I want than this, and honest men and women who will
listen to me?" The confidence he had in the strength of the Catholic
argument was absolute, and this he showed by his zeal. His sole study
was how to transmute this force into missionary form. Of all the
wonders of the intellectual world he felt that the greatest is the
faith of Catholics, and he knew by the lesson of his early life that
it is but slightly appreciated by the non-Catholic mind. That
Catholics permit this ignorance to continue was a puzzle to him. And
it was all the more annoying because any single one of them can
multiply his influence indefinitely by his union with the most
perfect organism ever known--the Catholic Church. The quiescence of a
body of men, sincere and intelligent, infallibly certain of the means
of obtaining eternal happiness, living in daily contact with other
men ignorant and _inquiring_ about this unspeakable privilege, and
yet not taking instant measures to impart their knowledge, was to
Father Hecker almost as great a wonder as the divine gift of faith
itself, especially as Catholics are well furnished with leaders and
are organized to spread the truth as one of their most sacred duties.

Mr. Wilfrid Ward, a Catholic philosophical writer of distinction, has
explained in a brilliant little volume the influence upon controversy
of what he styles _The Clothes of Religion_--race, political
traditions, education, physical temperament. He puts into his
instructive pages the sense of the great scholastic maxim, _Quidquid
recipitur secundum modum recipientis recipitur_--Whatever is
received, is received according to the mode (or character) of the
recipient. The national character, the tendencies, the antecedents of
the people addressed, the relative power of thought and of emotion in
their mental activity; all these are not, indeed, the souls of men
but the clothing of them, their armor and their weapons; and Father
Hecker felt that such things must be taken into account in dealing
with people, and that with the utmost discretion. His view about
controversy with non-Catholics was indeed aggressive--that we had
reached the point in the battle at which the legion, having cast its
javelins, rushes on with drawn swords to closer conflict. But the
combatants should be well trained, the captains should know the
ground to be traversed, should understand thoroughly the weakness and
strength of the enemy. It was not a new thing to bring Protestanti