incessant practice of the missionary platform, and in the assistance of his present superior, exactly what he needed by way of preparation.  Besides the mission sermon at night—­the great sermon, as it was called—­there is a short doctrinal instruction at the same service and a moral one on the sacraments or commandments in the morning.  These became his share of the mission preaching, and the school in which he acquired that direct, convincing, and popular manner of discourse for which he was afterwards renowned as a lecturer.

We find the following among the memoranda: 

“When I came over to America with Fathers Bernard and Walworth, Bernard wanted to know what I could do.  Well, by that time I had given up all hopes of any public career.  I couldn’t preach.  My memory and intellectual faculties generally were so influenced by my interior state that theology was out of the question.  The lights that God had given me about the future state of religion in this country were still clear as ever, but I thought that I should have to confine myself to imparting them to particular and individual souls whom the providence of God should throw in my way; for I was persuaded that the Redemptorist community was unfitted for the future work I had caught a glimpse of and I was entirely contented to live and die a Redemptorist, and was quite certain that I should.  So, when Bernard asked me what I could do, I told him to get me some place as chaplain of a prison or public institution of charity, as that was about all that I was capable of.  But he thought differently.

“My first instructions on the missions were almost word for word given me by Bernard.  I didn’t seem to have a single thought of my own.”

To preach, whether to Catholics or to non-Catholics, one must learn how, and Father Hecker with all his gifts knew that this gift seldom comes from above except by way of reward for steady labor.  The opportunity of the missions, and of Father Bernard as a guide, was eagerly accepted in lieu of the prison chaplaincy.

The missions also enabled him to know the Catholic people.  The non-Catholics he already knew from vivid recollection of his own former state and from that of his early surroundings; Brook Farm and Fruitlands had completed his knowledge of the outside world; but the Redemptorist novitiate and studentate and his sojourn in England did not give him a similar knowledge of the Catholic people, priesthood, and hierarchy.  To the average looker-on Catholicity is what Catholics are, and Catholics in America viewed from a standpoint of morality were then and still are a very mixed population.  Why the fruits are worse than the tree is a sore perplexity even to expert controversialists, and Father Hecker had need to equip himself well for meeting that difficulty, a patent one in the rushing tide of stricken immigrants then pouring into America.  The missions are an unequalled school for learning men.  All men and women in a parish are made known to the missionary, for they walk or stumble through his very soul.