This is not for lack of guidance, so far as doctrine is concerned, for accredited authors on such subjects are numerous and their teaching is uniform and explicit, besides being of the most intense interest to those for whose instruction it is adapted.

These masters of spiritual doctrine not only dwell upon the interior life itself, but also on the external order of God in His Church which brings His interior teaching into proper relation with the exterior.
The interior life thus made integral is alone worthy of the term _real;_ is alone worthy of the description of St.Paul when he calls it "the witness of the Spirit." Now, as a witness who cannot be brought into open court to give his testimony might as well be dumb, and is as good as no witness, so the inner life, lacking the true external order of God, is cramped and helpless; and cramped and helpless Isaac Hecker was.

Whatever he did, therefore, toward investigating religious evidences was done primarily as a search for the external criterion which should guarantee the validity of the inspirations of God within him, and at the same time provide a medium of union with his fellow-men.
Those whose advertence is not particularly aroused to the facts of their interior life, have for their main task either the study of the Church as a visible society, claiming continuity with one established by Christ; or, preceding that, the question whether such a society was ever founded by God.

Now, although such questions must be settled by all, they are not the main task of men like Isaac Hecker.

In their case the problem transcending all others is where to find that divine external order demanded for the completion of their inner experience.
Such men must say: If there is no external order of God in this world, then my whole interior life is fatally awry.
The captain whose voyage is on the track of the trade winds nevertheless needs more than dead reckoning for his course; he needs to take the sun at noon, to study the heavens at night, and to con his chart.