The Henson Journals

[678]

Tuesday, April 11th, 1916.

617th day

A bright day, but becoming cold & blustering at the close. I received the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. The Bishop of Jarrow was celebrant. I was working away at my Easter Sermon, when my study was invaded by Mr Bardsley, the Secretary of the "National Mission", who aspired to explain to me its true character & purpose, & thus to remove all hesitations from my mind. He stayed for more than an hour, & effectually prevented me from completing my sermon. His explanations came to extremely little. Indeed, he impressed me as himself wholly conventional. I tried (quite vainly) to make him understand that the repetition of exhausted shibboleths with unprecedented fervour is not really the same thing as the revision of exhausted shibboleths! Bu these good folks are working themselves up into a Dervish–like frenzy, & they remind me irresistibly of the priests leaping about the altar & cutting themselves with knives while they shriek the frenzied petition "O Baal, hear us!" He said that the essential assumption of the Mission was 'the obligation of witness'. "The notion of a Christian who didn't bear witness to Christ" was abhorrent. I inquired what he meant by this "witness". Did he really mean nothing more than the 'testimonies' at an "experience meeting"? Were we to have men & women rising in the assemblies to tell how they had "found Jesus"? This seemed to me worse than useless. It was the very kind of too familiar conventional pietism which had so wholly failed as to do more harm than good. It was condoned where individuals were locally known to have reformed their whole lives, but apart from such condonation based on knowledge, it was actually offensive. Then these questions of "Drink" and impurity, were they to be dealt in the old vehemently indiscriminating ignorant way, which experience has shown to be futile? He could say nothing to re–assure me.

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