"Many a time before my conversion God gave me grace to weep over
those words: 'And all those who love His coming.' I did not believe
in His coming, but I loved it honestly and longed to believe it. I
had learned much of the Bible from my mother and had read it often
and much myself."

This consciously supernatural character of his inner life from the
first, should be kept closely united in the reader's mind with that
other idea of his adhesion to "guileless nature" which was such a
favorite theme with Father Hecker. No one could be more emphatic than
he in asserting the necessity of the supernatural for the attainment
of man's destiny. How could it be otherwise, when he considered that
destiny to be the elevation of man above all good merely human, and
by means far beyond the compass of his natural powers? Still, this
was undoubtedly a conclusion of his riper years, a result arrived at
after a certain intense if not very prolonged experience in
contemporary Utopias, in futile endeavors to raise man above his own
level while remaining on it, whether by socialistic schemes or social
politics.

In an article called "Dr. Brownson and the Workingman's Party Fifty
Years Ago," published in _The Catholic World_ of May, 1887, Father
Hecker has himself made some interesting references to his
experiences in the latter field, and upon these we shall draw heavily
for our own account of this period of his life, supplementing them
with whatever bears upon the subject in the memoranda already
referred to.

Concerning the inception of this party, to which all three of the
young Heckers belonged in 1834, we have a better statement in Dr.