The Henson Journals

[551]

Friday, December 24th, 1915.

508th day

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Is the 'Good King Wenceslas' of the popular carol to be identified with that Wenzel who 'became the tutelar Saint of' Bohemia? Milman says that in his time 'Christianity won the complete conquest of Bohemia'. He was, of course, endowed with all imaginable excellences, but none the less he was assassinated by conspirators, of whom his brother was the leader. Hardwick gives the date of Wenzel's reign as 928–936.

With infinite labour I completed a poor little muddled sermon for tomorrow's Festival. The warm damp weather, unseasonable & unhealthy, makes all mental efforts extraordinarily difficult & barren.

Cummings in khaki drove the car for us, & we called on Mrs Darwin, Mrs Soltau–Simmons, & Mrs Rogerson. Then we attended Evensong. I ordered the lights on the High Altar, & a hymn before the service, as on Sunday. A carol was sung after the grace, but such a poor thing, a recitative of the turgidest orthodox version of the Christian theology.

I wrote to Carissima and Marion: & received a pencil–written letter from Olive.

The 'Challenge' has a notice of my "War–Time Sermons". It is mostly an exposition of 'the limitations which have so often tended to spoil Dr Henson's best work'. With some eagerness I seek to discover what these may be, because, after all, 'fas est et ab hoste doceri' [one may be instructed by an enemy]. Apparently, my sermons lack practicality, and they contain 'nothing about the Holy Spirit, nothing about the Sacraments'. The root of the mischief is the preacher's 'unfilial' attitude of mind. "He does not consider the rock whence he was hewn. He is not as other clergymen". However much of the fault must be ascribed to the circumstance that the sermons were mostly delivered in Cathedrals!

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