There is hardly any part of this Life which does not assist one in understanding the Exposition, especially the chapters on the idea of a religious community and that giving his spiritual doctrine.  Many leading spirits hailed it with joy, among them Margotti, the editor of the Unita Cattolica of Turin, and Cardinal Deschamps.  The former made Father Hecker’s acquaintance during a visit to Turin, and became a warm admirer of him and his views.  He compelled him to leave the hotel and lodge at his house during his stay in that city.  When the Exposition came out he gave it two long and highly commendatory notices in his journal, at the time the most influential Catholic one in Italy, and published three chapters entire.

We have a copy of the Exposition annotated, at Father Hecker’s request, by the late distinguished Jesuit, Father H. Ramiere.  These comments are valuable and suggestive.  While modifying Father Hecker’s judgment as to the causes of the deterioration of Catholic manliness, Father Ramiere recognizes the fact.  The remedies receive his emphatic approval, as also the author’s explanation of the synthesis of the inner and outer action of the Holy Ghost in the Church.

When The Church and the Age appeared the English Jesuit magazine, The Month, in its issue of July, 1888, gave the book a very full and favorable review, endorsing all the principles of the Exposition.  After saying that the Vatican decrees mark a special epoch in the evolution of Christianity, and close a period of attack—­one of the sharpest which the Church has ever sustained—­upon her external authority, the reviewer continues: 

“It completed the Church’s defence, and left her free to continue unimpeded her normal course of internal development. . . .  The author displays remarkable breadth of thought, and the book contains many passages which are not only eloquent as a defence of Catholicity, but which cannot fail to impart instruction to the reflecting reader.  We think it deserving of a wide circulation among both clergy and laity, and it is with a desire to further such a result that we propose to explain at some length the views which we have already touched upon. . . .  We want a Catholic individualism, which necessarily requires a clear and recognized authority as a safeguard against the errors to which individualism exposes itself, but which, on the other hand, can never be begotten by the mere principle of authority as such.”

The Literarischer Handweiser, a German Catholic critical review, published in Muenster, having a high character and wide circulation, gave an equally favorable estimate of Father Hecker’s views in a notice of The Church and the Age.

The following extracts from letters will close our consideration of the Exposition, which we have thought worthy of so careful and full a study because it is the remedial application of Father Hecker’s spiritual doctrines to the evils of European Catholicity: