From this time there is not a trace of disquietude with his position to be observed in his correspondence, until 1849. Under date of February, 1847, he writes to his friend, who, as it appears from his own declarations, was the only intimate friend he had among his brother clergymen:
"I still write now and then to H., but there is such a restriction on the freedom of thought and expression in speaking to him, that I have but very little interest in the correspondence; indeed I think it hardly likely long to continue; but from you there is no need or wish on my part to conceal any thing.
* * * * *
I long to leave St. Paul's. I do not say this to anyone here, for nothing is gained of talking; but to you I say that I am obliged constantly to fall back on the reflection that, until some other way is opened, my duty lies here. It is not on account of any disagreeables in my position; but there are peculiar dangers and difficulties attending it, and I cannot help fearing constantly that my life is too easy and too soft to please God. Still I see not which way to move. I think I wish to submit myself entirely to the Divine Will. I hope it will not seem impertinent, dear Dwight, to express a hope that this coming Lent may be a season of strict discipline to us both. Oh, I need it! I cannot tell you how the sense of responsibility concerning the souls of others sometimes alarms me. I can say this to you, without hypocrisy, I trust. I need to be purged by penance very, very much, to be drawn away from pride and vain-glory, and slothfulness and self-will; these are my besetting sins; and to be stirred up to diligent study, to obedience, to humility, to labor, and to prayer. I pray that I may have the grace to fulfil the work which God has put in my heart to undertake this Lent, that He would draw me away from all things else, entirely to be united to Him. It would be a most pleasant thought that we were thus entering on this penitential season together."
The following extract from a letter of June 23, 1848, shows the interest which the writer still felt in Mr. Newman:—
"Is it not encouraging to see the stir that has been raised in England about Dr. Hampden's nomination? The secular papers all call the opposition a 'Tractarian Movement.' If they mean by this that none but Tractarians are engaged in it, it is palpably false; but in another sense it is certainly true. I see clearly in the whole matter the fruits of that movement, the greater earnestness and zeal for orthodoxy, as such, so different from what would have been exhibited a quarter of a century ago. And whom are we to thank for fixing the brand of heterodoxy upon this man; so that he cannot pass off his sophisms upon an unwary Church, but the great master to worn we once looked up, to whom God gave so clear a vision of the truth and so great a zeal to uphold it? This is the fruit of a seed sown by a hand now raised up against us, one of the many gifts by which we keep him and his great faculties in remembrance, though, alas! 'we now see him no more.'"
In one of these letters Mr. Baker speaks of his desire to leave St. Paul's Church for some other field of labor. Nevertheless, he remained there six years out of the eight years of his Protestant ministry. In 1848 he received an invitation to the Church of St. James the Less, a very beautiful and costly, though small church, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, built after the style of the English Benedictine abbey-churches, and fitted up after the manner which delights the Anglo-Catholic heart. This invitation he declined, at the request of his bishop, who was naturally loth to part with him. A proposal was then made that he should found a new parish; and this, I suppose, was the plan afterward carried out at St. Luke's. This plan was postponed from time to time on account of the precarious health of Alfred Baker. Meanwhile, he devoted himself most assiduously to his private religious exercises and to his ministerial labors. I have never known a young clergyman more universally and warmly loved and admired than he was among the people of his communion. He improved sedulously his admirable gifts for preaching, and in a diocese containing a number of excellent preachers, he attained and kept the first rank. His fastidious taste and sense of propriety led him soon to drop the long cassock, and every thing else in outward dress and demeanor which had appeared singular in the first years of his ministry. He avoided controversy and all peculiarities of doctrine in his sermons, and confined himself chiefly to those truths of religion and those practical points which could be received without question by his hearers. Aside from the pastoral intercourse which he had with his people, his life was very retired. He had the ideal of the Catholic priesthood always in view, and this encompassed his discharge of ministerial duties with many practical difficulties. He felt this particularly, as he has often said, in his visits to the sick and dying, on account of the want of the proper sacraments, and the want of a real and recognized sacerdotal relation. He could not help feeling always that while theoretically he regarded himself as a Catholic priest, in point of fact he was but a Protestant minister, compelled to fall back on a system of subjective pietism, based on Lutheran doctrine, to which he had an invincible repugnance, and in which his hands were tied.
Meanwhile events were progressing in the English Church and producing their reflex action in this country. On the one hand, the Oxford movement was still going forward under new leaders, and on the other, the Protestant character of the Anglican Establishment and its American colony was exhibiting itself every day more and more decisively. The first great wave that had rolled toward Catholicity had cast up those who were foremost on its crest on the Rock of Peter. Another wave was rolling forward in the same direction, which was destined to bear on its summit still more of those who floated on the great sea of doubt and error to the same secure refuge. The first converts were given up to obloquy, and their influence in every possible way lowered or destroyed, by belittling their character, if that was possible, or, if not, by inventing specious reasons to show that the course they had taken was the result of some personal idiosyncrasy, and not the just consequence of their Catholic principles. It was stoutly asserted that the movement was not responsible for them, and that it did not of itself lead to Rome. It began again afresh with new men, new books, new projects. Again there was an advanced party; and in due time this advanced party began to move Romeward, denying as before that it would ever actually arrive at Rome. Nevertheless, many of its members, some of very high character and position, did eventually follow the earlier converts over to the Catholic Church. Others, especially those who were in stations of dignity and authority, began to recoil and retract, and call back their followers to the safer ground of the old High Church. In this country there was a sad lack of earnestness and reality on the part of the majority of those who had yielded themselves to Oxford influences, and these influences were but faintly felt by the laity. Mr. Baker was, however, deeply and sadly in earnest. He had schooled himself into submission to his soi-disant Church and bishop, and resolutely determined to believe that he could think, act, and live up to Catholic doctrines and laws where he was. He had thrown himself anew into Anglicanism, putting faith in its new leaders and the old ones who remained, and confiding in the reality and success of their efforts. Long and wearily he struggled to hold out in this course, in spite of the daily increasing evidence that it was delusive and hopeless. For long years he was tossed backward and forward on the waves of doubt and uncertainty, sometimes almost gaining a foothold on the Rock, and then dashed again backward into the sea.
Most persons, whether they are Catholics or Protestants, will wonder that Mr. Baker, having approached at first, by almost a single bound, so near the very threshold of the Catholic Church, should have waited and hesitated so long before taking the final step over its border. Those who have not felt it can hardly understand the strong spell by which the system so ably advocated by the Oxford divines captivated many minds. To those who were deeply imbued with certain Catholic prepossessions, and yet not emancipated from the old hereditary prejudice against the Roman Church, it offered a compromise which allowed them to cherish their prepossessions and yet remain in the reformed Church, where they were at home and among their friends, and free to select some and reject other Catholic doctrines and usages, according to their own private judgment and taste. It pretended to give them "a Catholicity more Catholic, and an antiquity more ancient" than those of the ancient, universal mother and mistress of churches herself. Once seduced by this specious pretence, there was no end to the ingenious arguments, wire-drawn distinctions, fine-spun theories, and plausible special pleading by which they were detained under its influence. The theory has infinite variations, and a flexibility which accommodates itself to every form of doctrine, from the lowest tolerated in the Episcopal ministry to the highest advocated in the Union Review. This influence on the mind and conscience is a very injurious one, and tends to disable them from reasoning and deciding, in a plain and direct manner, on broad and general principles. Mr. Baker became aware of this afterward, and regretted that he had permitted himself to be swayed so much by the authority of others instead of following the dictates of his own judgment and conscience. It is impossible for me to say whether he was dilatory in following the inspirations of divine grace or not. No one but God can certainly judge how much time is necessary in any individual case for the full maturing of the convictions into a distinct and undoubting faith. One thing I can assert, however, with confidence, and I believe that every one who reads the ensuing extracts from Mr. Baker's letters will share the same conviction: that he never deliberately quenched the light of the Divine Spirit, or refused to follow it from any worldly and unworthy motives. He sought for wisdom by study, prayer, and a pure life, and although he was slow in arriving at a full determination, yet he made a continual progress toward it; and when he reached it, he did not shrink from any sacrifice which obedience to God and his conscience required of him.
In a letter under the date of June 4, 1849, after speaking of the probability of his leaving St. Paul's, and the uncertainty he was in in regard to his future plans, which were interfered with by the ill-health of his brother, he thus writes: