The Henson Journals

[152]

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Good Friday, April 10th, 1914.

The desperate state of our public affairs seems to empty all our normal proceedings of interest and meaning. Theoretically we are all absorbed in penitential thought on the Lord's Passion. Actually we are itching to get hold of "the Times"! The lethargy of mundane obsession lies over pulpit and pew alike. In striving to whip up sentiments not grotesquely incongruous with the Day we are 'flogging a dead horse'. The consciousness of unreality is literally painful. To place the coping stone on the fabric of our discontent Gore delivers himself of another of his fervent & irrelevant disquisitions. He denounces the 'insincerity' of Anglicans, & (presumably in the interest of truth) calls upon them for yet larger achievements of 'make–belief'! His own handling of the Thirty–nine Articles is a luminous illustration of Anglican sincerity! And all on Good Friday, when we are supposed to be given up to solemn meditation, & sorrow for sin! It is hard indeed in these circumstances to resist the impression that we too are but assisting at the funeral obsequies of the Religion we profess! And in this inner conflict lies a discipline severer if less salutary than any imposed by Penitentiaries!

[153]

There was a small congregation at the morning service: Hughes preached a sermon which had the merit of brevity. Whether it had other merits I cannot tell, for my place in the sanctuary hindered me from hearing any complete sentence. In the afternoon a fairly good congregation assembled. I preached on the Superscription on the Cross, using a sermon which was originally composed for St Margaret's in 1908.

A violent gale blew all day, and made the chimneys smoke. Harry Reichel, nursing his neuritis, found the cathedral so cold that he came out during the morning service, & had no heart to attempt Evensong. Pemberton came in to tea.

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