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town. It reports a membership of 891, and of Sunday scholars 3,370. There are in connection with the schools a savings bank, and various kindred institutions. And of the manner in which the church responds to the demands made on its liberality, Mr. Brown testifies :"I have often, very often, been greatly gratified by the readiness with which appeals made by me on behalf of charitable institutions, and on behalf of persons in distress, have been responded to. I have only had to mention aged and infirm ministers, widows, orphans, all totally unknown to every soul in this place, and just as the pipes of an organ answer to the player's touch, a thousand pipes in all the harmony of kindness have answered to the word, and ample help has been promptly rendered, and that almost without my knowing the name of a single contributor. I have never stood in need of any reasonable amount of money for the relief of sufferers without knowing that I could easily obtain it, and that not in large sums from one or two wealthy friends, but in many sums of various amounts down to the widow's mite." Nor have these extra demands damaged the societies which have a claim on all our congregations-the Foreign and Home Missions, the County Associations, the colleges, and the local charities. The history of the Myrtle Street Church is the record of much labour for the Lord.

As might be anticipated, Mr. Brown's aid has been eagerly sought in connection with various public objects. He has taken a prominent part in the Lancashire and Cheshire Association, and to most of the churches which compose it has rendered willing help. In Liverpool he is perhaps the most influential leader of the Nonconformist churches, and there is scarcely any great social or religious movement which has not secured his advocacy. He has spoken with good effect at political meetings. His utterances on Disestablishment are among the most vigorous and telling which have been published. He has, likewise, appeared on the temperance platform, and shown himself a resolute foe to the greatest of our national vices, and his vindication of the policy of international arbitration versus war, proves how valiantly and heartily he can fight in a good and necessary cause, and "when he has the mind to."

He has not, to our knowledge, published any volume of sermons. A series of short articles on the Proverbs have, however, been collected into a volume; he has written some six or seven "Circular Letters," and various addresses to students and ministers. He is the editor of a magazine entitled "Plain Talk," and last year contributed to it a series of papers on the "Parables of St. Paul," which may possibly have formed the substance of sermons. A volume containing specimens of his regular ministry would be generally acceptable. A more sublime discourse than one he delivered some years ago in his own chapel on the greatness of God, we cannot recall, and others we remember as displaying fine discrimination and great depth of spiritual feeling. Readers of Mr. Brown's lectures are familiar with his strong common sense, his courageous manliness, his racy wit, and his keen

sarcasm, which, in the exposure of a fashionable folly, or the rebuke of a popular vice, comes down with the power of a sledge-hammer. But few could gather from his lectures the extent of his Biblical knowledge, the clearness of his spiritual insight, and the enthusiasm of his love for Christ. The description which he gives of the ministerial character of his predecessor might, without the slightest incongruity, be applied to himself. He also is "a man of learning and piety, a careful student, and an excellent expositor of Scripture.' Many of Mr. Brown's ablest discourses have been given to his own people in the course of a consecutive exposition, and could scarcely be appreciated by a casual hearer. He is, while staunchly evangelical, conversant with the results of modern criticism, and freely avails himself of them in his interpretation of Scripture. His preaching abounds in instances of all the qualities we have named. And his success proves that a man may be at once fearless and reverent in his investigations, honest and outspoken in his utterances, resolute in the maintenance of his own beliefs, and charitable towards those who differ from him. His ministry illustrates the power of Christian voluntaryism and the influence which faithful and effective labour is sure to acquire, and not the least important lesson which may be gathered from his career is this, that ceteris paribus long pastorates are essential to the greatest and most substantial usefulness. The influence of an intelligent, hard working, devout-minded minister, will be a growing one. Every year will install him more thoroughly in the affections of his people, and to reap his full measure of success he must be content both to "labour and to wait."

An Ecclesiastical Oddity.

THE REV. ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER, M.A.*

AMONG the remarkable men whose career illustrates the con

flicting tendencies of our own age, a prominent place belongs to the late Vicar of Morwenstow. He never, it is true, rose to great distinction either in "Church or State." His reputation during his lifetime was mainly local, and rested largely on his staunch

*Memorials of the late Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A., sometime Vicar of Morwenstow, in the Diocese of Exeter. Collected, arranged, and edited by the Rev. F. G. Lee, D.C.L., Vicar of All Saints', Lambeth. London: Chatto and Windus. 1876.

The Vicar of Morwenstow: A Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A. By S. Baring Gould, M.A. New and revised edition. London: Henry S. King and Co. 1876.

Churchmanship and his eccentricity as a "parish priest." But circumstances which transpired at the time of his death brought his name before the public, and it is in consequence known to a much wider circle than before, and there has been in many quarters an eagerness to learn all that can be learned about him. He will be principally remembered as the author of a number of poems of indisputable worth, and of several ballads which will probably last as long as the English language itself. His death occurred in August, 1875. Two "memoirs" of him have been published, one by Dr. Frederick G. Lee, of Lambeth, the other by Mr. Baring Gould. The local as well as the metropolitan and ecclesiastical papers gave lengthened sketches of his life, and in reference to his reception into the communion of the Roman Catholic Church there has been a vigorous and acrimonious controversy. As Mr. Hawker was a representative man, and as the events of his life throw light on several of the great problems of the day, we shall give a more extended notice of him in connection with these two memoirs than would otherwise be necessary.

The

Of the two works we decidedly prefer Mr. Gould's. Notwithstanding evident traces of hasty composition (even in the new and revised edition) and a lack of compression, it is written in a lively and graphic style, and gives us a far more complete view of Mr. Hawker's singular character than we can gain from Dr. Lee's memorials. innumerable anecdotes with which Mr. Gould enlivens his pages have, we presume, been collected from those who knew Mr. Hawker, and if they are reliable (and we take for granted that they would not have appeared unless the author had verified them) they reveal more of the heart and mind of the man than many pages of elaborate disquisition. Here and there Mr. Gould has fallen into inaccuracies. His interpretation of some of Mr. Hawker's acts is strained and unnatural, and we frequently dissent from his views, but on the whole he has produced a biography as instructive as it is amusing.

Dr. Lee writes in a totally different strain. He has an eye to the serious side, and makes little or no mention of the more eccentric features of Mr. Hawker's character. His memorials are of the Churchman and the Poet rather than of the man as he actually appeared to his associates and observers. They are, in fact, a vindication of Mr. Hawker's ecclesiastical sincerity, and were written to defend his memory from the abuse heaped upon it in consequence of the latest act of his life. Dr. Lee is among the highest of the High Churchmen. To him the subject of his book was "a priest who served God for nearly half a century, quietly ministering by sacrifice, intercession, and sacrament." Notwithstanding his ordination vows, he can revile in unmeasured terms the chief pastors who have the rule over him. Converts" to the Church from the ranks of Dissent are in his view "won from the slippery and dangerous paths of schism," and he utterly disapproves of the fashion of "the present shallow and unreal age" to praise such men as John Wesley, while, on the other hand, he deems it an honourable thing to go over to Rome, and represents

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the English Churchman who takes this step as simply "adding to his faith." It is surely time that he and all like-minded with him should boldly make this addition to their faith, and not keep their hold on the patronage and support of the State, in a Church whose main claim to its monopoly of privilege unquestionably lies in the supposed fact that it is "the bulwark of Protestantism."

But we must turn to Mr. Hawker. He was born in 1804, and was the son of an English clergyman, and the grandson of the celebrated Calvinistic divine, Dr. Robert Hawker, of Plymouth, the author of "Morning and Evening Portions." Young Hawker was sent to his grandfather to be educated, and while with him gave many an earnest of his future eccentricities. He was an adept in practical joking, and indulged this inclination to a most unwarrantable extent. Some of his pranks were innocent and amusing, others were hard-hearted and disgraceful. Mr. Gould tells us, e.g., that he worried two old ladies (who he believed were setting their caps at the Doctor, then a widower) out of Plymouth. He fabricated a story that one of them had slipped on a piece of orange peel and broken her leg, and in all haste sent off one of the leading physicians, with splints and bandages, to set it. Day after day a fresh surgeon or physician was sent to bind up legs or arms, or to attend a case of pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, &c., till every medical man in the neighbourhood had called on the spinsters. At last an undertaker was sent to measure the old ladies for their coffins, and not only so, the young scapegrace went so far as to order their graves to be dug, and the hearse to go and convey them to it. Such a freak as this was unpardonable, and the lad who played it could never, apart from a more powerful than "sacramental regeneration," have been really fit to "enter the Church." The hoax he played on the people of Bude, deceiving them into a belief that they had seen a mermaid, and night after night drawing them in crowds to the shore to hear " its disconsolate wailing," was amusing enough, and harmed no one but himself. And the device by which in later years he undertook to stop the eloquence of a wearisome and irrepressible speaker, to make way for Archdeacon (afterwards Bishop) Wilberforce, was as commendable as it was effective. It consisted in securing the watch, of the old gentleman, who, when addressing a public audience, was accustomed to swing his bunch of seals round and round in his left hand, and who, when he missed it, began at once to flounder, and forthwith, sat down defeated. Most of us have probably wished that an equally effective plan could be more generally applied.

Hawker went to Oxford in 1823; married, in 1824, a lady more than twice his own age and one year older than his mother, taking this step, according to Mr. Gould, as an "expedient" to enable him to remain at Oxford, which his father's poverty would have compelled him to leave. The lady had an annuity of £200. Whether this version is correct or not, it ought to be recorded in Hawker's favour that no husband could have been more tenderly and faithfully

devoted to his wife than he, and we are disposed to think that, while his father's inability to support him at Oxford hastened this step, it did not suggest it. It was by no means inharmonious with his character. In 1827 he gained the Newdigate Prize for his poem on "Pompeii"-a piece of true poetic power, glowing and picturesque, and with lines of exquisite beauty. (It was re-published in the edition of his "Cornish Ballads," &c. Parker. 1869.) He was ordained deacon in 1829, and priest in 1831. In 1834, Dr. Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, offered to appoint him Vicar of Stratton, where his father was curate, but he refused the offer, and secured the living for his father. In the same year the Vicar of Morwenstow died, and the parishioners presented to the bishop a petition requesting him to appoint the curate to the living. The curate, in urging his claims on the bishop, remarked that all the Dissenters had signed the petition, and that even the Wesleyan minister wished him well. And "that distinguished man and valued champion of true principles," as Dr. Lee calls him, replied to the curate, "Then, my good sir, it is very clear that you are not the man for me. I wish you a good-morning." And he at once offered the incumbency to Robert Stephen Hawker, who at once accepted it.

Both the biographers give us a charming description of Morwenstow -a parish in the midst of the wild and rugged grandeur of the Cornish coast, and surrounded by innumerable names and memorials of the early British saints. Its "storied ground" was exactly suited to Hawker's peculiar temperament. His love of the supernatural, his superstitious fancies, found here abundant scope, and his faith, especially on its weak side, was continually fostered, and "grew by what it fed on." The religious condition of the neighbourhood was dark and degraded. The vicar who preceded Mr. Hawker had been "non-resident," and some of his curates had also been of opinion. that the parish could get on better without their presence than with it. Fox-hunting and convivial parsons, who cared only for the emoluments of their office, pluralists bent on their own aggrandisement had indeed wrought sad havoc, and among the most grossly neglected spots, Cornwall appears to have been pre-eminent. However unwillingly Church writers may make the admission, they cannot deny that godliness was kept alive mainly through the hated conventicles, and that "the extravagances of self-constituted prophets" saved even the Church from disasters which might well have come upon it through the blindness and apathy and impiety of "rulers who ruled not." Mr. Hawker could not be in his parish as a nonentity, he was on the contrary resolved to make his presence felt, and, looking at his life as a whole, we cannot deny that he worked diligently for what he believed to be the good of the Church, and that he had a sincere interest in the well-being of his parishioners. He needed, however, something more than that superstitious feeling which led him to prize "Christian folk-lore," and to realize" the abiding sanctity of sacred spots and consecrated sleeping places"—a feeling

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