The Henson Journals

[36]

5th Sunday after Trinity, June 26th, 1921.

[symbol]

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m., and read some of the prayers set out by the Archbishops for use in the churches today. The more we pray, the worse the world grows! This whole subject of prayer is dark and perplexing. In no respect does the teaching of the New Testament and the experience of human life appear more discordant: on no matter is the conflict between the heart and the reason more acute and immitigable. Instinctively, at every juncture of danger & anxiety, we fall to prayer: inexorably as we rise from our knees, nay, while yet we are kneeling, the mocking question, What does it profit? suggests itself. I observe that while the Evangelicals incline to an insistence & persistence in petition, as if, indeed, like S. Simon Stylites, they would "storm the gates of heaven with storms of prayer", their rivals, the soi–disant "Catholicks" affect a great multiplication of "masses", as if they could thereby bind the Eternal to the courses of action which they desire. Both are professing a childish simplicity of belief in the efficacy of their respective procedures, which is so far removed from the temper and habit of modern life that one cannot even discuss it. How does all this really differ from the monster prayer–wheel of the Buddhists which, at every revolution, salutes the Ear of Deity with a million and a half separate petitions? There is a considerable thunderstorm in progress as I write.

[37]

Ella, Miss Rait, Ernest, Clayton and I motored in to Durham for the morning service in the Cathedral. Rain fell heavily all the way. There was, however, a considerable congregation. Before the service began Budworth was installed as honorary canon. I preached from 1.Peter V.6.7. "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for you". After the sermon I read the special prayers from the pulpit. We all returned to Auckland for lunch. Ernest's brother and sister–in–law came from Hexham and lunched here. Later he bicycled back to Jedburgh.

The "Observer" seems – though it is not easy to give precise meaning to its oracular pronouncements – to urge the break–up of the Coalition, Lloyd George becoming the Head of a reunited liberal party & the Unionists going their own way. It is possible that the Government may go to pieces over the Irish question. Lloyd George's letter to the rebel leader, de Valera, inviting him to a conference with the Ulster Prime Minister and himself must surely be the last essay in olive–branches. If this effort fails, there is nothing left but the odious way of coercion which we have been traversing lately with so little results, & so much loss of credit. There seems some probability of the coal strike coming to an end at last. The miners are evidently beaten, but no plan has yet been suggested which can so far cheapen coal–production as to enable the steel & iron industries to recover their foreign markets. I wrote to George.

---