But we have often heard him say that the immediate impulse which induced his application to be made a Redemptorist was need of "intimate and careful spiritual guidance." His director therefore became satisfied that he should become a religious, and turned his attention to the Society of Jesus, giving him the lives of St.Ignatius and St.Francis Xavier to read, and, doubtless, answered his inquiries about that order.

"But," he said in after years, "I had no vocation to teach young boys and felt unfitted for a student's life"; added to this was the certainty of the postponement of any public activity on his part for many years if he became a Jesuit.
After mentioning that he had read the life of St.Francis Xavier, he says that an acquaintance had written him that a German priest, living in Third Street, wanted to see him.

This was one of the Redemptorist Fathers who were newly established in the city.

This priest, whose name is not given, undertook to assume direction of Isaac, and was very urgent with him to make a spiritual retreat with a view to deciding his vocation.

"He is a very zealous person--too much so it seems to me," is the comment in the diary, and the answer was a refusal.