It has exhibited a power that is superior to, and which overcomes, all that arrays itself against it.

We do not deny that Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, Cato, etc., were good, great, and religious men, above the age in which they lived, and inspired be a life not only superior to that of their time but above that of a great part of Christendom, so-called.

But we say that Christ gave to the world a life infinitely above theirs, and that, had they been His contemporaries, or ours, they would have been as far superior to their actual selves as the inspiration of Christianity is superior to that under which they lived." [* "As some also of your own poets said: For we are also His offspring.

Being, therefore, the offspring of God, we must not suppose the Divinity to be like unto gold or silver or stone, the graving of art and the device of man." (Acts 17:28, 29)] Although there is authority for saying that the business partnership between Isaac Hecker and his brothers was not formally dissolved until he went away to Belgium in 1849, he seems never to have resumed any active share in it after his return from Concord.

Now and again the old scruples about this apparent inactivity returned upon him, and we find him contracting his personal needs within a compass so narrow that his support shall be felt as the least possible burden.
Thus he writes, on July 13, that his present state of suspension from all outward engagements cannot and should not be of long continuance.
He adds: "It is a clear and bounden duty that every one should in some way or other compensate the world for that which he consumes from its store.
But I do not see how I can do this consistently with the present state of my mind.