The Henson Journals

[134]

13th Sunday after Trinity, August 25th, 1918.

1483rd day

A beautiful morning, bright but cool and fresh. Before getting up I read Cowper's "Truth", & was interested to find a Dean of Durham offered as a specimen of prelatical humility. After describing two examples of ascetical pride – the Bramin and the anchorite, he proceeds:–

The truth is (if the truth may suit your ear,

And prejudice have left a passage clear,)

Pride has attained its most luxuriant growth,

And poisoned every virtue in them both.

Pride may be pamper'd while the flesh grows lean,

Humility may clothe an English dean;

That grace was Cowper's – his, confess'd by all –

Though plac'd in golden Durham's second stall.

Not all the plenty of a bishop's board,

His palace, and his lacqueys, and 'My Lord',

More nourish pride, that condescending vice,

Than abstinence, and beggary, and lice:

It thrives in misery, and abundant grows:

In misery fools upon themselves impose.

The compliment may have had its origin as much in the pride of relationship as in the dean's deserving. "Truth" was published in 1782. After enlarging on the spiritual superiority of the poor over the rich, the poet allows that even the latter are not all undone:–

[135]

We boast some rich ones whom the gospel sways,

And one who wears a coronet and prays;

Like gleanings of an olive–tree they show,

Here and there one upon the topmost bough.

Is this an allusion to the famous Selina, Countess of Huntingdon?

I went to the parish church at 8 a.m., and there received the Holy Communion. There were a good many communicants, mostly women with a sprinkling of parsons. The collect well matches the thoughts with which my return to Hereford, & entrance into my official house, fill my mind.

Almighty & merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that thy faithful people do unto thee true & laudable service; Grant, we beseech thee, that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Probably the first clause of the collect implies the tremendous controversies which gather about the names of St Augustine and Pelagius, and which have for us become almost unintelligible. Perhaps we are all Pelagians, or at least, semi–Pelagians now, but with the revolution in our reading of Scripture we can no longer get excited over the fortunes & faults of Adam & Eve. "Every man is the Adam of his own soul" as the Apocryphal writer says very wisely. Yet the consciousness of personal incapacity to render to God "true and laudable service" does not become weaker, as we know more of ourselves, & more of this strangely tangled universe into which we are so closely bound.

[136]

I wrote to Mary, and to Ella, then I read through Cowper's "The Progress of Error". It contains a good many effective lines. He is severe, as usual, on the clergy.

Oh, laugh or mourn with me the rueful jest,

A cassock'd huntsman, and a fiddling priest;

He from Italian songsters takes his cue:

Set Paul to music, he shall quote him too.

He takes the field, the master of the pack,

Cries – Well done, saint! and claps him on the back.

Is this the path of sanctity? Is this

To stand a waymark in the road to bliss?

Himself a wand'rer from the narrow way,

His silly sheep, what wonder if they stray?

Go, cast your orders at your bishop's feet,

Send your dishonour'd gown to Monmouth street!

The sacred function in your hands is made

Sad sacrilege! no function, but a trade!

There has been, perhaps, a considerable revolution of opinion on the subject of 'the fox–hunting parsons' whom the poet so sternly denounced. Not the discovery of their practical advantages has effected the change so much as the apparent and complete failure of the professionalized clerical "carpet–baggers", who have replaced them in too many country parishes. These men, generally of humble origins and narrow education, are filled full with sacerdotal pride, & a self–confidence which the absence of local criticism enables to survive even the experience of failure.

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