e a new order of things,
and to promote the happiness of my kind. I used the Bible as a good
Protestant, took what could be accommodated to my purpose, and passed
over the rest, as belonging to an age now happily outgrown. I
followed the example of the carnal Jews, and gave an earthly sense to
all the promises and prophecies of the Messias, and looked for my
reward in this world."

The passages we have italicized in this extract may go to show how
far Dr. Brownson himself was, at this period, from being able to give
any but the evasive answer he actually did give to the searching
philosophical questions put by his youthful admirer. But it is not
easy, especially in the light of Isaac Hecker's subsequent
experiences, to overestimate the influence which this new
presentation of our Saviour had upon the development of his mind and
character. For reasons which we have tried to indicate by a brief
description of some of his life-long interior traits, the ordinary
Protestant view, restricted and narrow, which represents Jesus Christ
merely as the appointed though voluntary Victim of the Divine wrath
against sin, had been pressed upon him prematurely. Now He was held
up to him, and by a man who was in many ways superior to all other
men the boy had met, as a great personality, altogether human,
indeed, but still the most perfect specimen of the race; the
supremely worshipful figure of all history, whose life had been given
to the assertion of the dignity of man and the equality of mankind.
That human nature is good and that men are brethren, said Dr.
Brownson, was the thesis of Christ, taught throughout His life,
sealed by His death. The Name which is above all names became thus in
a new sense a watchword, and the Gospels a treasury for that social
apostolate to which Isaac Hecker had already devoted himself with an
earnestness which for some years made it seem religion enough for him.

So it has seemed before his time and since to many a benevolent
dreamer. Though the rites of the humanitarian cult differ with its
different priests, its creed retains everywhere and always its narrow
identity. But that all men are good, or would be so save for the
unequal pressure of social conditions on them, is a conclusion which
does not follow from the single premise that human nature, inasmuch
as it is a nature and from the hand of God, is essentially good. The
world is flooded, just at present, with schemes for insuring the
perfection