of Catholic literature as a missionary force, the picture was inspiring, and that the hearers, receiving a Pentecostal fire within their bosoms, felt as if America were to be at once converted.  So would it have been if there had been in America a sufficient number of Heckers.  He had his critics.  Who ever tries to do something outside routine lines against whom hands are not raised and whose motives and acts are not misconstrued?  A venerable clergyman one day thought he had scored a great point against Father Hecker by jocosely suggesting to him as the motto of his new order the word “Paulatim.”  The same one, no doubt, would have made a like suggestion to the Apostle of the Gentiles.  Advocates of “Paulatim” methods have too often left the wheels of Christ’s chariot fast in the mire.  We rejoice, for its sake, that enthusiasts sometimes appear on the scene.  The missions of the early Paulists, into which went Father Hecker’s entire heart, aroused the country.  To-day, after a lapse of thirty or thirty-five years, they are remembered as events wherever they were preached.

His was the profound conviction that, in the present age at any rate, the order of the day should be individual action—­every man doing his full duty, and waiting for no one else to prompt him.  This, I take it, was largely the meaning of Father Hecker’s oft-repeated teaching on the work of the Holy Ghost in souls.  There have been epochs in history where the Church, sacrificing her outposts and the ranks of her skirmishers to the preservation of her central and vital fortresses, put the brakes, through necessity, from the nature of the warfare waged against her, upon individual activity, and moved her soldiers in serried masses; and then it was the part and the glory of each one to move with the column.  The need of repression has passed away.  The authority of the Church and of her Supreme Head is beyond danger of being denied or obscured, and each Christian soldier may take to the field, obeying the breathings of the Spirit of truth and piety within him, feeling that what he may do he should do.  There is work for individual priests, and for individual laymen, and so soon as it is discovered let it be done.  The responsibility is upon each one; the indifference of others is no excuse.  Said Father Hecker one day to a friend:  “There is too much waiting upon the action of others.  The layman waits for the priest, the priest for the bishop, and the bishop for the pope, while the Holy Ghost sends down to all the reproof that He is prompting each one, and no one moves for Him.”  Father Hecker was original in his ideas, as well as in his methods; there was no routine in him, mental or practical.