the truth he knew to be
contained in it. He carried in himself the touchstone to which all
that was akin to it beyond him responded of necessity. The Light
which lights every man who comes into the world had not only never
been darkened in him by sinful courses, but it seemed to burn with a
crystal clearness which threw up into hideous and repellant
proportions all that was offensive to it. Many voices had called him
from without, but he had refused obedience unto any. He never
submitted until his submission was full and not to be withdrawn. So,
once in the Church, and enjoying her divine guarantee of external
authority, he had few if any disquieting recollections of error to
breed distrust of the light that shone within him. His soul was of
that order to which truth speaks authoritatively and at first hand;
of that soil from which institutions which are to stand spring by a
true process of development, because it is the soil which first
received their germs. Always it is the soul of man which is inspired,
the mind of man that is enlightened. Then the teaching comes as
record of the fact and the doctrine; then the institution solidifies
about them, a perpetual witness that to many men and ages of men the
same message has been handed down by its first recipients and has
produced in them its proper results. The race of such souls has not
died out in the Christian Church. The one truth, spoken once for all
by the Incarnate Word, takes on for them new aspects and new tones.
They are the pioneers of great movements. Nurtured in the Church,
their ardor burns away mere conventionalities; born outside the
Church, the light she carries is a beacon, and the voice she utters
is felt as that of the true Mother. To adapt once more a pregnant
sentence from young Hecker, of the truth of which he was himself an
example: "It is God in them which believes in God."

But to return to Brownson. An entry in the journal, made nearly a
year later, sums up the total impression which Brownson had made upon
his young disciple:

"June 22, 1845.--0. A. B. is here. He arrived this morning. Though he
is a friend to me, and the most critical periods of my experience
have been known to him, and he has frequently given me advice and
sympathy, yet he never moves my heart. He has been of inestimable use
to me in my intellectual development. He is, too, a man of heart. But
he is so strong, and so intellectually active, that all his energy is
consumed in