around him, into the daily and periodical press, into the social and political and scientific groupings of men and women, his lectures enabled him to breathe the peremptory call of the true religion, sure to provoke inquiry in all active minds, and in some to find good soil and bear the harvest of conversion.  He searched for earnest souls; and his confidence that they were everywhere to be found was rewarded not only in many particular instances, but also by the removal of much prejudice throughout the entire country.

The writer of these pages saw Father Hecker for the first time on the lecture platform.  He was then in the full tide of success, conscious of his opportunity and of his power to profit by it.  We never can forget how distinctly American was the impression of his personality.  We had heard the nation’s greatest men then living, and their type was too familiar to be successfully counterfeited.  Father Hecker was so plainly a great man of that type, so evidently an outgrowth of our institutions, that he stamped American on every Catholic argument he proposed.  Nor was the force of this peculiar impression lessened by the whispered grumblings of a few petty minds among Catholics themselves, to whom this apostolic trait was cause for suspicion.  Never was a man more Catholic than Father Hecker, simply, calmly, joyfully, entirely Catholic.  What better proof of this than the rage into which his lectures and writings threw the outright enemies of the Church?  Grave ministers lost their balance and foamed at him as a trickster and a hypocrite, all the worse because double-dyed with pretence of love of country.

For the Protestant pulpits felt the shock and stormed in unison against this new exposition of Catholicity and against its representative.  In some cases, not content with one onslaught, they returned to the charge Sunday after Sunday.  All this was not unexpected.  The secular press, however, were very generally favorable in their notices, excepting some of the Boston dailies.  As a rule, the lectures were very fully reported and sometimes appeared word for word.

To reply to one’s assailants after one has left the field of battle is no easy matter, and for the most part Father Hecker trusted for this to local champions of Catholicity; and not in vain.  But it happened on one occasion that after he had lectured in a large town in Michigan, and had journeyed on to fulfil engagements farther West, he was attacked in a public hall by a minister of the place.  On his return East Father Hecker stopped over and gave another lecture in the town, and not only refuted the minister but covered him with ridicule.  In fact there was no great need of defence of Father Hecker’s arguments, they were so simply true and so readily understood.  Not one of his antagonists compared well with him for frankness, good humor, courtesy; and they almost invariably shirked the issue and confined themselves to stale calumnies against the Church.