The Henson Journals

[598]

Tuesday, May 30th, 1916.

666th day

Robertson wrote well: "There are three things in the world which deserve no quarter – Hypocrisy, Pharisaism, and Tyranny." If for "the world" we substitute "one's self", we have an excellent rule for self–judgment & self–direction. There are no sins more vehemently denounced in others and more commonly condoned in ourselves than these. Humbug, conceit, selfish self–assertion are the continuing shadows of domestic life; and their citadel is mostly in the Head of the Household!

I put some finishing touches to the Lecture on Warburton, originally read to the Royal Society of Literature (v. p. 713), and destined for a second production tomorrow. After attending Evensong, I walked with Logic through Houghall Wood: & then read the "Round Table".

The "Church Family Newspaper" has a highly laudatory notice of "the Commons' New Chaplain". Canon Carnegie, we learn, "is a cultured, forceful and thought–provoking preacher, & since he came to London he has made St Margaret's in reality what it has been nominally for generations – the official church of the House of Commons." That is a back–hander at Canon Carnegie's predecessor! Yet it is the case that without exception everybody who has spoken to me on the subject, has assured me that the Members come worse than in my day, & that the present Rector's preaching is not liked. But what does it really matter what is said about one? The facts cannot be altered: and they are registered correctly in the only place where registration matters – the judgment–book of the Almighty. What they look like there is not a pleasant subject of thought. I quite expect to read soon that my ministry was a total failure, and that the Church was empty when I preached there!!

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