After a preliminary conversation in which there was nothing to offend, the business of the evening began by Mr Hawke’s standing up at one end of the table, and saying “Let us pray.”  The Ernest set did not like this, but they could not help themselves, so they knelt down and repeated the Lord’s Prayer and a few others after Mr Hawke, who delivered them remarkably well.  Then, when all had sat down, Mr Hawke addressed them, speaking without notes and taking for his text the words, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Whether owing to Mr Hawke’s manner, which was impressive, or to his well-known reputation for ability, or whether from the fact that each one of the Ernest set knew that he had been more or less a persecutor of the “Sims” and yet felt instinctively that the “Sims” were after all much more like the early Christians than he was himself—­at any rate the text, familiar though it was, went home to the consciences of Ernest and his friends as it had never yet done.  If Mr Hawke had stopped here he would have almost said enough; as he scanned the faces turned towards him, and saw the impression he had made, he was perhaps minded to bring his sermon to an end before beginning it, but if so, he reconsidered himself and proceeded as follows.  I give the sermon in full, for it is a typical one, and will explain a state of mind which in another generation or two will seem to stand sadly in need of explanation.

“My young friends,” said Mr Hawke, “I am persuaded there is not one of you here who doubts the existence of a Personal God.  If there were, it is to him assuredly that I should first address myself.  Should I be mistaken in my belief that all here assembled accept the existence of a God who is present amongst us though we see him not, and whose eye is upon our most secret thoughts, let me implore the doubter to confer with me in private before we part; I will then put before him considerations through which God has been mercifully pleased to reveal himself to me, so far as man can understand him, and which I have found bring peace to the minds of others who have doubted.

“I assume also that there is none who doubts but that this God, after whose likeness we have been made, did in the course of time have pity upon man’s blindness, and assume our nature, taking flesh and coming down and dwelling among us as a man indistinguishable physically from ourselves.  He who made the sun, moon and stars, the world and all that therein is, came down from Heaven in the person of his Son, with the express purpose of leading a scorned life, and dying the most cruel, shameful death which fiendish ingenuity has invented.

“While on earth he worked many miracles.  He gave sight to the blind, raised the dead to life, fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes, and was seen to walk upon the waves, but at the end of his appointed time he died, as was foredetermined, upon the cross, and was buried by a few faithful friends.  Those, however, who had put him to death set a jealous watch over his tomb.