To say that Father Hecker “Americanized” in the narrow sense would be to do him injustice.  The American ideas to which he appealed he knew to be God’s will for all civilized peoples of our time.  If fundamentally American they were not for that reason exclusively American.  His Americanism is so broad that by a change of place it can be made Spanish, or German; and a slight change of terms makes it religious and Catholic.  Nor had form of government essentially to do with it; human equality cannot be monopolized by republics; it can be rightly understood in a monarchy, though in such a ease it does not assume the conspicuous place which it does in a republic.  It was this broadness of Father Hecker’s Americanism that made him acceptable to the extremely conservative circles of Rome, in his struggle there in the winter of 1858-9.  Many men in the monarchies of the old World may doubt the advent of republicanism there, but what sensible man anywhere doubts the aspiration of all races towards liberty and intelligence?

Father Hecker’s repertory covered the entire ground between scepticism and Catholicism.  In refutation of Protestantism the principal lectures were:  The Church and the Republic; Luther and the Reformation; How and Why I Became a Catholic, or A Search after Rational Christianity; and The State of Religion in the United States. On the positive side his chief topics were:  The Church as a Society, Why We Invoke the Saints, and the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion.  Others he had against materialism, spiritualism, etc.

As may naturally be supposed, some of his lectures succeeded better than others.  One of those he personally preferred was The Churrk and the Republic. He opened by affirming, as the fundamental principle of the American nation, that man is naturally virtuous enough to be capable of self-government.  He developed this in various ways till his audience felt that it was to be the touchstone of the question between the churches.  He then exhibited the Protestant teaching on human virtue and human depravity, quoting extensively from Luther and from Calvin, as well as from the creeds of the principal Protestant sects, until the contrast between their teaching and the fundamental American principle was painfully vivid.  There was no escape; doctrinal Protestantism is un-American.  He then gave the Catholic doctrine of free will, of merit, of human dignity, and of the equality of men and human brotherhood.  The impression was profound.  Great mountains of prejudice were lifted up and cast into the sea.  The elevating influences of the Church’s faith fixed men’s eyes and won their hearts.  To have it demonstrated that Catholicity was not a gigantic effort to combine all available human forces to maintain a central religious despotism in the hands of a hierarchy, was a surprise to multitudes of Protestants.  To not a few intelligent Catholics the style of argument was a great novelty.  Father