It recognized in man his native dignity; it saw in him a being made God-like by the attribute of reason, and called him to a state infinitely more God-like by a supernatural union with Christ.

It understood his weakness, pitied it, and knew how to cure it.

True, there are passages here in which his impatience with the public attitude of the Church betrays that his view of it was yet a distant one; they show, also, an undue concentration of his gaze upon social evils.

"The Church is a great almoner," he says, "but what is she doing to ameliorate and improve the circumstances of the poorer and more numerous classes?
She is more passive than active." "Instead of the Church being in the head and front of advancement, suffering martyrdom for Christ, she is in a conservative relation with society." Yet he adds: "We speak of the Church as she is exhibited by her bishops and clergy, and only in this sense." Isaac Hecker's renewed experiment of engaging in business and following at the same time the lead of the peremptory Spirit within him soon proved a failure.

He complains, though not as bitterly as the year before when he felt the first agony of this suffering, that the greater part of his true life is lost in his present position--the thoughts, feelings, studies which are of supreme value to him, getting entrance into his mind almost by stealth, while, at the same time, he is not of much use in the business and of little benefit to others in any way.