Laemmer was, to undertake the religious instruction of a body of young men at the very doors of the University of Berlin. Among his youthful hearers he found open infidelity, rationalism, the doctrines of Schleiermacher, Pietism, confessionalism, in one word, each class was a miniature copy of the Protestant world around. But he did not swerve from the path of duty. He boldly set before them, as the central truth of religion, the Man-God dying on the cross for the world. In vain did his hearers bring forward the pretended results of modern criticism, and natural explanations of supernatural facts; M. Laemmer insisted with energy upon the credibility and the inspiration of S. Scriptures, and on the miracles and prophecies narrated in them. He also made it his duty to lead his charge to love and practise prayer. In spite of their resistance he obliged even the higher classes to recite the Decalogue and the Apostles' Creed; and he was consoled by seeing his firmness rewarded by the happiest results. At Easter, 1857, he passed his examination for the doctor's degree, having chosen for the subject of his theme Pope Nicholas I. and the Court of Byzantium. Again he was successful: Lehnerdt, to whom he had dedicated his thesis, observed to him with great gentleness that he was not far from Hurter's idea of the Papacy. And in truth this last labour had brought him much nearer to the Church by reason of the brilliant light it cast on the character and office of the Papacy in Christianity. In 1857 he found time to publish a new edition of St. Anselm's _Cur Deus homo_, and to write a paper on the conversion of Herman of Kappenburg. In June 1858 he revised for the press his treatise on the ante-Tridentine theology. In preparing the revision he made a study of modern Catholic works on history, dogma, moral and canon law. He became familiar with the Roman Breviary, to which his attention had been called by the attempt made by a Protestant minister to form a Lutheran Breviary. He also read and admired Cardinal Wiseman's _Fabiola_. "I now understood the _Memorare_ and the _Sub tuum_; I began to recite the _Ave Maria_, to salute together with the angel the Mother of my God, to seek her compassion, that she might obtain for me grace to be completely enlightened, and to enter into the Saviour's one fold. The sting of doubt tormented me unceasingly; on my knees, before my crucifix in my lonely chamber, I experienced the most painful struggles. As I had ever preserved such fragments of Christian truth as the Reformers had spared, and as for many long years I had occupied myself with the solution of the leading questions in philosophy and theology, it appeared to me very hard to submit my reason to the yoke of faith. But prayer removed all these obstacles, and when soon after I came to knock at the door of the Church, I found it easy to assent to all the truths that were proposed to my belief" (p. 163).