The Henson Journals

[214]

Monday, March 14th, 1921.

Marvell's observations on Bramhall's attempts to bring about the union of churches are curiously relevant to the efforts which the Lambeth appeal has occasioned. Probably he expressed in the XVIIth century what is still the mind of the average English layman, who notes that "reunion" is a very one–sided affair when an "Anglo–Catholick" takes it in hand.

"I must confess freely, yet I ask pardon for the presumption, that I cannot look upon these undertaking Churchmen, however otherwise of excellent prudence and learning, but as men struck with a notion, and craz'd on that side of their head...... But if he (Bramhall) were so great a politician as I have heard, and indeed believe him to have been, methinks he should in the first place have contriv'd how we might live well with our Protestant neighbours, and to have united us in one body under the King of England, as head of the Protestant interest, which might have rendered us more considerable, and put us into a more likely posture to have reduced the Church of Rome to reason:–..... had the Bishop but gone that step, to have reconciled the ecclesiastical differences in our own nations, & that we might have stood firm at home before we had taken such a jump beyond sea, it wd have been a performance worthy of his wisdom."

"The Rehearsal Transprosed". A. D. 1672

[215]

I wrote to the Archbishop of York asking his counsel in this perplexing matter of Major S.

A parson named Densham came to see me. He seeks admission into this diocese, & is handicapped by a record which discloses the unattractive phenomenon known as "the rolling stone". His papers were satisfactory as far as they went, but there is something fell about the man, which arouses misgivings in one's mind.

Clayton and I motored to Sunderland, and there, in the Church of St Thomas, I confirmed about 70 candidates.

The Rev. G. W. Froggatt, Vicar of S. Thomas, Sunderland, was ordained in 1895, after having been in business. He has held his present position since 1914. He ascribes the great difficulty of getting domestic servants to the modern passion for "the pictures". The girls cannot be induced to take situations in which they would not have their evenings at their own disposal. An experiment in training girls for domestic service had been carried out in Sunderland by the Government at great expense, but the trained girls would not enter service! The question must needs rise in the mind, What likelihood is there that a population which attends the cinemas every night during the week will have any mind to attend the churches on Sunday? It only needs that the cinemas should be open on Sundays in order to give the coup de grace to popular churchgoing!

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