The Henson Journals

[110]

19th Sunday after Trinity, October 13th, 1912. New Haven, Conn.

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made:

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

Edmund Waller. 1606–1687.

O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee: Mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct & rule our hearts, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The weather is cool & bright, a welcome change after the heat of yesterday. I wrote to Buff before breakfast. I preached to the University in the large Auditorium. This building is said to seat nearly 3000 persons. It was well filled, save for a small gallery at the back. I selected the sermon on 'The thirst of the Soul for God'. It took 36 minutes in delivery, & was, I think, well heard. Anson Phelps Stokes took the short service for me. He begged for my MS afterwards, that the sermon might be printed in the Yale newspaper.

[111] [symbol]

Dr Newman Smyth came to see me with the purpose of talking over the Reunion Project in which he is so eagerly engaged. He is as ardent, as impractical, & as optimistic as ever: but his mind stills [sic] plays round the old futile point of Orders, & he reads into the polite compliments of English bishops a meaning which assuredly they do not bear.

Anson Phelps Stokes, who has grown a beard to the surprise & delight of his neighbours – I dubbed him forthwith 'the handsome Italian' – took me for a walk to the top of the East Rock, from which we obtained a noble view of the city stretched on the level plain between the two cliffs. We devoured the way with conversation. He is undoubtedly more at home with the older kind of Christian Socialist than with me. Indeed I am a great perplexity to these American Broad Churchmen, who cannot understand how I can be so unsympathetic with 'progressive democracy'. But (as I told him) I am an old–fashioned 'latitude–man'. He was very confident that the Tractarian party had been losing ground in the Protestant Episcopal Church during the last five or six years. He said that Bishop Lawrence's influence had waxed steadily: but that Bishop Greer, who had been unanimously elected successor to Bishop Potter in New York, had been something of a disappointment. He still clings to the plausible but mistaken notion that the Church of England would gain spiritually by Disestablishment.

[112]

Mine host has a brother–in–law who is a French cavalry–lieutenant & also a Roman Catholic. He spent some months in France this summer visiting this gentleman. I inquired what impression had been made on him by the Roman Church in that country: & he replied that he was astonished by the evident signs of increasing strength which that church presented. The deadness of the French Protestant churches could not be doubted.

I addressed between 200 & 300 students on the Putumayo Atrocities. They seemed to be interested: & some of them came to talk with me afterwards. It is evident that they had but the vaguest notion of what had happened. Also they spoke of my morning sermon, which appears to have interested them, & which they wanted to read.

Mine host, who had accompanied me to the meeting & waited patiently while I discussed with the students, walked home with me: & thence sent off a telegram to Governor Dix at Albany telling him we should arrive on Tuesday.

So ended a pleasant but laborious day. It is the 7th Sunday on American soil, the 8th since we deserted our poor flock in Westminster.

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Issues and controversies: recognition of/reunion with non-episcopal churches; Putumayo