of
that year Father Baker died, and the missions, which had been a
grievous burden to the little band, now became an impossibility. They
were suspended till 1872, excepting an occasional one, given not so
much as part of the current labor of the community, as to retain
their sweet savor in the memory and as an earnest of their future
resumption. But up to Father Baker's death this small body of men had
preached almost everywhere throughout the country, getting away from
the South just before the war blocked the road. Eighty-one missions
had been given, hundreds of converts had been received into the
Church and many scores of thousands of confessions heard. Numerous
applications for missions were refused for want of men to preach
them. Scarcely a city of any size in the United States and Canada but
knew the Paulists and thanked God for their missions.

The Fathers conducted them in the same spirit as when they were
Redemptorists, and followed, as the community still continues to do,
substantially the same method. It is not easy to improve on St.
Alphonsus. But they did not fail to bring out the qualities and call
for the peculiar virtues demanded by Divine Providence in these
times. Their preaching was distinguished by appeals to manliness and
intelligence, as well as to the virtues distinctly supernatural. The
people were not only edified by their zeal and religious discipline,
but the more observant were attracted by the Paulists' freedom of
spirit, and by their constant insistence on the use of the reasoning
faculties to guide the emotions aroused by the sermons. The
missionaries were men of native independence, and their religious
influence was productive of the same quality. Great attention was
paid to the doctrinal instructions. As to special devotions, the
Paulists have never had any to propagate, though competent and
willing to assist the pastor in his own choice of such subsidiary
religious aids. Non-Catholics of all classes were drawn to hear the
convert missionaries, and the exercises usually received flattering
notices from the secular press. An unrelenting warfare was carried on
against the dangerous occasions of sin peculiar to our country and
people, and the Fathers were from the beginning, and their community
is yet well known for particular hostility to drunkenness, and to the
most fruitful source of that detestable and widespread vice, the
saloon. Their antagonism to drunkenness showed their appreciati