The Henson Journals

[199]

4th Sunday after Easter, May 18th, 1919.

I wrote to Muir Mackenzie, suggesting that he should back up Haldane, and giving him the general lines of an opposition to the Enabling Bill. It is suggestive and amusing that nobody seems disposed to take any concern for the Church of England saving only the Scots!

We attended Mattins in the parish church. It was about half–full, & the congregation seemed largely composed of school girls. Yet Birchington contains a population of more than 2000 souls, and there is no other church. The sermon was preached by the curate, a person named Jones, with a whining voice, a monotonous delivery, and a Welsh dialect so pronounced as to be almost unintelligible. He looked a middle–aged man well past fifty. I heard him with more melancholy than resentment, for he embodied one of the most intractable of Anglican problems, that of the ordained duffer or innocent incompetent, who is universally unacceptable yet nowhere condemned. This curate represents a hopeless but numerous class, which raises lamentable complaints in the Church papers about the neglect of their services & the starvation–wages which they are paid. But the brutal truth is that nobody wants their services, and the pittance they receive is in excess of their 'market value'!

[200]

It is requisite that I decide on the subject of my next letter to the clergy in the "Diocesan Messenger" for July. I desire so far as is possible to avoid the polemical, and deal with the edifying. But in truth such is the inner dissidence of the Church of England that everything has become matter of contention from the Holy Sacrament downwards.

'Preaching' might, perhaps, be a suitable subject. I have some right to handle it, as having exercised the preacher's office for more than 30 years, not wholly without acceptance. And, as the author of a volume of "Lyman Beecher" lectures on "Preaching", I might be supposed to know something about that ministry. The points to be emphasized would be:–

1. The proper connexion between pastoral visiting & preaching.
2. The advantage of linking the sermon to the lessons, and, as far as possible, to the hymns.
3. The importance of writing sermons, even when delivery is "extemporaneous".
4. The undesirableness of "topical" sermons.
5. The conditions under which quotations are advisable.
6. The importance of avoiding jokes & colloquialisms in the pulpit.
7. The conditions of a wise choice of texts.
8. The importance of avoiding "the pulpit manner".

[201]

The essential quality of an edifying sermon is not eloquence but conviction. If the preacher convey the impression of believing what he says, and saying it because he believes it, the congregation must needs listen. But they will not listen long if their interest be unkindled. To be interesting does not require that the Preacher should preach novelties, or arrest attention by extravagances of phrase and manner. But the people must be made to feel that he knows more than they do, and that they can learn from him. The superiority of exegetic over hortatory sermons is apparent in this connexion.Excellent commentaries, full of relevant information are accessible to the English preacher, and any man of average industry & intelligence can master them. The parishioners ought to feel that their parson justifies his exemption from the normal distractions of the layman's life by giving them in his sermons the result of a religiously employed leisure.Religious employment must mean responsible study, such study as the Ordination pledge requires. Orators are born, not made: but students are fashioned by deliberate habit, and any educated man of normal endowments, physical and mental, can make himself a good preacher with industry and devotion.

---