The following account of his curious inner experiences tells of the positive interference of God and His angels, supplementing the calmer moods in which Isaac longed for and struggled towards the settled condition only to be attained after his entering the Church.
"November 5.--How is it and why is it that I feel around me the constant presence of invisible beings who affect my sensibility, and with whom I converse, as it were, in thought and feeling, but not in expression? At times they so move me that I would escape them, if I could, by running away from where I am. I can scarcely keep still; I feel like beating, raving, and grasping what I know not. Ah! it is an unearthly feeling, and painfully afflicts my heart. How to get rid of it I do not know. If I remain quietly where I am, by collecting its scattered rays it burns more deeply into my soul, bringing forth deep sighs, groans, and at times demanding all my energy to repress an unnatural howl.
"How shall I escape this? By remaining here and trying to bear it, or by travelling? To do the latter has often occurred to me of late. By such a cause I was driven from home last winter. What the result will be this time I cannot tell; but if I did know, I would not wait, as I did then, until it came on me with such power as to be torturing in the extreme. Ah, what nervous strength and energy I feel at such times! If I speak of it to my brothers, they cannot understand me, never having had the same experience. My timidity, which does not wish to be thought of as desiring anything extra on account of my life, makes me bear it until it is unendurable. Hence I am silent so long as it does not speak for itself, which extremity might be prevented were circumstances other than they are. Since they are not, let it be borne with, say strength and resignation united with hope. 'Tis this that is fabled in Prometheus and Laocoön--and how well fabled, too."
It is significant that after every extraordinary disturbance, such as the above, he experienced the impulse to study the credentials of claimants in the outer religious world, the envoys of the Deity to man; and this especially concerning the Catholic Church. He goes on at once to say: