The Henson Journals

[457]

21st Sunday after Trinity, October 24th, 1915. Manchester.

447th day

I read Oliver's "Ordeal by Battle" in bed, & found it fascinating. We went to the Cathedral, & there I listened to an extemporaneous sermon by "Fish" Cecil. It was rather a "large" talk about the War, which, it was maintained, had exposed the essential defects of German education, & ought therefore to dispose us to support the National Society, as the instrument of a sounder education for the English people! It might, perhaps, be wise for those who accept this reasoning to remember that, whatever may be the demerits of the German system of state schools, they do at least include in their curriculum that "definite religious instruction" which the National Society clamours for. I stayed to the Holy Communion, which was choral. After lunch Welldon went out to preach, and I wrote to Ella and Marion. Of course Welldon and I discussed appointments. It is a topic which is equally unedifying & persistent; indeed, the discussion of it always immerses one in uncharity, & never really does any good. I always put a curb on my criticism by asking myself what, if I had had a free hand, I would myself have done in the circumstances. It is the case that the new Bishop of Newcastle is relatively unknown & absolutely undistinguished; but the first may be as much a virtue as a defect, and the last may be remedied. He can hardly be a man of real force for, though everybody seems to have liked him, no one seems to have been impressed by him: Fowler & Poole, who recall his Durham career, agree with Canon Moore, who was associated with him in Oxford, in expressing extreme surprise that he should have been selected for episcopal office. They had never felt him to be marked out for government. But we must "wait & see".

[459]

There was an immense congregation at the evening service. It over–flowed into the choir & ambulatories, & is said to have exceeded 3000 people. I was much impressed by the heartiness of the singing, and the closeness of the attention. My sermon took 33 minutes in delivery. It was, perhaps, rather too formal & heavy for the congregation! There came to supper Hillier [sic], a minor canon whose father is the music–man in Durham from whom we obtained the piano; and Boutflower, a cousin of the Master of Sherburn Hospital, and, like him, a descendant of the Blakiston family into which Bishop Cosin married. A pleasant man, evidently, but also, as his conversation disclosed, a Ritualist by temperament, if not by conviction. We had some talk after the guests had gone on Episcopacy, & I was a little surprized as well as gratified to find that Cecil has inclined more towards my position than I had supposed. Neither he nor Welldon has thought out his attitude; they know themselves to be out of agreement with the Ritualist, or "Catholic", faction; and they are naturally disgusted by the vulgar individualism of Dissent; but they neither analyse their feelings, nor realize the implication of their words. Meanwhile they are living on phrases & habitudes which still make "Anglicanism" attractive to a large number of English clergy & laity, & which appeals to the patriotic sentiment, now much inflamed by the War, as being a distinctively English type of Christianity. But "Anglicanism" is no longer capable of defence on the lines of "Catholic" argument; & it is essentially opposed to Protestantism. Condemned to an isolation, as absurd ecclesiastically as it is wrong religiously, it must break down in practice, & slowly perish in theory.

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