even this defective presentation of the Redeemer of men might have appealed profoundly.  But Isaac Hecker’s problems were at this time mainly social; as, indeed, to use the word in a large sense, they remained until the end.  Now, Protestantism is essentially unsocial, being an extravagant form of individualism.  Its Christ deals with men apart from each other and furnishes no cohesive element to humanity.  The validity and necessity of religious organization as a moral force of Divine appointment is that one of the Catholic principles which it has from the beginning most vehemently rejected.  As a negative force its essence is a protest against organic Christianity.  As a positive force it is simply men, taken one by one, dealing separately with God concerning matters strictly personal.  True, it is a fundamental verity that men must deal individually with God; but the external test that their dealings with Him have been efficacious, and their inspirations valid, is furnished by the fact of their incorporation into the organic life of Christendom.  As St. Paul expresses it:  “For as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, are yet one body, so also is Christ.  For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free, and in one Spirit have we all been made to drink."*

[* I Cor. 12:12, 13.]

It is plain, then, that a religion such as Protestantism, which is unsocial and disintegrating by virtue of its antagonistic forces, can contribute little to the solution of social problems.  Even when not actively rejected by men deeply interested in such problems, it is tolerably sure that it will be practically ignored as a working factor in their public relations with their fellows.  Religion will remain the narrowly personal matter it began; chiefly an affair for Sundays; best attended to in one’s pew in church or at the family altar.  Probably it may reach the shop, the counter, and the scales; not so certainly the factory, the mine, the political platform, and the ballot.  If Christianity had never presented itself under any other aspect than this to Isaac Hecker, it is certain that it would never have obtained his allegiance.  Yet it is equally certain that he never rejected Christ under any aspect in which He was presented to him.

Even concerning the period of his life with which we are now engaged, and in which we have already represented him as having lost hold of all distinctively Christian doctrines, we must emphasize the precise words we have employed.  He “lost hold”; that was because his original grasp was weak.  While no authoritative dogmatic teaching had given him an even approximately full and definite idea of the God-man, His personality, His character, and His mission, the fragmentary truths offered him had made His influence seem restrictive rather than liberative of human energies.  Yet even so he had not deliberately turned his back upon Him, though his tendency at this time was doubtless toward simple Theism.  He had begun to ignore Christianity, simply because his own problems were dominantly social, and orthodox Protestantism, the only form of religion which he knew, had no social force corresponding to its pretensions and demands.