ven by me before
an audience, a great part of which was not Catholic, the matter and
manner of which was taken from my second book, my fellow-missionaries
were present; and they as well as myself regarded this as a test
whether my views and sentiments were adapted to reach and convince
the understanding and hearts of this class of people, or were the
mere illusions of fancy. Hitherto my fellow-missionaries had shown
but little sympathy with my thoughts on these points, but at the
close of the conference they were of one mind that my vocation was
evidently to work in the direction of the conversion of the
non-Catholics, and they spoke of such a work with conviction and
enthusiasm."

This last event occurred in St. Patrick's Church, Norfolk, Va., in
April, 1896, and is thus mentioned by Father Hewit in the record of
the mission: "Father Hecker closed with an extremely eloquent and
popular lecture on 'Popular Objections to Catholicity.'"

The _Questions of the Soul_ was well named, for it undertakes to show
how the cravings of man for divine union may be satisfied. It does
this by discussing the problem of human destiny, affirming the need
of God for the soul's light and for its virtue, proving this by
arguments drawn from the instincts, faculties, and achievements of
man. The sense of want in man is the universal argument for his need
of more than human fruition, and in the moral order is the
irrefragable proof of both his own dignity and his incapacity to make
himself worthy of it. Father Hecker urged in this book that man is
born to be more than equal to himself--an evident proof of the need
of a superhuman or supernatural religion. Eleven chapters, making
one-third of the volume, are devoted to showing this, and include the
author's own itinerarium from his first consciousness of the supreme
question of the soul until its final answer in the Catholic Church,
embracing short accounts of the Brook Farm and Fruitlands
communities, and mention of other such abortive attempts at solution.
Three chapters then affirm and briefly develop the claim of Christ to
be the entire fulfilment of the soul's need for God, with the
Catholic Church as his chosen means and instrument. These are
entitled respectively, "The Model Man," "The Model Life," and "The
Idea of the Church." Three more chapters discuss Protestantism,
stating its commonest doctrines and citing its most competent
witnesses in proof of its total and often admitted in