ds who frequented my father's house was the Rev. Francis
L. Hawkes, long the pastor of a very prominent and fashionable Episcopal
church in New York. I remember that on one occasion he began to abuse my
Germans in good earnest for their irreligion and infidelity, of which I,
indeed, knew nothing. I inquired whether he had read any of the authors
whom he so unsparingly condemned. He was forced to confess that he had
not, but presently turned upon me, quite indignant that I should have
asked such a question. I recall another occasion on which the
anti-slavery agitation was spoken of. Dr. Hawkes condemned it very
severely, and said: "If I could get hold of one of those men who are
trying to stir up the slaves of the South to cut their masters' throats,
I would hang him to that lamp-post." An uncle of mine who was present
said: "Doctor, I honor you!" but I felt much offended at the doctor's
violence. With these exceptions his society was a welcome addition to
our family circle. He was a man of genial temperament and commanding
character, widely read in English literature, and esteemed very eloquent
as a preacher.

I remember moments in which the enlargement of my horizon of thought and
of faith became strongly sensible to me, in the quiet of my reading, in
my own room. A certain essay in the "Wandsbecker Bote" of Matthias
Claudius ends thus: "And is he not also the God of the Japanese?"
Foolish as it may appear, it had never struck me before that the God
whom I had been taught to worship was the God of any peoples outside the
limits of Judaism and Christendom. The suggestion shocked me at first,
but, later on, gave me much satisfaction. Another such moment I recall
when, having carefully read "Paradise Lost" to the very end, I saw
presented before me the picture of an eternal evil, of Satan and his
ministers subjugated indeed by God, but not conquered, and able to
maintain against Him an opposition as eternal as his goodness. This
appeared to me impossible, and I threw away, once and forever, the
thought of the terrible hell which till then had always formed part of
my belief. In its place, I cherished the persuasion that the victory of
goodness must consist in making everything good, and that Satan himself
could have no shield strong enough to resist permanently the divine
power of the divine spirit.

This was a great emancipation for me, and I soon welcomed with joy every
evidence in literature which tended to show that