ard, as a rule, to the small craft and the
shipwrecked sailors tossing on the wild waves around them, and only
surprised when one or another hailed their vessel and asked to be
taken on board. Nor did the attitude of non-Catholics, taking them
generally, invite anything else. Isaac Hecker, passing into the
Church, not only came into contact with its members, but was to be
for some years exclusively in their company. But, though carried
beyond the Ripleys, the Alcotts, the Lanes, the Emersons, and beyond
the theories they in some sort stand for and represent, he had
learned them and their lesson, and never lost his aptitude for
returning to their company with a Catholic message. His farewell to
that class did not involve loss of affectionate interest, for in mind
he continually reverted to them. He knew that their peculiar traits
were significant of the most imperative invitation of Providence to
missionary work. He thought it was to that class, or, rather, to the
multitude to whom they were prophets, that the exponent of
Catholicity should first address himself. They possessed the highest
activity of the natural faculties; they were all but the only class
of Americans who loved truth for its own sake, that trait which is
the peculiarity of the Catholic mind, and the first requisite for
real conversion.

It may have been the latent strength of this conviction that, within
a year after his reception into the Church, permanently affected the
influence which Brownson had so long exerted over him. It ceased now
to be in any sense controlling, and at no future time regained force
enough to be directive. They found the Church together, went together
into its vestibule, and were received nearly at the same time. And
then the wide liberties of a universal religion gave ample scope and
large suggestion for the accentuation and development of their native
differences. Brownson was a publicist and remained so; Isaac Hecker
was a mystic and remained so. To the mysticism of the latter was
added an external apostolate; the public activity of the former was,
indeed, apostolic, but upon a field not only different from any he
would himself have spontaneously chosen, but quite unlike. Our reader
already knows how grievous a loss to the public exposition of the
Church in America this defection of Brownson's genius from its true
direction seemed to Father Hecker. He never ceased to deplore it as a
needless calamity, overruled in great meas