The Henson Journals

[83]

Sunday after Christmas, December 26th, 1920.

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My thoughts, as I was dressing, ran persistently in the unpleasant channel of diocesan & personal finance. So difficult is the situation that every other duty of my office is subordinated to this single business of appealing for money. During recent years many religious & philanthropic organizations have been created; every one of these has become the means of living to a number of "workers": all of them are now enormously more costly to carry on; and the Fund of public generosity, from which they have all been maintained, has disappeared before the ubiquitous & continuing pressure of private poverty. Only by large efforts of self–denial can most people maintain their subscriptions, to increase them is wholly impossible. Yet without greatly increased contributions these "voluntary" works cannot be maintained. The "Church" must not "sweat" its servants, yet it lies open to the odious accusation unless it increases their wages by at least 50 per cent. And the "Church" has no fresh resources from which to draw, only the old resources seriously depleted. Yet in these circumstances it is thought necessary to launch on the public vast fresh schemes enormously expensive, designed to meet the appetite for "social reconstruction", which is our insular form of the disease which elsewhere is directly revolutionary. I think there are signs that the "charitable public" is revolting against the incessant appeals, pressed with such passionate fervour at this unfortunate time. We, the Bishops, have a vast system on our hands, which is insolvent, & clamourous. What can we do with it! Begging is the only way: & that way is now a blind alley!

[84] [symbol]

I celebrated in the chapel at 8 a.m. The collect for S. Stephen's Day reminded me that Christians are not promised a "bed of roses". Our "sufferings here upon earth" are no longer physical, but are they less hard to sustain on that account? Our "persecutors" are not fanatical individuals, but untoward circumstances, & we can gain no grace by forgiving them! The insistance on the "poverty of the clergy" is making the whole subject of the clergy tiresome & repulsive: men are beginning to ask what the precise value of these gentlemen may be. Is it really so important to maintain these squalid mendicants, who inhabit the parsonages, &, in many cases, appear to do little else? Once that question is openly discussed, & the Church of England will have reached its term: for it is strangely difficult to answer. This princely Auckland is like a lonely boulder deposited on some plain, to which it was carried in a previous geological epoch, & which has no affinity with its present surroundings. It presupposes the princely revenues of my predecessors, and now that those revenues have vanished, it has become an anomaly, an embarrassment, almost a scandal. In trying to explain the actual situation of the modern Bishops, we have only succeeded in making our position appear absurd in the eyes of the public. The glamour of past greatness lies upon us still, and still there is a measure of involuntary deference paid to the Bishop even in the unlikeliest quarter, but the glamour is the light of the setting sun, & fails steadily as the night draws on. Our actual poverty in the framework of our historical magnificence has an aspect, half pitiful, half grotesque.

[85] [symbol]

I remained in my study, and finished my sermon for the Railwaymen, but I fear my labour was wasted, for the Railwaymen failed to attend the service. There was certainly not more than fifty of them, the rest of the congregation being parochial. The men themselves professed surprise at so small an attendance, but I should have thought both time and day very unfavourable. There is not much traffic at Christmastide, and churchgoing is not a popular form of making holiday. Possibly there may be some prejudice against me on the score of the Railway Strike last year; however nobody suggested this to be the case: St Peter's Church is a modern church, & acoustically belongs to the category of "dead" churches. It is, I understand, considered to be a popular church, but I conceived a prejudice against it. There was too much palaver of cant & compliment in the vestry. This perhaps, is only the secular aspect of Evangelical "unction"! But however explained it is repellent,& I suspect unwholesome. Why should an organist and choir be effusively thanked for their assistance, when presumably the only excuse for their existence is that they should give it? Dissenters, being wholly dependent on the favour of their congregations for their means of living, do naturally cringe to, & toady the people, but why should Anglicans do the same? The weather today was fine & warm. I observed that a good many people took the air in the Park, which, save for the muddy state of the paths, was attractive enough.

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