The Henson Journals

[413]

Tuesday, September 28th, 1915.

421st day

The weather is bright and cold: reports from the scenes of recent fighting announce deluges of rain & storms so violent as to arrest the conflict. This morning's news is not exciting, but it contains nothing disastrous. Rogerson came to ask me to address another recruiting meeting on Saturday in the market place, but I was compelled to decline. I attended Evensong, & then went across to the Castle to attend an extraordinary meeting of the Council of the Durham Colleges. Pemberton came back with me to tea. His son has been in the recent fighting. He awaits tidings of him with some anxiety. A letter from Reggie Still tells me that he is 21 today. He comes of age at a critical time. In a few days he hopes to go to the Front. It is wonderful how little these boys make of death. There is a 'soldier's fatalism' which they acquire in the camps, and which seems to make them indifferent to death.

[415]

Mr Fripp, an Unitarian minister, came to ask my advice. He is tired of Unitarianism, which seems to him cold & almost lifeless. He had sate at the feet of Dr Martineau, whose lofty & reverent spirit no longer pervaded the Church which he adorned but did not represent. He desired to join the ministry of the Church of England. He stayed to dinner, & we had much talk about the religious situation in this country. This is the second Unitarian minister within a few weeks who has communicated to me his desire to become an Anglican parson (v. 357). "The war has brought home to me the intolerable inadequacy of Unitarian religion. There is nothing in it which expresses the mystical sympathy & strength of the prayer 'By Thy Cross & Passion &c.' We want & must have a suffering God." In such words, as nearly as I can recall them, Mr Fripp expounded the reason of his change of mind. He told me that his age was 53, & that he had two sons at the Front. It would hardly be excessive to suppose that he is the representative of many, who can only harmonize religion & such a war as this by bringing sorrow directly into the very Life of Deity. We are becoming Patripassians on a wave of sympathy!

I wrote to the Secretary of the Churchmen's Union at Manchester proposing that I should address the members on Oct: 25th on this theme: 'The probable effects of the War in the sphere of English Christianity'. My Unitarian visitor has certainly contributed a suggestion, which is capable of development. The same tendency which disgusts the Unitarian with his hard creed predisposes the Anglican to seek after the emotional consolations of the Roman system, always most alluring in the time of trouble.

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