[Life of Father Hecker by Walter Elliott]@TWC D-Link bookLife of Father Hecker CHAPTER V 12/29
His mind was introverted.
Philosophical questions, then as always, interested him profoundly, but only in so far as they led to practical results.
It might be truer to say that philosophy was at no time more than the handmaid of theology to him. At this period he was in the thick of his struggle to attain certainty with regard to the nature and extent of the Christian revelation, and what he sought at Brook Farm was the leisure and quiet and opportunity for solitude which could not be his at home. "Lead me into Thy holy Church, which I now am seeking," he writes as the final petition of the prayer with which the first bulky volume of his diary opens.
With the burden of that search upon him, it was not possible for such a nature as his to plunge with the unreserve which is the condition of success into any study which had no direct reference to it.
We find him complaining at frequent intervals that he cannot give his studies the attention they demand.
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