ughly, ending by the decrees of the Council of
Trent. All this the lecturer proved by citations from numerous high
authorities, all of them Protestants. Why did Luther leave the
company of the true reformers? or, as Father Hecker puts it, "Why did
Luther change his base?" Whatever reason he had for leaving
Catholicity, it was not, as a matter of fact, on account of zeal for
reform. The lecture concluded by emphatically and, in different
terms, repeatedly denying to Luther the name of Reformer and to his
work the name of Reformation. Such was the line of argument in a
lecture which entertained the general public and enraged bigoted
Protestants more, perhaps, than any of the others. The secret of its
success was that it overturned the great Protestant idol.

With humanitarians, rationalists, indifferentists, and sceptics
Father Hecker's lectures were popular, and such were his favorite
audience. If he so much as aroused their curiosity about the Church,
he deemed that he had gained a victory; this and more than this he
always succeeded in doing. Regular "church members" he did not hope
much from, though they came to hear him and he sometimes made
converts even among them. The lecture system, then far more in vogue
than at present, gave him hearers from all classes of minds, and
especially those most intellectually restless and inquiring. He took
his turn in the list which contained the names of Wendell Phillips,
Beecher, Emerson, and Sumner, and found his golden opportunity before
such audiences as had been gathered to listen to them. Thus into the
drifts of thought and into the intellectual movements around him,
into the daily and periodical press, into the social and political
and scientific groupings of men and women, his lectures enabled him
to breathe the peremptory call of the true religion, sure to provoke
inquiry in all active minds, and in some to find good soil and bear
the harvest of conversion. He searched for earnest souls; and his
confidence that they were everywhere to be found was rewarded not
only in many particular instances, but also by the removal of much
prejudice throughout the entire country.

The writer of these pages saw Father Hecker for the first time on the
lecture platform. He was then in the full tide of success, conscious
of his opportunity and of his power to profit by it. We never can
forget how distinctly American was the impression of his personality.
We had heard the nation's greatest