[Transcriber's Notes: This production was derived from
https://archive.org/details/lifeofrevfrancis00hewi/page/n9]

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Sermons Of The
Rev. Francis A. Baker,

Priest Of The Congregation Of St. Paul.

With A Memoir Of His Life

BY

Rev. A. F. Hewit.


Fourth Edition.

New York:
Lawrence Kehoe, 145 Nassau Street.
1867.

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Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1865

By A. F. Hewit,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

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PREFACE.

In offering the Memoir and Sermons of this volume to the friendsof F. Baker, and to the public, propriety requires of me a fewwords of explanation. The number of those who have been more orless interested in the events touched upon in the sketch of hislife and labors is very great, and composed of many differentclasses of persons in various places, and of more than onereligious communion. I cannot suppose that all of them will readthese pages, but it is likely that many will; and therefore aword is due to those who are more particularly interested, aswell as to the general class of readers. I have to ask theindulgence of all my readers for having interwoven so much of myown history and my own reflections on the topics and events ofthe period included within the limits of the narrative. They havewoven themselves in spontaneously, without any intention on mypart, and on account of the close connexion between myself andthe one whose career I have been describing; and I have beenunable to unravel them from the texture of the narrative withoutbreaking its threads.

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I have simply transferred to paper that picture of the past, longforgotten amid the occupations of an active life, which came upagain, unbidden and with great vividness, before the eye ofmemory, during the hours while the remains of my brother anddearest friend lay robed in violet, waiting for the last solemnrites of the requiem to be fulfilled. If I have succeeded, Icannot but think that the picture will have something of the sameinterest for others that it has for myself. Those who knew andloved the original, will, I hope, prize it for his sake; andtheir own recollections will diffuse the coloring and animationof life over that which in itself is but a pale and indistinctsketch. For their sakes chiefly I have prepared it, so far as themere personal motive of perpetuating the memory of a revered andbeloved individual is concerned. But I have had a higher motiveas my chief reason for undertaking the task: a desire to promotethe glory of God, by preserving and extending the memory of thegraces and virtues with which He adorned one of His most faithfulchildren. I have wished to place before the world the example ofone of the most signal conversions to the Catholic faith whichhas taken place in our country, as a lesson to all to imitate thepure and disinterested devotion to truth and conscience which itpresents to them.

Let me not be misunderstood. I do not present the example of hisconversion, or that of the great number of persons of similarcharacter who have embraced the Catholic religion, as a proofsufficient by itself of the truth of that religion....