YEARNINGS AFTER CONTEMPLATION "COULD I but give up all my time to contemplation, study, reading, and reflection!" Upon this aspiration as a background the whole matter of Isaac Hecker's vocation must be considered.

In substance we have met with it very frequently already; in the shape just given it confronts us on the first page of the new diary begun a few days before his baptism.

And as our reader accompanies us through the records he made during the year that still elapsed before he entered the Redemptorist Order, nothing, we think, will become more evident than that he was called to something beyond adhesion to the Church, the worthy reception of the sacraments, or even the ordinary sacerdotal state.
To make this still plainer at the start, it may be useful to describe briefly the special grounds whereon Isaac Hecker fought his life-long battles.

These were, first: The validity of those natural aspirations which are called religious, and which embrace the veracity of reason in its essential affirmations.

Second: Whether man be by nature guileless or totally depraved: Third, Whether religion be or be not intrinsically and primarily an elevating influence whose end is to raise men to real union with God.
To many inquirers after the true religion such preliminary doubts have been already settled, either by natural bent of mind or docility to previous training; and they pass on to consider apostolical succession, the primacy of Peter, the nature and number of the sacraments, and other matters wherein heresy errs by denial or by defect.