the point of contact. He was certainly an edifying
priest, and to hear his Mass was to be spiritually elevated by his
joyous fervor. But you would never say of him "he is a thorough
ecclesiastic, he is a typical priest." The external aids of religion
he imparted with a reverence which displayed his faith in his
priestly character as a dispenser of the sacramental mysteries of
God. But the other mysteries of God which are hidden in his
providential guidance of men, he could expound with the instinctive
familiarity of a native gift; the voice of God in nature, in reason,
and in conscience, and its response in revelation, he could elicit
with a power and unction rarely met with. He has left the following
words on record: "After my ordination the duties of the sacred
ministry appeared to me most natural; the hearing of confessions and
the direction of souls was as if it had been a thing practised from
my childhood, and was a source of great consolation."

The year spent in England after ordination was occupied by Father
Hecker mainly in parochial duties at Clapham and some neighboring
stations attended by the Redemptorists of that house. Father Walworth
enjoyed some missionary experience with Fathers Pecherine and
Buggenoms, but Father Hecker had only been at one or two small
retreats--one at Scott-Murray's estate in company with Father Ludwig
and another at that of Weld-Blundells in Lancashire; but in neither
of these had he preached or given any instructions, serving only in
the confessional and in hunting up obstinate sinners. He certainly
did preach once before leaving England, perhaps only once, and that
was at Great Marlowe, near London, in the church built by the
Hornihold family. It was on Easter Sunday, 1850, and was well
remembered by Father Hecker and referred to in after years. He
thought the sermon a good one as a beginning, but it seems to have
given him no encouragement, and we venture to think that if it
profited his hearers somewhat it also amused them a little. He needed
a teacher, and he found one in Father Bernard, the newly appointed
provincial of the American province.

In 1850 Father Bernard Joseph Hafkenscheid* was made Provincial of
the Redemptorist houses in America. His patronymic was too formidable
for ordinary use, and he was universally known as Father Bernard. He
was in the prime of life on taking this office, and although he had
spent twenty years on the missions in Holland, his native cou