emerson lecture in New York, or he may have read Brownson's Charles Elwood, which dealt with the questions that engaged his mind and conscience. But among the many interesting figures at Brook Farm I recall none more sincerely absorbed than Isaac Hecker in serious questions. The merely æsthetic aspects of its life, its gayety and social pleasures, he regarded good-naturedly, with the air of a spectator who tolerated rather than needed or enjoyed them. There was nothing ascetic or severe in him, but I have often thought since that his feeling was probably what he might have afterward described as a consciousness that he must be about his Father's business.

"I do not remember him as especially studious. Mr. Ripley had classes in German philosophy and metaphysics, in Kant and Spinoza, and Isaac used to look in, as he turned wherever he thought he might find answers to his questions. He went to hear Theodore Parker preach in the Unitarian Church in the neighboring village of West Roxbury. He went into Boston, about ten miles distant, to talk with Brownson, and to Concord to see Emerson. He entered into the working life at the Farm, but always, as it seemed to me, with the same reserve and attitude of observation. He was the dove floating in the air, not yet finding the spot on which his foot might rest.

"The impression that I gathered from my intercourse with him, which was boyishly intimate and affectionate, was that of all 'the apostles of the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was drawing toward the Catholic Church, and his virile force fascinated the more delicate and sensitive temper of the young man, and, I have always supposed, was the chief influence which at that time affected Hecker's views, although he did not then enter the Catholic Church.

"He was a general favorite at Brook Farm, always equable and playful, wholly simple and frank in manner. He talked readily and easily, but not controversially. His smile was singularly attractive and sympathetic, and the earnestness of which I have spoken gave him an unconscious personal dignity. His temperament was sanguine. The whole air of the youth was that of goodness. I do not think that the impression made by him forecast his career, or, in any degree, the leadership which he afterwards held in his Church. But everybody who knew him at that time must recall his charming amiability.

"I think that he did not remain at Brook Farm for a whole year, and when later he went to Belgium to study theology at the seminary of Mons he wrote me many letters, which I am sorry to say have disappeared. I remember that he labored with friendly zeal to draw me to his Church, and at his request I read the life and some writing of St. Alphonse of Liguori. Gradually our correspondence declined when I was in Europe, and was never resumed; nor do I remember seeing him again more than once, many years ago. There was still in the clerical figure, which was very strange to me, the old sweetness of smile and address; there was some talk of the idyllic days, some warm words of hearty good will, but our interests were very different, and, parting, we went our separate ways. For a generation we lived in the same city, yet we never met. But I do not lose the bright recollection of Ernest the Seeker, nor forget the frank, ardent, generous, manly youth, Isaac Hecker.

"Very truly yours,