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. Forgive the lines for the sake of their sincerity, etc....
He wrote a poem of singular beauty on the auroral display of the night of 10th Nov. 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 underworld 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 Galilee, 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, ever more, 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.
CHAPTER IX
Restoration of Morwenstow Church—The Shingle Roof—The First Ruridecanal Synod—The Weekly Offertory—Correspondence with Mr. Walter—On Alms—Harvest Thanksgiving—The School—Mr. Hawker belonged to no Party—His Eastern Proclivities—Theological Ideas—Baptism—Original Sin—His Preaching—Some Sermons.
The church of Morwenstow was restored by Mr. Hawker in 1849; that is to say, he removed the pews that had been built about the old carved oak benches, pulled down the gallery, and put up a new pulpit, and made sundry other changes in the church.
The roof was covered with oak shingle in the most deplorable condition of decay. According to the description of a mason who went up the tower to survey it, “it looked, for all the world, like a wrecked ship thrown up on the shore.”