But Mr. Hawker was not a theologian, nor was he careful in the expression of his opinions. He spoke as he thought at the moment, and he thought as the impulse swayed him. Many of his most intimate friends, who met him constantly during the last years of his life, and to whom he opened his heart most fully, are firm in their conviction that he was a sincere member of the Church of England, believing thoroughly in her Divine mission and authority. But it is quite possible, that, in moments of excitement and disappointment, to others he may have expressed himself otherwise. He was the creature of impulse; and his mind was never very evenly balanced, nor did his judgment always reign paramount over his fancies.
Mr. Valentine writes in another letter to me:—
I have only one sermon to send you, but to me it is a deeply interesting one, as it was delivered more than once just over the spot where he told me so often to lay him; and I feel assured that whenever he preached it, his thoughts would wander onward to that coming day when he himself, as he contemplated, would form one of that last and vast assemblage which will be gathered in Morwenstow churchyard and church. Ever since I knew dear old Hawker, and for years before, he preached extempore. His habit was to take a prayer-book into the pulpit, and expound the Gospel for the day. He would read a verse or two, and then with a common lead pencil, which was ever suspended by a string from one of his coat-buttons, mark his resting-point. Having expounded the passage, he would read further, mark again, and expound. His clear, full voice was most mellifluous; and his language, whilst plain and homely, was highly poetical, and quite enchanting to listen to. He riveted one’s whole attention. His pulpit MSS. are very rare, because, just before taking to extempore preaching, “basketsful” of his sermons were destroyed under the following circumstances, as he used to relate it to me: A celebrated firm of seedsmen advertised something remarkable in the way of carrots; and Mr. Hawker, who had long made this root his especial study, sent for some seed. He was recommended to sow it with some of the best ashes he could procure, and therefore brought out all his sermons one morning on to the vicarage lawn, set fire to the pile, and carefully collected the precious remains. The crop was an utter failure; but the cause thereof, on reflection was most palpable. He remembered that a few of old Dr. Hawker’s sermons were lying amongst his own; and the conclusion forced upon him was, that his grandfather’s heterodoxy had lost him his crop of carrots.
He refers to this destruction in another letter to Mr. Carnsew:—
Dec. 6, 1857. My dear Sir,—To-morrow I send for my last load of materials for building, the close of a long run of outlay extending through nearly thirty years. Bude, Whitstone, Trebarrow, Morwenstow, have been the scenes of my architecture. Anderson writes that he has bought a cottage of yours. I am glad of it for his wife’s sake. I wrote to him offering a young pig of mine, and twelve MS. sermons, for a young boar of the same age; and, do you know, he has taken me at my word. So I am to send him my MSS. and to fetch the boar. Did I ever tell you that I once dressed a drill of turnips for experiment with sermon ashes (I had been burning a large lot), and it was a complete failure? Barren, all barren, like most modern discourses; not even posthumous energy.
The sermon that is spoken of by Mr. Valentine was on the general resurrection, and was preached at the “Revel,” Midsummer Day.
The Revel or Village Feast is—in some places was—a great institution in Cornwall and West Devon, held on the day of the Saint to whom the church is dedicated.
One of his sermons which is remembered to this day was on the text, Gen. xxii. 5: “Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.”
He pointed out in this sermon how that in Morwenstow and many other villages, the church is situated at some distance from the congregation. At Okehampton the church is on a hill, and the town lies below it in the valley. At Brent-tor it is planted on the apex of a volcanic cone, rising out of a high table-land; and the cottages of which it is the parish church lie in combes far away, skirting the moor. At Morwenstow it stands above the sea, without a house near it save the vicarage and one little farm. This, said he, was no bit of mismanagement, but was done purposely, that those who went up to Jerusalem to worship might have time to compose their thoughts, and frame their souls aright for the holy services in which they were about to engage.
Is it a trouble to go so far? Does it cost many paces? Yea! but an angel counts the paces that lead to the house of God and records them all in heaven.