The Henson Journals

[75]

Septuagesima, February 16th, 1919.

[symbol]

I went to the Cathedral at 8 a.m., & celebrated the Holy Commn. Then I set to writing the article on the Church of England which I promised. It resolved itself into a rather savage attack on the Selborne Scheme, which I sum up as a proposal for Disestablishment without Disendowment. This is to be followed up by a second Article on the lines of what I have written in the "Modern Churchman". This will indicate the alternative policy. I attended a meeting in the Kemble Theatre, and looked at a series of films designed to illustrate the methods of combating Tuberculosis. Miss Mc Gaw explained the films in advance. Then I made a short speech, and Dr Gold, the Medical Officer of Health, a long one, during which the audience was slipping away. The night was very wet, and, notwithstanding, there was a considerable audience. I hope these meetings do good. It is rather curious that I should be slipping into a kind of Christian Socialist position, in spite of my life–long refusal to be mixed up in politics. But the public mind no longer concerns itself with the interests which used to be called spiritual, and the next world is quite unable any longer to hold its own in competition with the world present: so that the miserable "sky–pilot" is really much at a loss to find any intelligible rôle in modern society. He casts about to make himself useful in any direction, however humble!

---