The Henson Journals

[214]

5th Sunday after Easter, May 25th, 1919.

I went to the cathedral at 8 a.m., and celebrated the Holy Communion. The two archdeacons assisted.Instead of going to Mattins I remained in my study, and read a very interesting & suggestive volume just published by the Cambridge Press called "Christ, St Francis & Today" by G. G. Coulton. It is full of good and acute dicta, but disfigured by a good deal of what I must needs call bombast. The parallel between Franciscanism and Christianity is curiously close. S. Francis more or less consciously modelled his career on that of Jesus: and the tradition in both cases exemplifies the play of the same forces. The XIXth century produces another parallel, also illuminating in the history of Babism. The book consists of lectures delivered during the War, & they reflect the excitements of the time. There was a great deal of exaggerated sentiment, and not a little sheer nonsense, evoked by the experiences of an unprecedented crisis. Looking back on it all, one is divided between amusement & humiliation. Men are very little changed by what they have gone through: and, after having been represented as heroes, are being discovered to be only the ordinary British folk they always were – goodnatured in the main, but lazy & unimaginative, very easily gulled by agitators & astonishingly suspicious.

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