a part of the experience of so many converts, is an instinctive testimony that the call to the truth is more than natural, while the overpowering attraction which attends it witnesses that nature must needs obey or perish.  The Church, too, is not heard by the soul merely as the collective voice of many men and ages of men agreed upon the truth, but as a mystic personality which makes her the imperative ambassadress of Christ.  For she is the Spouse of the Lamb, and in her the Incarnate Word obtains a voice which is no less single in its personality than multitudinous in its tones.

Much as Isaac Hecker had considered the matter, studying, reading, praying, assuring himself from time to time that if any church were true this was the one, and that to enter it was probably his duty, now that Brownson’s weight was likewise thrown into the scale and it went down with a warning thud, he thrilled through with apprehension.  “I feel like throwing all up,” he wrote in the diary on the day the letter reached him.  “Some cannot rest. How much better would it have been could I have remained in quietness at my daily pursuits, and not been led to where I now find myself."

Then he questions himself:  “What have I against the Catholic Church?  At this moment I cannot say that I have anything that is essential.  And she meets my wants on every side.

“Oh, this is the deepest event of my life!  I would have united myself to any one of the Protestant sects if I had found any that would have answered the demands of my nature.  Why should I now hesitate when I find the Catholic Church will do so?  Is not this the self-will which revolts against the involuntary will of the Spirit?

“The fundamental question is, Am I willing to submit my will to the guidance and direction of the Church?  If she is the body of Christ; if she is the channel of the Holy Ghost; if she is the inspired body illumined by Christ’s Spirit; in a word, if she is the Catholic Church; if I would serve God and humanity; if I would secure the favor of God, and heaven hereafter; why should I not submit to her?”

But however painful this final indecision may have been, it was of short duration.  Brownson’s letter reached Concord on Friday morning, and on Saturday Isaac Hecker went into Boston to see Bishop Fenwick and put himself under instruction.  That done, his peace not merely returned, but he felt that it rested on more solid grounds than heretofore.  Yet, curiously enough, it is at this point we come upon almost the first trace of his stopping seriously to consider the adverse sentiments of others with regard to any proposed action on his part.  Now that he means to range himself, he turns to look back at the disorderly host which he is quitting, not so much, or at least not primarily for the sake of the order and regularity and solidity of that to which it is opposed, but because a true instinct has taught him that unity is the external mark of truth, as equilibrium is the test of a just balance.  In his diary of June 11, 1844, after recording that he has just returned from Boston, where he has seen the bishop and his coadjutor, Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick, and received from the latter a note of introduction to the president of Holy Cross College, at Worcester, Mass., he adds: