"Arriving at Farmington on the 5th, at L. Peavy's I fell in company with Dr. Hammond, who soon introduced conversation on the subject of religion. He stood on the old doctrine of fatalism, and was what every man ought to be who honestly plants himself on this ground, a Universalist. After he had labored hard (for one must labor hard to support a false doctrine, whilst the truth can support itself and all who believe it,) to prove his theory, I said to him: 'Sir, although you claim to make God a good and merciful being, you make him inconsistent. You prove that he has decreed one thing and commanded another. You allege that he ordained all things. Of course he has ordained them right. But, Sir, are you able to say that all the wars, blasphemy, drunkenness, political and religious contention we have on earth, proceed from your good God?' 'Certainly' responded he; 'it is all for some end. Mortals must experience a degree of misery, to prepare them for happiness. It is best,' continued he, 'to have different beliefs and sects in the world, and what you term religion is merely impulse and imagination, which is good so far as it tends to good among men. The fear of hell which you hold up, moves many to reform, and I think it would not be so well if all men were as I am.' In the last idea I acquiesced. I told him that I never had known the opinions he avowed to work the reformation of any man; that I had not yet met a Christ-like and prayerful person of those views, and that I had known them to be accompanied by much profanity, professed in the grog-shop, and resorted to by the vilifier of practical godliness as a shelter against the solemn claims of Christ upon the heart. I said to him that truth bears good fruits, and that I was sorry that he should labor so hard to prove a doctrine of whose results he had so poor an opinion. Here our conversation closed.