The Henson Journals

[52]

Thursday, February 19th, 1920.

Men may judge, as they will or must, of English Dissent, but till they are at the heart of that experience which is recorded in Grace Abounding, the Pilgrim's Progress and Fox's Journal, their judgements will be external and of little value. In few other books is the religious life, that is the historic source & the continuing reason and inspiration of the Dissenting communities, to be read as clearly & truly. It is only as they breed true to this type that these communities can live at all, or that it is desirable they should live.

T. R. Glover. Poets and Puritans. P 116.

Glover is himself a Dissenter, and also a highly educated & very able modern believer. What does he really mean by being "at the heart of" the experience of these 17th century sectaries? In his own case can he have more than such an understanding of their experience as a sympathetic imagination can provide? The external circumstances of Dissenting Christianity have not changed more completely than the modes of its spiritual thinking. Take the case of the Bible. It was the raison d'être of their whole religious method that they possessed an infallible, self–interpreting, verbally–inspired Book, on which they could rest their whole confidence. Who now, save the most illiterate sectaries, can make that assumption?

[53]

I worked all the morning, not very fruitfully, on the Swedish lectures. Cecil Fortescue lunched here. Ella had invited him, & forgotten the fact! Then I was interviewed by a representative of the "Christian World". This is a process for which I have a definite loathing, and commonly I decline interviews, but I made this exception as it seemed to me possibly useful to make some observations on the Durham episode. Then I wrote a short letter to the "Times" about the rating of the Tithe rent charge in answer to a rather vitriolic & wholly unfair letter by Lord Sheffield which appears in the column of that paper.

The Archbishop sent me a very mad communication which he had received from the Vicar of Hatfield. He appears, so far as his words bear any sense, to acknowledge his iniquities.

Ella returned from London by the evening train.

Major wrote to ask me for an article on the Crown nomination to bishopricks, but I refused. First, the Convocation resolutions on the subject were not worth powder & shot: next, I can't spare the time. The sermons I am pledged to preach are rather important viz:

March 21st	Bradford Parish Church. Morning & Evening
" 22nd	Eastbrook Congregational Mission.
April 4.	Hereford Cathedral
June 6.	Cambridge (University)
July 18.	Westminster Abbey

Incidentally I am pledged to about 50 confirmations during Lent and Ascensiontide.

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