The Henson Journals

[63]

Friday, June 21st, 1918.

1418th day

The following observations are probably true, & certainly highly disconcerting for a "Latitudinarian" Bishop. They are taken from Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay vol.I p.259.

"There are few general remarks wh. so uniformly hold good as the observation that men are not willing to attend the religious worship of people who believe less than themselves, or to vote at elections for people who believe more than themselves. While the congregations at a high Anglican service are in part composed of Low churchmen & Broad churchmen; while Presbyterians and Wesleyans have no objection to a sound discourse from a divine [64] of the Establishment; it is seldom the case that any but Unitarians are seen inside a Unitarian chapel. On the other hand, at the general election of 1874, when not a solitary Roman Catholic was returned throughout the length & bredth of the island of Great Britain, the Unitarians retained their long–acknowledged pre–eminence as the most over–represented sect in the Kingdom".

I instituted three incumbents, and motored to St Michael's College Tenbury. There is an institution for teaching singing boys. It was founded more than 60 years since by Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley. The buildings are imposing, and well–placed on a very beautiful site. The Warden told me that there were now 29 boys in the school, & that there was accommodation for 40. He is vicar of a small but scattered parish, that is, of an extensive area with but few inhabitants distributed over it. There is a full "cathedral" service maintained in the college chapel which is also the parish church. Here I confirmed five boys between the ages of 13½ –14½. The service was devotional &, I trust, edifying.

The Revd D. Edgar Bowen came as a deputation from the "Free" Churches of the City to ask me to preach at their annual gathering. I promised to preach in the Congregational Church on Sunday evening Oct. 20th at 6.30 p.m. There seemed no valid reason why I shouldn't do in my own diocese what I have already done in the diocese of London, & propose to do in the diocese of Birmingham on Sunday week. And there is wisdom in decisiveness. "Pecca fortiter" [sin vigorously] may be sound tactics in rebus ecclesciasticis [in ecclesiastical matters]!

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