The Henson Journals

[50]

Ash Wednesday, February 18th, 1920.

It is repentance that it is so hard for us, and which lies at the roof of genuine religion. For the notion of sin is extraordinarily difficult to frame and fit in to our scheme of life. The kindly tolerance with which we regard, and treat, the transgressions of others is not withholden from our own. We can explain them also, and pityingly, as the fruits of circumstances in our own birth & up–bringing which were deserving not of censure but of compassion. How can we repent of what came to us from without, & which clings to us by a fatal force of its own against our deliberate will, in spite of a clear vision of its mischief & folly? The old infinitely suggestive question, why our will should be so powerless to hold us back from courses which we can see to be both disgraceful and disastrous, no longer creates in us a sense of sin, but only an immense curiosity with respect to our antecedents, physiological and social. As with sin, so with Redemption, we are now concerned with explaining the genesis of the Belief and its strangely tenacious hold on men's minds, not with a joyful acceptance of a Divine Gift. All the old assumptions have broken down, and the Atonement remains like a detached boulder stranded in oddly incongruous surroundings at a distant epoch by a dimly imagined catastrophe. We have the old hunger in our hearts, & the old promises of satisfaction in our ears, but our minds are obstinately & inevitably sceptical. "The Word of the Cross" is more than ever paradoxical on the lips of an educated Christian preacher at the present time.

[51]

I went to the Cathedral, and received the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. In so great perplexity, and with the pitiable weakness of one's own self so evident, what else remains but to throw one's self on the Divine Compassion?

I read through Barlow's account of the Hampton Court Conference in 1603. It is really a very illuminating document. James was evidently very anxious to make a good impression on the English Bishops, whom he imagined to be suspicious of him as a man bred in Presbyterianism. Then, as their servile demeanour tickled his vanity, he "let himself go" in gibes against the four Puritans, who must have cut a poor figure beside the Bishops & Deans. Incidentally we get much light on the position of the Church of England at the close of Elizabeth's reign.

The Dean and I walked together for 1½ hours in the afternoon. Warm and brilliant weather better matched June than the middle of February. We walked to Belmont by the river.

Fearne returned from her visit.

Newman points out the various opinions maintained by Anglican authorities as to the extent of the antiquity to which appeal should be made in matters of faith. His own conclusion is that "the termination of the period of purity cannot be fixed much earlier than the Council of Sardica in 347" nor so late as the second Nicene or seventh General Council in 787. This, of course, was his view as an Anglican. (v. "Via Media" vol.I.11.205) He sets forth what he describes as "a real view", distinct alike from Protestantism and Romanism.

---