The Henson Journals

[680]

Monday, April 10th, 1916.

616th day

I received the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. Knowling was Celebrant: and apart from the clergy, there were 6 communicants. After breakfast, Miss Ramsay left for Scotland. The cathedral was crowded at noon for the special service in preparation for the "National Mission". Some hundreds of the clergy attended, & their singing of the hymns was very effective. The Bishop of London preached for an hour, covering a vast deal of ground, & distributing obiter dicta of a very disputable kind on every hand, but he cast little light on the question of the Mission, & mostly dwelt in the region of platitudes & picturesque phrases. But the clergy seemed to be pleased, & perhaps also edified. We lunched with Lillingston & the two bishops. There was a Committee Meeting during the afternoon, which I did not attend: & then the members came to tea at the Deanery. The Bishop of London went over the house with me, & was of course very affectionate. He allowed himself a gibe against episcopal palaces, with which, he said in his sermon, the bishops are "cursed": & he confessed to me his private conviction that "deaneries ought to be abolished". I consoled him with the assurance that they certainly would be, & many other good things with them, in the evil days which are coming upon us. The only apologia which can be offered for such a hierarchy as we have received from the past is too subtle & indirect for the understanding of a democracy. If the whole destructive programme of the Reformers were carried out, and an end made of all our historic and picturesque anomalies, does any considering man suppose that the Church of England would be compensated for its new dullness by an increase of spiritual power? We might placate the envious appetites of a few sectaries to their own religious injury, but should we remove a stumbling–block from any honest man's path?

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