The Henson Journals

[221]

Whitsunday, May 23rd, 1915.

293rd day

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The most beautiful summer's day conceivable. I celebrated before breakfast. Only Watkins of the canons was there. The communicants numbered about 85. Then I preached to the soldiers at 10 a.m.: and again at the Choral Eucharist. Only Knowling was present of the canons: &, as May is on holiday, and Cully was at the organ, I myself read the Gospel from the Chancel step. There were but few communicants, but rather more non–comts stayed to the end. Hutton preached at Evensong from S. Paul's words, "Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost'. He connected the text with Confirmation, & allowed himself in the now fashionable sneer at German criticism! Otherwise the sermon was well enough, & as no ordinary English Churchgoer wd dream of linking the notions of 'Confirmation' & the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the references thereto would pass harmlessly by! Yet it is certainly perplexing that a man of 55, who has necessarily seen a good deal of the working of the ecclesiastical system, shd even pretend to himself that he believes in such a doctrine of Confirmation. Are the bodies of the unconfirmed Christian not 'the temples of the Holy Ghost'? Just as Roman Catholics go on professing to believe in the Infallibility of the Pope in the teeth of experiences which demonstrate at every turn the falsehood of the dogma, so our Anglicans with the theoretical absurdities of our system! Divers officers including Col: Grimshaw & Major Iremonger, came to tea, & I shewed them over the Cathedral. Finally, after dinner, Gee appeared to see Hutton. The Sunday Paper accounts of the Railway Accident record a very terrible catastrophe, probably the most destructive accident in the annals of British Railways. It is pathetic, indeed, that so many young men should be destroyed ignobly before drawing sword in the 'Holy War'.

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