Hitherto Isaac Hecker’s environment had been entirely non-Catholic; the ebbing and flowing of a sea of doubt and inquiry upon which floated small boats and rafts which had been cast off from the good ship of Christ.  Now that he was on board the ship itself, he found its crew and passengers sailing straight on toward their destined haven, paying small regard, as a rule, to the small craft and the shipwrecked sailors tossing on the wild waves around them, and only surprised when one or another hailed their vessel and asked to be taken on board.  Nor did the attitude of non-Catholics, taking them generally, invite anything else.  Isaac Hecker, passing into the Church, not only came into contact with its members, but was to be for some years exclusively in their company.  But, though carried beyond the Ripleys, the Alcotts, the Lanes, the Emersons, and beyond the theories they in some sort stand for and represent, he had learned them and their lesson, and never lost his aptitude for returning to their company with a Catholic message.  His farewell to that class did not involve loss of affectionate interest, for in mind he continually reverted to them.  He knew that their peculiar traits were significant of the most imperative invitation of Providence to missionary work.  He thought it was to that class, or, rather, to the multitude to whom they were prophets, that the exponent of Catholicity should first address himself.  They possessed the highest activity of the natural faculties; they were all but the only class of Americans who loved truth for its own sake, that trait which is the peculiarity of the Catholic mind, and the first requisite for real conversion.

It may have been the latent strength of this conviction that, within a year after his reception into the Church, permanently affected the influence which Brownson had so long exerted over him.  It ceased now to be in any sense controlling, and at no future time regained force enough to be directive.  They found the Church together, went together into its vestibule, and were received nearly at the same time.  And then the wide liberties of a universal religion gave ample scope and large suggestion for the accentuation and development of their native differences.  Brownson was a publicist and remained so; Isaac Hecker was a mystic and remained so.  To the mysticism of the latter was added an external apostolate; the public activity of the former was, indeed, apostolic, but upon a field not only different from any he would himself have spontaneously chosen, but quite unlike.  Our reader already knows how grievous a loss to the public exposition of the Church in America this defection of Brownson’s genius from its true direction seemed to Father Hecker.  He never ceased to deplore it as a needless calamity, overruled in great measure, indeed, by the good Providence of God, but not wholly repaired.

Father Hecker’s affection for Dr. Brownson never wavered, and his gratitude towards him was only deepened and made more efficacious with the lapse of time and the growth of his own spiritual experience.  If they did not always agree, either in principles or in questions of policy, they always loved each other.  The memoranda furnish an interesting proof of this abiding affection on the part of Father Hecker.  He was asked: