complaint against them all. Some, like the Unitarians, did but offer
man his best self and hence added nothing to humanity, while humanity
at its best ceaselessly condemned itself as insufficient. This
insufficiency of man for himself, Calvinistic and Lutheran
Protestantism in their turn condemned as a depravity worthy of the
deepest hell, making man a wretch maimed in his very nature so
cruelly and fatally as to be damned for what he could not help being
guilty of. Meantime the Catholic Church was seen by Isaac Hecker as
having elements the most attractive. It recognized in man his native
dignity; it saw in him a being made God-like by the attribute of
reason, and called him to a state infinitely more God-like by a
supernatural union with Christ. It understood his weakness, pitied
it, and knew how to cure it. True, there are passages here in which
his impatience with the public attitude of the Church betrays that
his view of it was yet a distant one; they show, also, an undue
concentration of his gaze upon social evils. "The Church is a great
almoner," he says, "but what is she doing to ameliorate and improve
the circumstances of the poorer and more numerous classes? She is
more passive than active." "Instead of the Church being in the head
and front of advancement, suffering martyrdom for Christ, she is in a
conservative relation with society." Yet he adds: "We speak of the
Church as she is exhibited by her bishops and clergy, and only in
this sense."

Isaac Hecker's renewed experiment of engaging in business and
following at the same time the lead of the peremptory Spirit within
him soon proved a failure. He complains, though not as bitterly as
the year before when he felt the first agony of this suffering, that
the greater part of his true life is lost in his present
position--the thoughts, feelings, studies which are of supreme value
to him, getting entrance into his mind almost by stealth, while, at
the same time, he is not of much use in the business and of little
benefit to others in any way. On March 10 he wrote to Brownson that
he was going to give up business totally and finally, and asked his
Advice about a course of study "for the field of the Church," not
having yet fully settled as to whether it should be "the Roman or the
Anglican." Upon his determination to withdraw from the secular
affairs of life he experienced "such peace, calmness, and deep,
settled strength and confidence" as never before. "I fe