The Henson Journals

[321]

Monday, August 9th, 1915.

371st day

Let us know

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well

When our deep plots do pall: & that should learn us

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough–hew them how we will.

Hamlet's words disclose a faith in Providence which is at once instinctive and reasoned. Expressed Christianly it becomes St. Paul's brave declaration. "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God". This calm assurance was the strength of Calvinism as a practical creed, but it was based on an impossible Theology. Cut this away, and connect it with a belief in the universal & equal concern of God for all His children and it becomes indistinguishable from a feeble kind of optimistic fatalism, quite satisfying to the mind, and quite uninspiring to the will. Yet it is instinctive always in the case of religious men, & they will always cast about for some sufficient theological reasons.

The weather continues to be extremely warm, damp, & enervating. It suggests Sierra Leone rather than the North of England. The continuous rain, moreover, threatens a harvest which, if it could be gathered, would be bountiful. I attended Evensong, & then went to tea with Knowling in order to see Patterson of Trinity who is staying with him for the night. He tells me that Raper dined in college before his death, which came upon him in his sleep quite peacefully. He was a man of not very prepossessing appearance, who made devoted friends, & wielded a widely extended influence. I met him frequently in the company of the Warden, who was his intimate friend, a fact which is itself a sufficient certificate of character.

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