The Henson Journals

[128]

Saturday, April 5nd, 1919.

There was a slight frost this morning enough to warn us against our hopes. I wrote two pages of the Anson Memoir, and for the rest spent the morning in talking with divers interlopers. The Archdeacon came to lunch. In the afternoon I walked for an hour with Ernest, and then wrote a short sermon for tomorrow. My chauffeur, William, is reported to be in bed with flu: however the Hereford Motor Cy undertakes to send me an efficient substitute. I wrote to Mr Tallents, the Rector of Upper Sapey, offering him the living of Kimbolton.Bishop Stubbs was a wise & learned man, and he found himself able publicly to make this declaration:–

"I speak from experience when I say that a man who becomes a Bishop gives up everything else to enable himself to give himself to the work that God sets him: & very sadly inefficient he finds himself."

He was very resentful of the smart criticisms of so–called Church Reformers, and he was a whole–hearted opponent of Disestablishment. In his time the evil was but in its bud, which now in its full & insolent fruitage threatens to ruin everything. His charges are pathetically remote from the situation which now confronts us.

---