For His person and office he and all of us had a profound appreciation and sympathy, but it was not reverential or religious; the religious side of Christ's mission was ignored.

Christ was a social Democrat, Dr.Brownson maintained, and he and many of us had no other religion but the social theories we drew from Christ's life and teaching; that was the meaning of Christianity to us, and of Protestantism especially." In penning the reminiscences just given Father Hecker probably had in mind the whole period lying between his fourteenth year and his twenty-first.

In the autumn of 1834, when he first made acquaintance with Orestes Brownson, Isaac Hecker was not yet fifteen, while the reform lecturer was in his early thirties.

But the boy who began at once, as he has told us, to put philosophical questions, and to seek a test whereby to determine the validity of his mental processes, was already well known to the voters of his ward, not merely as an overgrown and very active lad, always on hand at the polling booths, and ready for any work which might be entrusted to a boy, but also as a clear and persuasive speaker on various topics of social and political reform.
Politics of the kind into which the young Heckers threw themselves so ardently were not very different in their methods fifty years ago from what they are to-day.

Reform politics are always the reverse of what are called machine politics.