S. Baring-Gould

“ He loved children, and they loved him. It was his delight to take them by the hand and walk with them about the parish, telling them stories of St. Morwenna, St. Nectan, King Arthur, Sir Bevil Grenville, smugglers, wreckers, pixies and hobgoblins, in one unflagging stream. So great was the affection borne him by the children of his parish, that when they were ill, and had to take physic, and the mothers could not induce them to swallow the nauseous draught, the vicar was sent for, and the little ones, without further struggle, swallowed the medicine administered by his hand. ”

“ A little way down the side of the hill that descends in gorse banks and broken rock and clean precipice to one of the largest and grandest of the caves, is a hut made of fragments of wrecked ships thrown up on this shore. The sides are formed of curved ribs of vessels, and the entrance ornamented with carved work from a figure-head. This hut was made by Mr. Hawker himself; and in it he would sit, sheltered from storm, and look forth over the wild sea, dreaming, composing poetry, or watching ships scudding before the gale dangerously near the coast. ”

“ More than one thousand years have rolled away since Morwenna gave this church to God; and since then never has there been a day in which, when God looked forth upon the earth, there has not been a priest standing at this altar, to say in answer to His call, “Here am I!”
A thousand years, and more, have swept away; and in all these ages there never has been a moment in which an angel, leaning on his flashing sword, has not stood here as sentinel, to answer to God’s call, when foes assail, and traitors give the Judas kiss, and feeble hearts fail, “Here am I!” ”

“ But, in the meanwhile, the captain of the Margaret Quail, despairing of help, and thinking that his vessel would break up under him, came off in his boat, with the rest of the crew, trusting rather to a rotten boat, patched with canvas which they had tarred over, than to the tender mercies of the covetous Clovellites, in whose veins ran the too recent blood of wreckers. The only living being left on board was a poor dog.
No sooner was the captain seen to leave the ship, than the Clovelly men lost their repugnance to go to sea. ”

“ No stone remains on another of the ancient chapel.
From the cliff an unrivalled view can be had of the Atlantic, from Lundy Isle to Padstow point. Tintagel Rock, with its ancient castle, stands out boldly, as the horn of a vast sweep against glittering water, lit by a passing gleam behind. Gulls, rooks, choughs, wheel and scream around the crag, now fluttering a little way above the head, and then diving down towards the sea, which roars and foams several hundreds of feet below. ”

“ Consequently the true self is the spiritual man: this none but the spiritual man can understand. The vicar accommodated himself to ordinary society, but he did not belong to it. His spirit hovered high above in the thin, clear air, whilst his body and earthly mind laughed, and joked, and laboured, and sorrowed below. Trouble was the anguish of the soul recalling its prerogative. The fits of depression which came on him were the moments when the soul was asserting its true power, pining as the captive for its home and proper freedom. ”

“ Hawker had a theory that there was an atmosphere which surrounded men, imperceptible to the senses, which was the vehicle of spirit, in which angels and devils moved, and which vibrated with spiritual influences affecting the soul. Every passion man felt set this ether trembling, and made itself felt throughout the spiritual world. A sensation of love or anger or jealousy felt by one man was like a stone thrown into a pool ”

“ And so she died on Morwenstow cliff, looking out across the Severn Sea to the faint blue line of the Welsh mountains. St. Nectan had a cell at Wellcombe, as also at Hartland, for both of these churches bear his name.
The coast from Tintagel to Hartland is almost unrivalled for grandeur. The restless Atlantic is ever thundering on this iron-walled coast. The roar can be heard ten miles inland; flakes of foam are picked up after a storm at Holsworthy. To me, when staying three miles inland, it has seemed the roar of a hungry caged beast, ravening at its bars for food. ”

“ I ran across my glebe, a quarter of a mile, to the cliffs, and down a frightful descent of three hundred feet to the beach. It was indeed a scene to be looked on only once in a human life. On a ridge of rock, just left bare by the falling tide, stood a man, my own servant: he had come out to see my flock of ewes, and had found the awful wreck. There he stood, with two dead sailors at his feet, whom he had just drawn out of the water, stiff and stark. The bay was tossing and seething with a tangled mass of rigging and broken fragments of a ship ”

“ Morwenna came from Wales, from Brecknockshire, where was her father’s palace: she loved the things of God more than the things of men.
And then the wild Atlantic rolled against these cliffs as now, and the gorse flamed over them as now, and the little brook dived through fern, and foamed over the rocks to join the sea, as now. And there were men and women where you dwell, as now; and there were little children on their knees, as now. But then there was no knowledge of God in the hearts of men, as there is now. There was no church, as now ”

“ He had been descanting one day on the blight which such an eye could cast, when his companion said: “Really, Mr. Hawker, you do not believe such rubbish as this in the nineteenth century.”
He turned round and said gravely: “I do not pretend to be wiser than the Word of God. I find that the evil eye is reckoned along with ‘blasphemy, pride and foolishness,’ as things that defile a man.” ”

“ Hawker’s visitation sermon, already quoted.
‘The day is far spent, and the night is at hand: the hour cometh wherein no man can work. A little while, and all will be over.’ ‘Their love and their hatred, and their envy, will have perished; neither will they any longer have a name under the sun.’ The thousand thoughts that thrill our souls this day, with the usual interests and the common sympathies of an earthly existence—of all these there will not, by-and-by, survive in the flesh a single throb. ”

“ Hawker’s noble face was clouded with trouble, as he talked over the way in which he had been thwarted at every turn by the agent and the farmers, if a word were said about the poor, the clouds cleared from his brow, his face brightened at once: “‘The poor have ye always with you,’ said our Lord, and the word is true—is true.” ”

“ There was a professor at Oxford in my time who lectured on divinity. One day a pert student began to speak about ‘Paul’s opinion.’ ‘Paul’s opinion, sir!’ said the professor. ‘Paul is not here to speak for himself; but if Paul were, and heard you talk thus disrespectfully of him, it is my belief that Paul would take you by the scruff of your neck and chuck you out of the window. As I have Paul in honour, if I hear you speak of him disrespectfully again, I will kick you from the room.’”
“Never boast,” was a favourite saying of the vicar’s. “The moment you boast, the Devil obtains power over you. ”

“ My first funeral of those lost mariners was a touching and striking scene. The three bodies first found were buried at the same time. Behind the coffins, as they were solemnly borne along the aisle, walked the solitary mourner, Le Daine, weeping bitterly and aloud. Other eyes were moist; for who could hear unsoftened the greeting of the Church to these strangers from the sea, and the “touch that makes the whole earth kin,” in the hope we breathed, that we too might one day “rest as these our brethren did”? ”

“ 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. ”

“ His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was signalised by a terrific hurricane. The storm came up Channel from the south-west. A strange vessel of foreign rig went on the reefs of Harty Race, and was broken to pieces by the waves. The only man who came ashore was the skipper. A crowd was gathered on the sand, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst rushed the dripping stranger, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel who had ridden to the beach to see the sight. ”

“ As the tall cliffs on this wild coast lose themselves in mist, so does history, which attaches itself to many a spot along it, stand indistinct and weird in its veil of legend. Kings and saints of whom little authentic is known, whose very dates are uncertain, have given their names to castle and crag and church. ”

“ She died propped up in bed, with her chestnut hair flowing over his blue sailor’s jersey, as he held her head on his breast.
When he had laid his pet in Forrabury churchyard the light of his life was extinguished. The old man wandered about the cliffs all day, in sunshine and in storm, growing more hollow-cheeked and dull-eyed, his thin hair lank, his back bowed, speaking to no one and breaking slowly but surely.
But Mr. Avery, the shipbuilder, about this time laid the keel of a little vessel, and she was reared in Boscastle haven. ”

“ God Almighty grant that they and their adversaries and we ourselves also, may look on each other’s faces and be at rest, one day, in the city of God, among the innumerable company of angels, and the first-born whose names are written in heaven, and the spirits of just men made perfect, and Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, through the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel! ”

“ It is quite possible to distinguish Catholicism from Romanism. Romanism has developed a system—a miserable system of indulgences and dispensations on one side, and restraints on the other—all issuing from the throne of St. Peter, as an impure flood from a corrupt fountain, and which has sadly injured Christian morals. A student of history cannot fail to notice that the Papacy has been a blight on Christianity, robbing it of its regenerating and reforming power, a parasitic growth draining it of its life-blood. ”

“ A west window in my tower is offered me by Warrington for the cost of carriage and putting together. But—but—but. Fifteen years I have been vicar of this altar; and all that while no lay person, landlord, tenant, parishioner or steward, has ever proffered me even one kind word, much less aid or coin. Nay, I have found them all bristling with dislike. All the great men have been hostile to me in word or deed. Yet I thank my Master and His angels, I have accomplished in and around my church a thousand times more than the great befriended clergy of this deanery. Not one thing has failed. ”

“ His very aspect was that of the master in Israel, conscious of his indubitable position, and whose mind was thoroughly made up on questions about which many other men either have no certain opinions, or at least have no such ground for holding them as that with which his learning and acuteness at once supplied him. Such was the late vicar of Morwenstow, one of the very last men in England to leave the Church of which he gloried to be a priest, of whose cause he was at all times the most unyielding defender, and in whose communion it was his hope and prayer to die. ”

“ Hawker returned to Morwenstow, to fresh suffering, disappointment, and anxieties. I give a few of his last letters to one whom he regarded as his best friend.
Morwenstow, Sept. 22, 1874. My dear Valentine,—You brought to my house the solitary blessing of my life. My three daughters came to me through you, as God’s instrument. I must write to you. You will not have many more letters from me.... My mind has been so racked and softened that I shall never be myself again. My health, too, is gone. My legs are healed, but the long drain has enfeebled me exceedingly. ”

“ Then arrived the mate and three other men of the crew. None were placid of feature or calm and pleasant in look, as those usually are who are accidentally drowned, or who die in their beds.
But one day my strange old man, Peter Barrow, came to me in triumphant haste with the loud greeting, “Sir! we have got a noble corpse down on your beach. We have just laid him down above high-water mark, and he is as comely a body as a man shall see!” ”

“ You say, ‘I now never catch cold,’ and within a week you have a sore throat. ‘I am always lucky in my money ventures’; and the next fails. So long as you do not boast, the Devil cannot touch you; but, the moment you have boasted, virtue has gone from you, and he obtains power. Nebuchadnezzar was prosperous till he said, ‘Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?’ It was while the word was in the king’s mouth that the voice fell from heaven which took it from him.”
Morwenstow, Jan. ”

“ As may well be believed, the mischievous, high-spirited boy played tricks on his brothers and sisters. The clerk was accustomed to read in church, “I am an alien unto my mother’s children,” pronouncing “alien” as “a lion.” “Ah!” said Mrs. Hawker, “that means Robert: he is verily a lion unto his mother’s children.”
“I do not know how it is,” said his brother one day: “when I go out with Robert nutting, he gets all the nuts; and when I go out rabbiting, he gets all the rabbits; and when we go out fishing together, he catches all the fish.” ”

“ Furthermore, let us remember, that, as a multitude of grains of wheat are mingled into one loaf, so we, being many, are intended to be joined together into one, in that holy sacrament of the Church of Jesus Christ. Brethren, on the first morning of October call to mind the word, that, wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together. “Let the people praise thee, O God, yea, let all the people praise thee! Then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our own God, shall give us His blessing. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.” ”

“ Sin is, according to Luther, of the essence of man, Original sin is not, as the Church teaches, the loss of supernatural grace co-ordinating man’s faculties, and their consequent disorder; it is something born of the father and mother. The clay of which we are formed is damnable; the fœtus in the mother’s womb is sin; man, with his whole nature and essence, is not only a sinner, but sin. Such are the expressions of Luther, indorsed by Carlstadt. Man, according to Catholic theology, still bears in him the image of God, but blurred. ”