The Henson Journals

[170]

Friday, February 18th, 1921.

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"Innocence is the best caution, and we may unite the expression, to be 'wise as a serpent' is to be 'harmless as a dove'. Innocence is like polished armour; it adorns, and it defends."

South A.D. 1659.

Yet in a world where, as the great Preacher too justly says, "interest is the grand wheel & spring that moves" everything, it may easily happen that mere innocence will fail. Men are censorious and full of suspicion as well as swayed by low selfishness. What chance has Innocence in an atmosphere charged with these ill tempers?

"The church is a place of graves, as well as of worship & profession. To be resolute in a good cause is to bring upon ourselves the punishments due to a bad." It would seem to follow that the innocent man will find his innocence no sufficient protection against persecution & calamity. Yet it is the case that innocence is the grand guarantee or condition of security, apart from which not the most cunningly cautious of men can be safe against detection: and beyond all question nothing but innocence can give the sense of security. "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Men are never so completely master of themselves as to be able to suppress all the tell–tale indications of guilt. Plausibility as a covering for transgression is like white–wash on an exposed stone: it cannot stand the weather.

[171]

Mr Chetwynd, the chaplain of the Deaf & Dumb Institution, came to see me, and stayed to lunch. In the afternoon I had a painful interview with the Rev: C. R. Coates, the epileptic curate of Etherley. I was quite firm in my refusal to accept him as a candidate for priest's orders. He was disposed to make a scene, & pleaded that he was being treated unjustly, but I went through my letter to him sentence by sentence, and disposed of that charge. Also, I read to him several letters from his "dossier" in order to 'take down' his rather exorbitant consciousness of intellectual sufficiency. So he was dismissed, and (as Clayton & I) motored out of the Park Gate, we observed him in colloquy with Hodgson of Escomb, the man who pressed him for Ordination on Bishop Moule. Probably they will work up a grievance together, but I will not yield anything on a subject of this kind.

We went to Ferryhill to see the Vicar, Mr Lomax, on the question of the proposed site for a church to become the parish church of a new parish which, it is proposed, should be carved out of the over grown parish of Ferryhill. Lomax is an eccentric saint, very devoted, very scatter brained, & very incompetent, but respected and, probably, also loved by those who know him. He is possessed of private means which he expends "not wisely but too well" on good works. His churches had the suggestion of dirty camaraderie which one connects with "Christian Socialism".

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