The Henson Journals

[174]

2nd Sunday in Lent, February 20th, 1921.

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"It is not the truth of an assertion, but the skill of the disputant, that keeps off a baffle; not the justness of a cause, but the valour of the soldiers, that must win the field: when a learned Paul was converted, & understood the ministry, it stopped the mouths of those that said, None but poor weak fishermen preached Christianity; & so his learning silenced the scandal, as well as strengthened the church."

South. "Religion the best reason of state"

Against this set the "learned Paul's "own words: "Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called: but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame them that are wise: & God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong: & the base things of the world, & the things that are despised did God choose, yea, & the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God". South and Bunyan were contemporaries: which was the greater spiritual force? Which has been the most precious legacy, South's "Sermons", or Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress'? Which was the best result of a Christian ministry, Charles II and his courtiers, or the persecuted sectaries whom they jeered at and oppressed? Yet my mind moves more naturally in South's orbit, than in Bunyan's, and I won't ordain illiterate men, however ardent!

[175]

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. The morning was spent in my study, where I prepared notes for an address on "Democracy and Christianity" which (rather foolishly) I promised to give at Trimdon Grange.

After lunch, Clayton and I motored to Trimdon Grange; where I gave my address to a church full of men. The Vicar (a mean–looking little, pallid, pinched man named Rudd) told me that the building could accommodate 260 persons: but there were but 14 rows of 11 persons, 5 on one side of the gangway, and 6 on the other. This accounts for 154, and there may have been a few more in addition together with 15 in the Choir. The total congregation cannot have reached 200. But with a strange folly, the clergy are everywhere given to the practice of self–cheating in the matter of church–attendance. They always exaggerate generally very grossly. After service I was introduced in the Vestry to divers members of the Congregation. Then we had tea in the Vicar's house, & returned to the Castle by way of Sedgefield.

The "Modern Churchman" announces that Kirsopp Lake is to expound his heresies to the members of the Churchmen's Union, when they meet for their annual conference in Girton College next August. It is quite clear to me that his version of Jesus Christ provides no sufficient basis for a discipleship, but how to formulate its rejection without doing violence to the principles of "Liberalism" is not easy to discover.

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