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The following beautiful verses, of very high order of poetical merit, have never been published:

A THOUGHT.

[Aug. 30, 1866. Suggested by Gen. xviii. 1–3.]

A fair and stately scene of roof and walls
Touched by the ruddy sunsets of the West,
Where, meek and molten, eve's soft radiance falls
Like golden feathers in the ringdove's nest.

Yonder the bounding sea, that couch of God!
A wavy wilderness of sand between;
Such pavement, in the Syrian deserts, trod
Bright forms, in girded albs, of heavenly mien.
Such saw the patriarch in his noonday tent:
Three severed shapes that glided in the sun,
Till, lo! they cling, and, interfused and blent,
A lovely semblance gleams, the three in one!1
Be such the scenery of this peaceful ground,
This leafy tent amid the wilderness;
Fair skies above, the breath of angels round,
And God the Trinity to beam and bless!

This poem was sent to an intimate friend with this letter:

DEAR MRS. M—,- I record the foregoing thought for you, because it literally occurred to me as I looked from the windows of your house, across the sand towards the sea. For give the lines for the sake of their sincerity, &c.

...

...

1 Cf. Philo, "On Abraham,” xxiv.: "The soul is shone upon by God as if at noonday. and being wholly surrounded with this brightness it perceives a threefold image of one subject, one image of the Living God, and others of the other two, as if they were shadows irradiated by it. . . . The one in the middle is the Father of the Universe, I Am that I Am; and the beings on each side are those most ancient Powers which are ever close to the Living God, the Creative Power and the Royal Power." This is on Gen. xviii. 1–3. Did Mr. Hawker know the passage?

He wrote a poem of singular beauty on the aurora. display of the night of Nov. 10, 1870, which was privately printed. In it he gave expression to the fancy, not original, but borrowed from Origen, or from North American Indian mythology, that the under-world of spirits is within this globe, and the door is at the North Pole, and the flashing of the lights is caused by the opening of the door to receive the dead. The following passage from his pen refers to the same idea:

CHURCHYARDS. The north side is included in the same consecration with the rest of the ground. All within the boundary, and the boundary itself, is alike hallowed in sacred and secular law. It is because of the doctrine of the Regions, which has descended unbrokenly in the Church, that an evil repute rests on the northern parts. The east, from whence the Son of Man came, and who will come again from the Orient to judgment, was, and is, his own especial realm. The dead lie with their feet and faces turned eastwardly, ready to stand up before the approaching Judge. The west was called the Gali lee, the region of the people. The south, the home of the noonday, was the typical domain of heavenly things. But the north, the ill-omened north, was the peculiar haunt of evil spirits and the dark powers of the air. Satan's door stood in the north wall, opposite the font, and was duly opened at the exorcism in baptism for the egress of the fiend. When our Lord lay in the sepulchre, it was with feet towards the east, so that his right hand gave benediction to the south, and his left hand reproached and repelled the north. When the evil spirits were cast out by the voice of Messiah, they fled, evermore, northward. The god of the north was Baalzephon. They say that at the North Pole there stands the awful gate, which none may approach and live, and which leads to the central depths of penal life. R. S. H.

MORWENSTOW.

and the perishable. The material Church is a type of the catholic Church, not the type of a sect."

In many ways Mr. Hawker was before his time, as in other ways he was centuries behind it.

He was the first to institute ruridecanal synods; and, when he was Rural Dean in 1844, he issued the following citation to all the clergy of the deanery of Trigg-Major:

In obedience to the desire of many of the clergy, and with the full sanction of our Right Reverend Father in God, the lord bishop of this diocese, I propose, in these anxious days of the ecclesiate, to restore the ancient usage of rural synods in the deanery of Trigg-Major. I accordingly convene you to appear, in your surplice, in my church of Morwenstow on the fifth day of March next ensuing, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, then and there, after divine service, to deliberate with your brethren in chapter assembled. I remain, reverend sir, your faithful servant, R. S. HAWKER,

FEBRUARY, 1844.

The Rural Dean.

Accordingly on March 5, the clergy assembled in the vicarage, and walked in procession thence to the church in their surplices. The church was filled with the laity; the clergy were seated in the chancel. The altar was adorned with flowers and lighted candles. After service the laity withdrew, and the doors of the church were closed. The clergy then assembled in the nave, and the rural dean read them an elaborate and able statement of the case of rural chapters, after which they proceeded to business. His paper on Rural Synods was afterwards published by Edwards & Hughes, Ave Maria Lane, 1844.

It is remarkable that synods, which are now being

here and there revived in a spasmodic manner, meeting sometimes in vestries, sometimes in dining-rooms, were first restored after the desuetude of three centuries, in the church of Morwenstow, and with so much gravity and dignity, thirty-one years ago.

The importance of the weekly offertory is another thing now recognized. The Church seems to be preparing herself against possible disestablishment and disendowment, by reviving her organic life in synods, and by impressing on her people the necessity of giving towards the support of the services and the ministry. But the weekly offertory is quite a novelty in most places still. Almost the first incumbent in England to establish it was the vicar of Morwenstow, before 1843.

He entered into controversy on the subject of the offertory with Mr Walter of "The Times."

When the Poor Law Amendment Bill passed in 1834, and was amended in 1836 and 1838, it was thought by many that the need for an offertory in church was done away with, and that the giving of alms to the poor was an interference with the working of the Poor Law.

Mr. Hawker published a statement of what he did in his parish, in "The English Churchman," in 1844. Mr. Walter made this statement the basis of an attack on the system, and especially on Mr. Hawker, in a letter to "The Times.'

Mr. Hawker replied to this:

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SIR, I regret to discover that you have permitted yourself to invade the tranquillity of my parish, and to endeavor to interrupt the harmony between myself and my parishioners, in a let

ter which I have just read in a recent number of "The Times. You have done so by a garbled copy of a statement which appeared in "The English Churchman," of the reception and disposal of the offertory alms in the parish church of Morwenstow.

I say "garbled" because, while you have adduced just so much of the document as suited your purpose, you have suppressed such parts of it as might have tended to alleviate the hostility which many persons entertain to this part of the service of the Church.

With reference to our choice, as the recipients of church money, of laborers whose "wages are seven shillings a week," and "who have a wife and four children to maintain thereon," you say, "Here is an excuse for the employer to give deficient wages!"

In reply to this, I beg to inform you that the wages in this neighborhood never fluctuate: they have continued at this fixed amount during the ten years of my incumbency. . . . Your argument, as applied to my parishioners, is this: Because they have scanty wages in that country, therefore they should have no alms; because these laborers of Morwenstow are restricted by the law from any relief from the rate, therefore they shall have no charity from the church; because they have little, therefore they shall have no more. You insinuate that I, a Christian minister, think eight shillings a week sufficient for six persons during a winter's week, as though I were desirous to limit the resources of my poor parishioners to that sum. May God forgive you your miserable supposition! I have all my life sincerely, and not to serve any party purpose, been an advocate of the cause of the poor. I, for many long years, have honestly, and not to promote political ends, denounced the unholy and cruel enactments of the New Poor Law. . . .

Let me now proceed to correct some transcendent misconceptions of yourself and others as to the nature and intent of the offertory in church. The ancient and modern division of all religious life was, and is, threefold,- into devotion, self-denial, and alms. No sacred practice, no Christian service, was or is complete without the union of these three. They were all alike and equally enjoined by the Saviour of man. The collection

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