With reference to our choice, as the recipients of Church money, of labourers 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 neighbourhood 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 county, therefore they should have no alms; because these labourers 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 of alms was therefore incorporated in the Book of Common Prayer. But it was never held to be established among the services of the Church for the benefit of the poor alone: it was to enable the rich to enjoy the blessedness of almsgiving for their Redeemer’s sake: it was to afford to every giver fixed and solemn opportunity to fulfil the remembrance, that whatsoever they did to the poor they did unto Him, and that the least of such their kindness would not be forgotten at the last day. “Let us wash,” they said, “our Saviour’s feet by alms”.... But this practice of alms, whereunto the heavenly Head of the Church annexed a specific reward—this necessity, we are told, is become obsolete. A Christian duty become, by desuetude, obsolete! As well might a man infer that any other religious excellence ceased to be obligatory because it had been disused. The virtue of humility, for example, which has been so long in abeyance among certain of the laity, shall no longer, therefore, be a Christian grace! The blessing on the meek shall cease in 1844! ... Voluntary kindness and alms have been rendered unnecessary by the compulsory payments enacted by the New Poor Law! As though the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew had been repealed by Sir James Graham! As if one of the three conditions of our Christian covenant was to expire during the administration of Sir Robert Peel!...

And now, sir, I conclude with one or two parting admonitions to yourself. You are, I am told, an elderly man, fast approaching the end of all things, and, ere many years have passed, about to stand a separated soul among the awful mysteries of the spiritual world. I counsel you to beware, lest the remembrance of these attempts to diminish the pence of the poor, and to impede the charitable duties of the rich, should assuage your happiness in that abode where the strifes and the triumphs of controversy are unknown, “Because thou hast done this thing, and because thou hadst no pity”. And lastly, I advise you not again to assail our rural parishes with such publications, to harass and unsettle the minds of our faithful people. We, the Cornish clergy, are a humble and undistinguished race; but we are apt, when unjustly assailed, to defend ourselves in straightforward language, and to utter plain admonitions, such as, on this occasion, I have thought it my duty to address to yourself; and I remain your obedient servant,

R. S. Hawker.

Nov. 27, 1844.

Now there is scarcely a church in England in which a harvest thanksgiving service is not held. But probably the first to institute such a festival in the Anglican Church was the vicar of Morwenstow in 1843.

In that year he issued a notice to his parishioners to draw their attention to the duty of thanking God for the harvest, and of announcing that he would set apart a Sunday for such a purpose.

To the Parishioners of Morwenstow.

When the sacred Psalmist inquired what he should render unto the Lord for all the benefits that He had done unto him, he made answer to himself, and said: “I will receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord”. Brethren, God has been very merciful to us this year also. He hath filled our garners with increase, and satisfied our poor with bread. He opened His hand, and filled all things living with plenteousness. Let us offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving among such as keep Holy Day. Let us gather together in the chancel of our church on the first Sunday of the next month, and there receive, in the bread of the new corn,[[38]] that blessed sacrament which was ordained to strengthen and refresh our souls. As it is written, “He rained down manna also upon them for to eat, and gave them food from heaven.” And again, “In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red.” 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.”