ed never to ripen.

Christ was the model of the Brook-Farmers, as He had become that of
Isaac Hecker. They did not know Him as well as they knew His
doctrine. They knew better what He said than why He said it, and that
defect obscured His meaning and mystified their understandings. That
all men were brethren was the result of their study of humanity under
what they conceived to be His leadership; that all labor is
honorable, and entitled to equal remuneration, was their solution of
the social problem. While any man was superfluously rich, they
maintained, no man should be miserably poor. They were reaching after
what the best spirits of the human race were then and now longing
for, and they succeeded as well as any can who employ only the
selvage of the Christian garment to protect themselves against the
rigors of nature. Saint-Simon was a far less worthy man than George
Ripley, but he failed no more signally. Frederic Ozanam, whose
ambition was limited in its scope by his appreciation of both nature
and the supernatural, succeeded in establishing a measure of true
fraternity between rich and poor throughout the Catholic world.

There can be no manner of doubt that although Father Hecker in after
life could good-naturedly smile at the singularities of Brook Farm,
what he saw and was taught there had a strong and permanent effect on
his character. It is little to say that the influence was refining to
him, for he was refined by nature. But he gained what was to him a
constant corrective of any tendency to man-hatred in all its degrees,
not needed by himself to be sure, but always needed in his dealing
with others. It gave to a naturally trustful disposition the vim and
vigor of an apostolate for a cheerful view of human nature. It was a
characteristic trait of his to expect good results from reliance on
human virtue, and his whole success as a persuades of men was largely
to be explained by the subtle flattery of this trustful attitude
towards them. At Brook Farm the mind of Isaac Hecker was eagerly
looking for instruction. It failed to get even a little clear light
on the more perplexing problems of life, but it got something
better--the object-lesson of good men and women struggling nobly and
unselfishly for laudable ends. Brook Farm was an attempt to remove
obstructions from the pathway of human progress, taking that word in
the natural sense.

Even afterwards, when he had known human destiny in its perfect
supern