The Henson Journals

[246]

Christmas Day, December 25th, 1912.

Publick the place of His Birth, an Iune, (every man's house for his money) & poor the manner thereof, so defeating the Jew's towring fancies of a temporall King, who long looking to see their Messiah sitting on a throne, would rather stumble at him, than stoop to behold him lying in a manger. The first tydings of the Lambe of God, by intelligence of Angels, is told to poor shepherds watching their flocks by night, whilst the Priests the pretended Shepherds of Israel, were snorting on their beds of security.

Fuller. A Pisgah–sight of Palestine. p. 299. A.D. 1650

My last Christmas in Westminster was marked by wet warm weather, very unseasonable & spoiling the congregations. However there were 105 communicants in S. Margaret's when I celebrated: & 225 when Westlake was celebrant. I preached from Hebrews I. 1, 2: & then (having been asked to do so overnight) I sent the M.S. of the sermon to the 'Times’. Clarence Stock was in church, & afterwards came to lunch.

[247]

In the afternoon I attended Evensong in the Abbey church. Rather to my surprize I found myself the only member of the Collegiate Body who was not wearing a scarlet cassock. There was a procession round the ambulatory after the service, culminating in a carol which was sung by the Choir in front of the Altar. I am now from a capitular point of view moribund, and, therefore, negligible, but I cannot think developments of ceremonial at this juncture are particularly wise. There seems to be a ceremony–microbe in the air, which is infecting the least likely persons. Gore is reported to have introduced a novel practice in confirming the boys at Eton. He is said to have made the sign of the Cross when 'laying on hands’. He must be getting into a fanatical state of mind. Burge told me yesterday that he opposed in the counsel of Bishops the very modest proposal to omit from the Preface to the Marriage Service ^the quaint reference^ to 'those who have the gift of continence’, because it is the only recognition of 'the state of celibacy’ in the Prayer Book! I observed that he had only to defend it publicly on that ground in order to induce ordinary English folk to become keen on its omission!

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