Father Walworth now became superior, and the missions went on in the same spirit and with the same success as before.  In the record of the one given at the church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Brooklyn, we find the following entry:  “Missionaries, Fathers Walworth, Hecker, Hewit, and George Deshon (late lieu-tenant Ordnance, U. S. A., a convert from the Episcopal Church.  This was his first mission).”  Father Deshon had been ordained not long before, and soon began to share the instructions with Father Hecker.  This was in February, 1856, and in November of the same year, at St. Patrick’s Mission, Washington, D. C., they were joined by Father Francis A. Baker, ordained in the preceding September, a distinguished convert from the Episcopal ministry of the city of Baltimore.  Much we would say of him, his eloquence and his very amiable traits of character, but all this and more is well said by Father Hewit, in his memoir of Father Baker, published after the latter’s death in 1865 (Catholic Publication Society Co.) This increase of members allowed a division of the band for smaller-sized missions.

In our judgment those men were a band of missionaries the like of whom have not served the great cause among the English-speaking races these recent generations.  Fathers Walworth, Hewit, and Deshon have survived their companions of those early days, and may they long remain with us, calm and beautiful and devout old veterans of the divine warfare of peace!

Father Hecker gave several retreats to religious communities of men and of women during the six or seven years we are considering, devoting for the purpose portions of the summer months usually unoccupied by missions.  Copies of notes of his conferences, taken down by some of his hearers, are in our possession and may aid us further on in giving the reader a view of his spiritual doctrine.

The following extract from the Roman statement summarizes what we have been telling in this chapter, and introduces the reader to Father Hecker’s first missionary activity as a writer: 

“My superiors sent me back to the United States, and on my return being asked by my immediate superior in what way he could best employ me, my reply was, in taking care of the sick, the poor, and the prisoners.  The stupidity which still reigned over my intellectual faculties, and the helplessness of my will, and my sympathy with those classes led me to choose such a sphere of action as most suitable to my then condition.  And although the conversion of the non-Catholics of my fellow-countrymen was ever before my mind, yet God left me in ignorance how this was to be accomplished.  Such strong and deep impulses, and so vast in their reach, took possession of my soul on my return to the United States in regard to the conversion of the American people, that on manifesting my interior to one of the most spiritually enlightened and experienced fathers of the congregation on the subject to obtain his direction, he bade me not to resist these interior movements, they came from God; and that God would yet employ me in accordance with them.  Such were his words.  After a few weeks in the United States the work of the missions began.  My principal duties on these were to give public instructions and hear confessions, and up to this time (1858) these missionary labors have occupied me almost exclusively.