The Henson Journals

[182]

Wednesday, December 6th, 1916.

856th day

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Asquith and Lloyd George have resigned. The King has sent for Bonar Law. Meanwhile, the débacle in Roumania proceeds apace, and the ignoble paralysis in Greece shows no sign of improvement. I attended Mattins, and then spent half an hour in sawing up logs. Locksley [Loxley] & Bothamly [Bothamley] waited on me as a deputation from the Chapter of the Rural Deanery to indicate the desire of the parochial clergy that, if soldiers were stationed at Durham, there should be no Church Parade for them in the Cathedral, but that separate parades should be arranged for them in the parish churches. I bit their heads off! The newly appointed incumbents of Bearpark & Edlingham, Hawke and McCracken, came to lunch. Also the Bishop of Jarrow & Cruickshank. They seemed decent & intelligent clergymen. I attended Evensong & then walked with Logic.

I started to read Matheison's "Church & Reform in Scotland 1791–1843" which forms the concluding volume of his considerable work. It compares the Evangelicalism of Scotland with that of England in a very interesting way. Both were intellectually squalid, and socially repulsive, disfigured by tuft–hunting parsons & corybantic fanaticks to an intolerable degree. The strength of both lay in the general horror produced by the excesses of the French Revolution, and in the extreme & universal abstinence from spiritual interest & evangelistic effort which marked the reigning 'Moderates'. The situation at the present time is quite startlingly similar. I am a "Moderate", and only by violent efforts can I bring myself to simulate interest in foreign missions, or in "Home Missions", or in "Temperance", or in any "Social Reform"!!! Oh dear!

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