The Henson Journals

[315]

Friday, April 29th, 1921.

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A most beautiful morning which added weight to the question which proposed itself to my waking thoughts. Was it really worth while to spend £7: and waste two days, in order to make a speech in the House of Lords on a painful subject with respect to which I could but gain fresh odium in the eyes of the religious publick? One the one hand, it does not seem right that being ex officio a member of that House, I should wholly neglect to attend its debates: and, if I am to do so at all, it would seem that I ought to be present when a subject of this kind is before the House. Moreover, it is precisely because a fallacious appearance of unanimity is presented by the Episcopal Bench in the House that I, knowing that appearance to be unreal, & being in my own person a proof of its unreality, am The more evidently bound to appear & speak. Add, that the presence of the Bishops in the House of Lords is now heavily challenged, & can certainly not continue much longer, and it is not difficult to show reasons for their being an active factor to the last; &, in fact, "dying game". Besides, there is undoubtedly in the background of my mind the vain, futile feeling that the House of Lords is the one sphere of my duties as Bishop of Durham in which I could "hold my own" with my predecessors in the See. None of the three Cambridge professors made any figure in Parliament.

[316] [symbol]

I left King's Cross at 10 a.m., and reached Darlington about 3 p.m. J. G. Wilson was my compagnon de voyage. The Archbishop & Clayton met me in the car, and brought me to the Castle. The Bishop of Newcastle and Mrs Wild came to dine & sleep. We had some interesting talk. It is clear to me that the situation in Sweden is many years behind that in this country. Socialism is far more akin to the Chartist movement. "Christian Socialism" would seem to be much what it was in England when F. D. Maurice and C. Kingsley were its conspicuous exponents. The Church of Sweden is much like the proe–Tractarian Church of England ̶ tied fast to government & the propertied classes, with a low level of spirituality. Hence it appears almost self–evident that a generous Christian minister should profess himself a Christian Socialist. As in Germany before the War, "Social Democracy" was the label of a party which included all the elements of opposition to the Prussian bureaucracy. Now all things are changing for the worse in Sweden as in the rest of the world: an anti–Christian temper inspires a hungry secularism, and the levelling doctrines of Communism draw to their support the idealistic altruism of the few, and the envious greed of the many. Just as Calvinism broke irrecoverably the sacramental tradition in Christian minds, so Communism seems to break irrecoverably what may be called the industrial tradition. I am not sure whether the one is not the logical development of the other.

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