The passages we have italicized in this extract may go to show how far Dr. Brownson himself was, at this period, from being able to give any but the evasive answer he actually did give to the searching philosophical questions put by his youthful admirer.  But it is not easy, especially in the light of Isaac Hecker’s subsequent experiences, to overestimate the influence which this new presentation of our Saviour had upon the development of his mind and character.  For reasons which we have tried to indicate by a brief description of some of his life-long interior traits, the ordinary Protestant view, restricted and narrow, which represents Jesus Christ merely as the appointed though voluntary Victim of the Divine wrath against sin, had been pressed upon him prematurely.  Now He was held up to him, and by a man who was in many ways superior to all other men the boy had met, as a great personality, altogether human, indeed, but still the most perfect specimen of the race; the supremely worshipful figure of all history, whose life had been given to the assertion of the dignity of man and the equality of mankind.  That human nature is good and that men are brethren, said Dr. Brownson, was the thesis of Christ, taught throughout His life, sealed by His death.  The Name which is above all names became thus in a new sense a watchword, and the Gospels a treasury for that social apostolate to which Isaac Hecker had already devoted himself with an earnestness which for some years made it seem religion enough for him.

So it has seemed before his time and since to many a benevolent dreamer.  Though the rites of the humanitarian cult differ with its different priests, its creed retains everywhere and always its narrow identity.  But that all men are good, or would be so save for the unequal pressure of social conditions on them, is a conclusion which does not follow from the single premise that human nature, inasmuch as it is a nature and from the hand of God, is essentially good.  The world is flooded, just at present, with schemes for insuring the perfection and happiness of men by removing so far as possible all restraints upon their natural freedom; and whether this is to be accomplished with Tolstoi, by reducing wants to a minimum and abolishing money; or by establishing clubs for the promotion of culture and organizing a social army which shall destroy poverty by making money plenty, appears a mere matter of detail—­at all events to dreamers and to novelists.  But to men who are in hard earnest with themselves, men who “have not taken their souls in vain nor sworn deceitfully,” either to their neighbor or about him, certain other truths concerning human nature besides that of its essential goodness are sure to make themselves evident, soon or late.  And among these is that of its radical insufficiency to its own needs.  It is a rational nature, and it seeks the Supreme Reason, if only for its own self-explication.  It is a nature which, wherever found, is found in the attitude of adoration, and neither in the individual man nor in humanity at large is there any Divinity which responds to worship.