Today the mind of youth is questioning. It is seeking not only rules for the conduct of life but a rational interpretation of religious creed and aspiration that will prove a guide in explorations on ground that perhaps Doctor Hawes would have considered forbidden. He was not a meta-physician. To him the way was plain. The fundamental truths, the orthodox acceptances, were good enough for him. The questions that for long troubled Doctor Bushnell not only did not worry Doctor Hawes—he did not understand why one should ask them. Doctor Bushnell was ahead of his time. He began where Doctor Hawes left off, and soon about the younger man gathered a school of disciples who shared in sympathy, if not with equality of intellectual penetration, the tenets of the religious philosopher, the visions of the seer and poet.
It was inevitable that two such divergent personalities as Hawes and Bushnell, laborers in the same field, living in the same city, should come into conflict. The story of that famous difference, of the struggles to find common ground and of the final reconciliation, have today a note of pathos. For the lay reader it is not easy at first glance to see what it is all about, and yet what feeling and bitterness were aroused!
There is no space here to go into the details of that old dispute. The letters the two ministers exchanged, like all sincere letters, are typical of their respective characters and a memorialist of Doctor Hawes finds nothing for which to apologize in his side of the correspondence. His letters, indeed, evidence what a modern theologian might consider his speculative limitations, but they show, too, beneath his determination to adhere to his principles, a genuine grief at the separation and a hope that the two churches might be "rooted and grounded in the truth, and their pastors as happily united in fellowship and love."
The church of which Doctor Hawes was minister was, and still is, something more than an ecclesiastical organization. It is a civic institution. It founded the town. Its minister takes rank as a public personage. In this character Dr. Hawes was interested in many local activities. An example of this was his connection with the famous Hartford Female Seminary—and this may serve also as another illustration of his interest in young people. On the Seminary's organization he was chosen a trustee—an office he held till his death. For many years he was its president. At the reunion of its graduates in 1892, a speaker who had been one of his "boys," and who was the executor of his will, gave a little address on his old pastor which is one of the best portraits of him that remains.
". . . the Hartford Female Seminary," said this speaker, "was his especial delight. To its principals he was a devoted friend; its teachers were his protegés and assistants; the pupils his spiritual garden. It was to him the nursery of all that was best in womanhood. I do not know how his sober judgment would have ranked, in relative importance, Yale College, the A. B. C. F. M., and the Seminary; but I know that in his affection this school had the warmest place. How regularly on Monday morning he opened its sessions with fervent prayer; how benignantly his benediction fell on the school as he took his departure, you all know who were in attendance in his time. And although you may have smiled at his peculiarities, I do not believe a doubt ever crossed one of your minds that Joel Hawes was a loving, faithful friend, and truly a man of God."
VIII: A Friend of Lincoln
IN the Spring of 1869 Gideon Welles, who had been appointed Secretary of the Navy by Lincoln and had served to the end of the Johnson administration, returned to Hartford where he lived till his death in 1878. His diary for May 2, 1869, contains the following entry:
"We left New York at 3 P. M. and reached Hartford at seven, stopping at the Allyn House. Nearly four years have passed since I have been here, more than eight since I left and took up my residence in Washington. . . . Hartford itself has greatly altered—I might say improved—for it has been beautified and adorned by many magnificent buildings, and the population has increased. These I see and appreciate; but I feel more sensibly than these, other changes which come home to my heart. A new and different people seem to move in the streets. Few, comparatively, are known to me. A new generation which knows not Joseph is here."