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To investigate and make one's self certain that God has made a revelation is of obligation, and consistent with Christianity.

But as a divine revelation springs from a source above the sphere of reason, it necessitates a divinely authorized and divinely assisted _interpreter_ and teacher.

This is one of the essential functions of the Church." That the use of the Scriptures is not, and cannot be made the ordinary means for making all men Christians, was plain to Isaac Hecker for other reasons than the essential one thus clearly stated.
For, if such were the case, God would bestow on all men the gift to read at sight, or cause all to learn how to read, or would have recorded in the Book itself the words, "Unless a man reads the Bible, and believes what he reads, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," or their plain equivalent; whereas the Bible, as we have it now, did not exist in the apostolic days, the most glorious era of the Christian Church.