The Henson Journals

[43]

Sunday before Advent, November 23rd, 1919.

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"The unpopularity of an Established Church is a very different thing from the unpopularity of the preventive service, of the army, of the police. The police, the army, and the coastguard may be unpopular from the nature of the work which they have to do; but of the Church it may be said that it is worse than useless if it is unpopular; for it exists only to inspire affection & respect: and, if it inspires feelings of a character opposite to respect and affection, it had better not exist at all. Most earnestly, therefore, I implore the House not to support an institution, wh is useless unless it is beloved, by means which can only cause it to be hated". ii. 349

"These were the last words which Macaulay spoke in the H. of Commons", says his Biographer. They were spoken with reference to a Bill for fixing the incomes for the Edinburgh clergy, which Macaulay supported in spite of fanatical voluntaries. It is an odd commentary on our Lord's words: "Woe unto you when all men should speak well of you!" But of course, His Church was not then "established and endowed".

[44] [symbol]

I remained in my study all the morning, revising my sermon. I also wrote to Ernest Pearce inquiring what he might have ascertained as to the ecclesiastical temperature of Downing Street. After Lunch, Ella and I motored to Gloucester, where I preached to a great congregation in the nave of the cathedral. My text was S. John vi. 67.68: and the substance of my sermon was identical with that which I preached in Helensburgh in August. We dined with the Dean in the Bell Hotel, and then motored back to Hereford, arriving at the Palace about 10.55pm. The wind was violent, and rain fell at intervals.

I took away with me from Gee's table a copy of Ralph's "Outspoken Essays", of which I read most of the introduction. It is amazingly brilliant. His position as a detached critic of current politics is now well established, and he makes the most of it. I suppose the weak point of all such criticism as his lies precisely in the fact that it proceeds from the very citadel of privilege. He is himself the fine flowers of a scholarship which has been created by a system of intensive culture, extended through many generations, and resting on a social system steeped in every kind of inequality.

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