The Henson Journals

[29]

4th Sunday after Trinity, June 19th, 1921.

I celebrated the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. in the Chapel. Miss Rait and one of the maids fainted, & left during the service. After breakfast Clayton and I motored to Hartlepool where I preached to a great congregation including the mayors & corporations of both boroughs. The whole centre of St Hilda's church was filled with men. After the service, the congregation standing the while, I unveiled & dedicated a monument to the memory of 19 members of the St Hilda's Court of the Ancient Order of Foresters. After lunching at the Vicarage, I was escorted by the Boys Brigade in great force to a Wesleyan Chapel where I addressed more than 1000 men on "Christianity and Democracy". The Hartlepool Brotherhood is one of these "unsectarian" associations so characteristic of this age, in which the older forms of association both sacred and secular appear to have lost attractiveness, and new forms of slight texture & ambiguous quality to be replacing them in popular acceptance. Then I had tea with Councillor Parkinson, & met some of the dissenting Ministers. One, a Presbyterian, struck me as an able man: the others, Methodists of various sorts, were of the weedy emotional type general in that denomination. We motored back to Auckland, turning aside to Kirk Merrington in order that Clayton might get out to preach at Evensong. After dinner I filled up the census paper. The Bishop of London, his companion, Mr Allen, and his chauffeur, who came for the night from Stockton, where he had been advocating temperance, were included in my return. The total numbered 17.