It was by him that Isaac Hecker's vocation was, though not revealed, yet most wisely directed.
Brownson told the young man that he ought to devote himself to the Germans in this country; Bishop Hughes advised him to go to St.
Sulpice and study for the secular priesthood; Bishop McCloskey told him to become a religious.
Hitherto Isaac Hecker's environment had been entirely non-Catholic; the ebbing and flowing of a sea of doubt and inquiry upon which floated small boats and rafts which had been cast off from the good ship of Christ.

Now that he was on board the ship itself, he found its crew and passengers sailing straight on toward their destined haven, paying small regard, as a rule, to the small craft and the shipwrecked sailors tossing on the wild waves around them, and only surprised when one or another hailed their vessel and asked to be taken on board.

Nor did the attitude of non-Catholics, taking them generally, invite anything else.

Isaac Hecker, passing into the Church, not only came into contact with its members, but was to be for some years exclusively in their company.

But, though carried beyond the Ripleys, the Alcotts, the Lanes, the Emersons, and beyond the theories they in some sort stand for and represent, he had learned them and their lesson, and never lost his aptitude for returning to their company with a Catholic message.