The Henson Journals

[319]

2nd Sunday after Easter, April 6th, 1913.

'In spite of the inroads of mystery & sacrament, the Christian religion held fast to the conviction that every Christian must know what he believed, & must therefore in some degree possess an intellectual understanding of his religion.'

Harnack, 'Bible Reading in the Early Church', p. 85.

This morning a start was made with the new arrangement of services. The Litany was read before the early celebration of Holy Communion. I was myself the celebrant. There were about 17 comts. The combined services were concluded in less than 45 minutes.

At 10.30 a.m. everything went well enough, but we were not out of church before 12.40 p.m. i.e. 2 hours & 10 minutes, though the absence of the boys probably shortened the music, & there were not more than a score of communicants. We had no Bidding Prayer.

Later, we were called for by Mr & Mrs Erskine of the Bank of England, Newcastle, who had undertaken to motor us to Newcastle in time for Evensong at the Cathedral, where I had pledged myself to preach a sermon in connexion with the local celebration of "Health Week".

[320]

The Cathedral was densely crowed. I was assured that as many as 2300 persons were present. Acoustically the building impressed me as good, but the distribution of the congregation could hardly have been favourable to easy audience of the preacher. The singing was vigourous [sic] & rapid – about on the level of a successful parish church. Bishop Straton made his appearance – an unusual & therefore, presumably, a complimentary proceeding. My sermon from the text, "Mind not high things but condescend to things that are lowly" was written for the occasion. It was listened to with very close attention; there was nothing to complain of in this respect. Nevertheless, the impression which I received from the clergy after the service was that they at least had not liked the discourse. Nor did the church–officers, to whom I addressed some civil commonplaces, give me any different impression. This may be explicable by that North–country reticence & churlishness of demeanour, of which so much is said: but I must needs suspect that unwittingly I stumbled on to some local corns, municipal or ecclesiastical.

Canon Kempson walked with us to the Railway Station, and there bade us farewell. We arrived home about 10.20 p.m.

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