The Henson Journals

[587]

Thursday, January 13th, 1916.

528th day

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"I wish I did not hate preaching so much, but the degradation of being a Brighton preacher is almost intolerable. 'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed;' but I think there is not a hard–working artisan whose work does not seem to me to constitute him a worthier and higher being than myself."

Robertson wrote this when he was on the pinnacle of such fame as preachers can obtain. Nor was this a fleeting sentiment. Again and again he protests his contempt for preaching, especially for popular preaching. Yet nothing is more certain than that preaching was his very life: and its effectiveness as a moral and spiritual agent has hardly ever been exceeded. His contemporaries, indeed, mainly ignored him: but his posthumous influence has been, and still is, enormous. Knowling tells me that a German translation of the sermons has been published within the last few years. /

I went to church at 8 a.m., and received the Holy Communion. Hughes was the celebrant. In the afternoon I walked with Kathleen in the Library, and then went to Evensong in the Cathedral. I wrote to Mary Radford, and returned his sermon to the Bishop of Bristol. It is a well–intentioned discourse, & well–expressed, but it is carefully guarded after the well–known episcopal manner against any risk of being applied to the immediate issue of Kikuyu. On the whole, I incline to think that the position of an English Bishop is so unfavourable to any real independence of thought or action, that the acceptance of a bishoprick would involve some forfeiture of self–respect. It is the hateful milieu of diocesan secretaries & holy women which does the mischief. Smothered by the pettiest routine, the mind grows to the measurements of the hierarchical strait–jacket, & ceases to move or grow.

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Issues and controversies: Kikuyu