The exercises may seem too many to you, but to us they are quite otherwise.

Their frequent changes prevent them from being monotonous, and their variety makes them agreeable.

Our time passes without our taking count of it, and our joy is that of a pure conscience, and our happiness that of a clean heart." It might seem a matter of peculiar difficulty for a free nature like Isaac Hecker's to conform to the stiff rules of such a system.

But this was not the case, and a closer look into the matter shows that such a regimen is of much use to an earnest man, however free his character, at the outset of his spiritual career.

Experience proves that one test of the genuineness of the interior disposition to serve God perfectly is readiness to surrender exterior peculiarities.