II. Habakkuk, chapter iii. Lord, at Thy voice my heart for fear hath trembled; Unto the world, Lord, let Thy works be shown: In these our days now let Thy power be known, And yet in wrath let mercy be remembered. From Teman, lo, our God you may behold, His shining was more clearer than the light, And from His hands a fulness did proceed, Which did contain His wrath and power indeed; Consuming plagues and fire were in His sight. He stood aloft, and compassed the land, And of the nations doth delusion make: The mountains rent, the hills for fear did quake, His unknown paths no man may understand. The Morians' tents e'en for their wickedness, What, did the rivers move the Lord to ire, Thy force and power thou freely didst relate Unto the tribes; Thy oath will surely stand, And by Thy strength thou didst divide the land, And from the earth the rivers separate. The mountains saw and trembléd for fear, The sun and moon amid their course stood still, Thou wentest forth for Thine own chosen's sake, Their towns Thou strikest by Thy mighty power, Thou mad'st Thy house on seas to gallop fast, The fig-tree now no more shall sprout nor flourish, The sheep shall now be taken from the fold, God is my strength, the Lord my only stay, III. Isaiah, chapter xvi. And in that day this same shall be our song, Open the gates; yea, set them open wide, And in Thy judgment, Thou wilt sure preserve In perfect peace those which do trust in Thee; Trust in the Lord, which doth all trust deserve; He is thy strength, and none but only He. He will bring down the proud that look so high, The stateliest buildings He will soon abase, And make them even with the ground to lie, And unto dust he will their pride deface. It shall be trodden to the very ground, The poor and needy down the same shall tread: The just man's way in righteousness is found, Into a path most plain Thou wilt him lead. But we have waited long for Thee, O Lord, And in Thy way of judgment we do rest: Our souls doth joy Thy Name still to record, And Thy remembrance doth content us best. My soul hath longed for Thee, O Lord, by night, And in the morn my spirit for Thee hath sought. Thy judgments to the earth give such a light As all the world by them Thy truth is taught. But show Thy mercy to the wicked man, He will not learn Thy righteousness to know: His chief delight is still to curse and ban, And unto Thee himself he will not bow. They do not once at all regard Thy power: Thy people's zeal shall let them see their shame; But with a fire Thou shalt Thy foes devour, And clean consume them with a burning flame. With peace Thou wilt preserve us, Lord, alone, For Thou hast wrought great wonders for our sibu And other gods beside Thee we have none, Only in Thee we all our comforts take. The dead and such as sleep within the grave, Shall give no glory, nor yield praise to Thee; Which here on earth no place nor being have, And Thou hast rooted out of memorie. O Lord, Thou dost this nation multiply; Thou, Lord, hast blest this nation with increase: Thou art most glorious in Thy majesty, Thou hast enlarged the earth with perfect peace. We cried to Thee, and oft our hands did wring, When we have seen Thee bent to punishment; Like to a woman in child-birth travailing, Even so in pain we mourn and do lament; We have conceiv'd and labouréd with pain, The wicked world likewise avails us nought. The dead shall live, and such as sleep in grave With their own bodies once shall rise again: Sing ye that in the dust your dwelling have! The earth no more her bodies shall retain. Come, come, my people, to My chamber here, And shut the doors up surely after thee; Hide thou thyself, and do not once appear, Nor let thine eyes Mine indignation see: For from above the Lord is now disposed To scourge the sins that in the world remain; His servants' blood in earth shall be disclosed, And she shall now yield up her people slain. He Drayton's "Harmonie of the Church " was published in 1591, and in the next year, 1592, appeared a translation into English, finished in 1587, of the "Traité de la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne," by Philippe de Mornay, Seigneur du Plessis-Marly. The author of this book was one of the most famous of the French Protestant scholars and soldiers. was born of a noble family in 1549. He was destined in childhood for good livings in the Roman Catholic Church, but his mother, when he was nine or ten years old, drew him with her to the Protestant side. He was but two or three years older than Sir Philip Sidney, who had known him when he visited England, and met him in Paris, where they were both present at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. Philippe de Mornay became a foremost friend in the counsels of the King of Navarre, whom he helped to make Henry IV. of France. He represented the intelligent soul of the French Protestant cause. His nobility of character gave him so much influence that he was called the Pope of the Huguenots, and he was from time to time in London as a political representative of French Protestantism. Sir Philip Sidney began a translation of De Mornay's "Treatise on the Truth of Christianity," and asked his friend, Arthur Golding, to finish it. He did so at once, and the dedication to the complete work is dated in May, 1587, although it was not until 1592 that the book was published, Sidney having died in October, 1586, from a musket shot at Zutphen. The volume was entitled "A Worke concerning the Trewnesse of Christian Religion, written in French: Against Atheists, Epicures, Paynims, Lewes, Mahumetists, and other Infidels. By Philip of Mornay, Lord of Plessie Marlie. Begunne to be translated into English by Sir Philip Sidney, Knight, and at his request finished by Arthur Golding." There was a scriptural emblem on the title-page, which associates the Reformation with the return of light, and the strayed sheep recovered by the Saviour. Arthur Golding said that he followed Sidney's wish in dedicating the translation to the Earl of Leicester. The design of the work was to demonstrate that there is a God who is one God, and that he is Creator and Ruler of the world; that man has an immortal soul, but is fallen from his first estate; and that his chief hope is in God, and his welfare consists in drawing near to Him. The way to this sovereign welfare, it is then argued, is by true Religion. The True God was worshipped in Israel, which is set forth as the first mark of True Religion. In Israel God's Word was the rule of His ser vice, which is the second mark of True Religion. The third mark is that the means of salvation have been revealed from time to time to the people of Israel. The rest of the argument is of Christ as the Saviour and Son of God. A short passage from the second chapter of the book, where Philip Sidney is translator, may be taken as example of its style. It draws evidence of the oneness of God from that which has caused some to doubt His existence-the oneness of nature, or as the marginal note to this paragraph calls it, THE LINKING IN OF THINGS TOGETHER. But let us see now how all things being so divers in the whole world, are referred to one another. The water moisteneth the earth, the air maketh it fat with his showers, the sun enlighteneth it and heateth it according to his seasons. The earth nourisheth the plants, the plants feed the beasts, the beasts serve man. Again, nothing is seen here to be made for itself. The sun shineth and heateth; but not for itself: the earth beareth, and yet hath no benefit thereby: the winds blow, and yet they sail not: but all these things redound to the glory of the Maker, to the accomplishment of the whole, and to the benefit of man. To be short, the noblest creatures have need of the basest, and the basest are served by the noblest; and all are so linked together from the highest to the lowest, that the ring thereof cannot be broken without confusion. The sun cannot be eclipsed, the plants withered, or the rain want, but all things feel the hurt thereof. Now then, can we imagine that this world which consisteth of so many and so divers pieces, tending all to one end, so coupled one to another, making one body, and full of so apparent consents of affections, proceedeth from elsewhere than from the power of one alone? When in a field we see many battles, divers standards, sundry liveries, and yet all turning head with one sway; we conceive that there is one general of the field, who commandeth them all. Also when in a city or a realm we see an equality of good behaviour in an unequality of degrees of people, infinite trades which serve one another, the smaller reverencing the greater, the greater serving to the benefit of the smaller, both of them made equal in justice, and all tending in this diversity to the common service of their country: we doubt not but there is one law, and a magistrate which by that law holdeth the said diversity in union. And if any man tell of many magistrates, we will by and by inquire for the sovereign. Yet notwithstanding all this is but an order set among divers men, who ought even naturally to be united, by the community of their kind. But when things as well light as heavy, hot as cold, moist as dry, living as unliving, endued with sense as senseless, and each of infinite sorts, do so close in one composition as one of them cannot forbear another; nay rather, to our seeming, the worthiest do service to the basest, the greatest to the smallest, the strongest to the weakest, and all of them together are disposed to the accomplishment of the world, and to the contentment of man who alonely is able to consider it ought we not forthwith to perceive, that the whole world and all things contained therein do by their tending unto us teach us to tend unto one alone? And seeing that so many things tend unto man, shall man scatter his doings unto divers ends? Or shall he be so wretched as to serve many masters? Nay further, to knit up this present point withal, seeing that all things the nobler they be the more they do close into one unity (as for example, we see that the things which have but mere being are of infinite kinds, the things that have life are of infinite sorts, the things that have sense are of many sorts, howbeit not of so many; and the things that have reason are many only in particulars :) doth it not follow also that the Godhead from whence they have their reason, as nobler than they is also much more One than they, that is to say, only One, as well in particularity and number as in kind? Henry Constable, whose few poems and extant letters indicate much sweetness of character, was in 1595 driven into exile for his fidelity to Roman Catholic opinions. There was some close association, perhaps tie of blood, between Henry Constable and Anthony and Francis Bacon, and to Anthony he wrote, in 1595, "I have a marvellous opinion of your virtues and judgment, and therefore, though in particulars of religion we may be differing, yet I hope that in the general belief of Christ (which is a greater matter in this incredulous age), and desire of the union of His Church you agree with me, as in the love of my country I protest I consent with you." Loving his country, Henry Constable sought leave to return, and failing in that, towards the end of Elizabeth's reign he returned clandestinely, but was discovered and committed to the Tower. One of his 'Spiritual Sonnets" may be taken as an example of the purity of aspiration that could be associated with the worship of the Virgin; something far higher than the idolatries from which he prays that it may save him: 66 TO OUR BLESSED LADY. Sovereign of queens! if vain Ambition move By pleasing sighs, shew me Thy lovely face, When in the presence of the Highest King of Exeter. Like Spenser, from whom he differed in views of Church polity, he was wholly an Elizabethan writer; each was born about 1553, and they died, before Elizabeth, within a year of each other. In literature Spenser is the greatest representative of Elizabethan Puritanism, and Hooker wrote the wisest and best argument against it. Both were true men who sought to serve God faithfully with all their powers; and they agreed more than they differed. Spenser, indeed, differed so much from the narrower Puritanism of his time, and was so fully in accord with Hooker's religious spirit, that we cannot think of them as in opposite camps. When different tendencies of thought lead men to seek one great end by different ways, and great parties are formed, it is between the lesser combatants--who confound accident with substance and give themselves up to fierce contention about phrases, words, and outward shows-that the distance seems most wide. Between the best and purest upon each side, who are one in aim, and who both look to essentials, the accord is really greater than the discord. away with good advice and benediction. Remembering after they left that he had omitted the help of a little money, the good bishop sent a servant to bring Hooker back, and when he returned, said, "Richard, I sent for you back to lend you a horse which hath carried me many a mile, and, I thank God, with much ease." The horse was a walking-stick that Jewel had brought from Germany. "And, Richard, I do not give but lend you my horse: be sure you be honest and bring my horse back to me at your return this way to Oxford. And I do now give you ten groats to bear your charges to Exeter; and here is ten groats more, which I charge you to deliver to your mother, and tell her I send her a bishop's benediction with it, and beg the continuance of her prayers for me. And if you bring my horse back to me, I will give you ten groats more to carry you on foot to the college; and so God help you, good Richard." Thus the loan of the walking-stick pledged Richard to call on his way back. He did call, and then saw for the last time his kindly patron. John Jewel died in September of the same year, 1571, and Hooker would have been unable to remain at Oxford if the president of his college, Dr. Cole, had not at once bidden him go on with his studies, and undertaken to see that he did not want. After about nine months also Hooker was aided by a legacy from the bishop, a legacy of love, not of money. Not long before his death Jewel had been talking to his friend Edwin Sandys, who had newly succeeded Edmund Grindal in the bishopric of London. In his talk he had said much of the pure nature and fine intellect and studious life of young Richard Hooker. The Bishop of London resolved, as he heard this, that when he should send Edwin his son to college, though he was himself a Cambridge man, he would choose Oxford, and send him to Corpus Christi, that he might have Hooker for a tutor. This he did about nine months after Bishop Jewel's death. Hooker was then nineteen, and his pupil-afterwards Sir Richard Hooker's parents were poor, but his uncle John was chamberlain of Exeter, and the boy's schoolmaster, who found in him an actively inquiring mind, and, under a slow manner, a quiet eagerness for knowledge, urged upon this richer uncle that there ought to be found for such a nephew, in some way, at least a year's maintenance at one of the Universities. John Jewel, who was also a Devonshire man, had been sent into his own county and the West of England as a visitor of churches, upon his return to England after the death of Queen Mary. Thus he had established friendly acquaintance with John Hooker, and presently afterwards he was made Bishop of Salisbury. John Hooker then visited the Bishop in Salisbury, and talked about his nephew. Jewel said he would judge for himself, and offered to see the boy and his schoolmaster. When he saw them he gave a reward to the schoolmaster, and a small pension to Richard's parents, in aid of the education of their son. In 1567, when Richard Hooker was a boy of fifteen, Bishop Jewel sent him to Oxford, placing him by special recommendation under the oversight of Dr. Cole, then President of Corpus Christi College. Dr. Cole provided Hooker with a tutor, and gave him a clerk's place in the college, which yielded something in aid of his uncle's contribution and the pension from the bishop. this way Richard Hooker's education was continued for about three years, and then, when he was eighteen, he had a dangerous illness which lasted for two months. His mother prayed continually for the life of her promising son, who used afterwards to pray in his turn "that he might never live to occasion any sorrow to so good a mother; of whom he would often say, he loved her so dearly, that he would endeavour to be good even as much for hers as for his own sake." Being recovered at Oxford, Richard Hooker went home to Exeter on foot, with another student from Devonshire, and took Salisbury upon his way, that he might pay his respects to Bishop Jewel. The bishop invited Richard and his companion to dinner, and after dinner sent them In FLEMING OLD ST. PAUL'S, WITH THE SPIRE. (From Dugdale's "History of St. Paul's," 1658.) Edwin Sandys, author of the "Speculum Europa" --not very much younger; but the bishop wisely sought for his boy a tutor and friend who, as he His said, "shall teach him learning by instruction and virtue by example: and my greatest care shall be of the last." George Cranmer (nephew's son to the archbishop) and other pupils soon joined Sandys, and found in Hooker a tutor with a rare power of communicating what he knew, and a life unostentatiously devout that stirred their affections. health was not vigorous, and weakened by a sedentary life of study. He was short, stooping, very short-sighted, and subject to pimples: so shy and gentle that any pupil could look him out of countenance. He could look no man hard in the face, but had the habitual down look that Chaucer's host in the Canterbury Tales is made to ascribe to the poet. When Hooker was a rector, he and his clerk never talked but with both their hats off together. He was never known to be angry, never heard to repine, while he remained at Oxford. In 1581 he was ordained priest, and soon afterwards appointed to preach one of the sermons at Paul's Cross. This appointment led indirectly to his marriage. The first stone of St. Paul's, as we have it now, was not laid until nearly a hundred years later, in 1675, and the new building was raised in accordance with the classicism of that later time. The old cathedral, ruined by the Fire of London, was, like other English cathedrals, Gothic, and had, until 1561, a spire. But in that year there broke over London a great storm, that struck with lightning first the Church of St. Martin upon Ludgate Hill, and soon afterwards the spire of St. Paul's, a structure of wood covered with lead, which it set on fire. The fire burned downwards for four hours, melted the church bells, and then ran along the roof, which OLD ST. PAUL'S, FROM THE EAST, AFTER THE LOSS OF THE STEEPLE. (From Dugdale's "History of St. Paul's," 1658.) could be witty without use of an ill word, and by his presence restrained what was unfit, without abating what was innocent, in the mirth of others. In December of the year 1573, in which the Bishop of London's son became his pupil, Hooker became one of the twenty foundation scholars of his college, who were, by the founder's statutes, to be natives of Devonshire or Hampshire. Hooker became Master of Arts in 1577, and in the same year Fellow of his College. His first pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, remained the attached friends of Richard Hooker, who worked on at Oxford, devoting himself much to study of the Bible, which was written, he said, "not to beget disputations, and pride, and opposition to government; but charity and humility, moderation, obedience to authority, and peace to mankind;" qualities of which "no man did ever yet repent himself on his death-bed." In 1579, when he and Edmund Spenser were about twenty-six years old, and Spenser published his first book, "The Shepherd's Calendar," Richard Hooker was appointed to read the public Hebrew lecture in the University, and continued to do so fell in. There were collections in all dioceses for the restoration of the church, and it was roofed again, but the steeple never was rebuilt. Paul's Cross stood in the churchyard on the north side of the cathedral, towards the east end. A cross in that place is said to have been first erected by Goodrich, abbot of Peterborough, to remind passersby to pray for the souls of certain monks of Peterborough there buried, who had been massacred by the Danes in the year 870. There was already a custom of preaching at this cross in the latter years of Edward III. The cross preached from in Elizabeth's reign had been built on the old site by Thomas Kempe, who was Bishop of London from A.D. 1450 to A.D. 1490. Careful choice was made of the preachers who were invited to deliver sermons at St. Paul's Cross Besides his fee, each minister who was not resident in London had right of board and lodging for two days before and one day after his sermon, in a house kept for the purpose, which was known as the Shunamite's House. A friend had persuaded Richard Hooker not to make the journey from Oxford to |