The soul of Isaac Hecker was one athirst for God from the first dawn of its conscious being.

Upon Him, its Creator and Source, it never lost hold, and never ceased to cry out for Him with longing and aspiration, even during that bitter and protracted period of his youth when his mind, entangled in the maze of philosophic subjectivism, seemed in danger of rejecting theism altogether.

But the underpinning of his faith, so far as that professed to be Christian and to come by hearing--to have an intellectual basis, that is--began to slip away almost as soon as he left his mother's knee.

It is possible that very little stress was ever laid upon distinctively Christian doctrines in her teaching.

To adore God the Creator, to listen to His voice in conscience, to live honestly and purely as in His sight--the heritage she transmitted to him probably contained little more than this.