We shall not attempt to follow the chronological order of the journal with exactness, but in making our extracts shall pursue the order of topics rather than of time.  By the middle of April the question of the Church had presented itself so unmistakably to Isaac Hecker, as the necessary preliminary to further progress—­to be settled in one way or another, either set definitely aside as unessential or else accepted as the adequate solution of man’s problems, that his struggles for and against it recur with especial frequency.  Faber has said somewhere that the Church is the touchstone of rational humanity, and that probably no adult passes out of life without having once, at least, been brought squarely face to face with it and made to understand and shoulder the tremendous responsibility which its claims impose.  There would be no need of a touchstone if there were no alloy in human nature, no feebleness in man’s will, no darkness in his understanding.  Were that the condition of humanity, the call to the supernatural order would be simply the summons to come up higher, its symbol a beacon torch upon the heights.  As it is, the path may be mistaken.  He whose feet have been set in it from birth by Christian training may wilfully forsake it.  He whose heart is pure and whose aspirations noble, may be so surrounded by the mists of inherited error and misapprehension that the light of truth fails to penetrate them when it first dawns.  The road is always strait which leads any son of Adam to supernal joy in conscious union with his Creator, even when his will is good and his desire unfeigned.

We shall find, therefore, that Isaac Hecker’s struggles were many and painful before he fully recognized and attained the necessary means to the end he craved.  They were characteristic also.  He was looking for the satisfaction of his rational aspirations rather than for the solution of historical problems, although his mind was too clear not to see that the two are inextricably bound up together.  But inasmuch as at the period of which we are writing, which was that of the Oxford Tracts, controversy turned mainly on questions of historical continuity and of Divine warrant in the external revelation of holy Scripture, it follows that he, and such as he, must have taken a lonely and unfrequented road towards the truth.  Every time he looked at the Church he was greeted with the spectacle of unity and uniformity, of discipline and order.  These are elements which always have been, and probably always will be, most attractive to the classes called educated, to men seeking for external notes of truth, flying from disorder, fearful of rebellion.  But to Isaac Hecker, the only external note which deeply attracted him was that of universal brotherhood.  If he were to bow his knee with joy to Jesus Christ, it would be because all, in heaven and earth or hell, should one day bend in union with him.