The Henson Journals

[85]

10th Sunday after Trinity, July 31st, 1921.

It is with an odd sensation of familiarity & strangeness that I find myself in this house, no more as the master, but as a guest. With what hopes & fears I came! With what memories I left! Episcopate was then a perilous experiment: it is now a wearisome drudgery. There is no more room for the illusions which ease effort, only for the cunning & caution which minimize risk. The features of episcopal life which most displease and disgust me have little to do with episcopal work in the true sense of the word. Raising money for objects in which one scarcely believes, or even dislikes, is a sore trial. Diocesan Conferences & National Assemblies are exasperating futilities. But confirmations are not either unreal or unpleasant: preaching is still a ministry which commends itself to reason & conscience: religious and moral counsel is really, if sometimes painfully, interesting. It is the extensive & multiplying business which bores and torments me. Then I must confess that I find "good works" and "good workers" infinitely trying. There is a type, surely distinctive of this age and country, which has always some "crusade" in hand, & looks at all the world only in connexion with it. These fanaticks for "purity", or "temperance", or "foreign missions", or "Boy Scouts", or "Girl guides", look upon the Bishop as their natural possession, & hold themselves entitled, as it were by Divine Right, to talk to him, & bother him at any time, & in any place. They are the flies & mosquitoes of the spiritual life, & have a highly deleterious effect on the character. I feel myself nakedly secularised by contact with them, & draw towards those who, with whatever faults, are natural and pleasant!

[86]

I went to the Cathedral, & received the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. After the service, I went into the vestry and saw Lilley. Dr Patterson brought his boys Lloyd and Adrian to see me. They are fine promising lads. At 11 a.m. I again went to the Cathedral, & heard a sermon from the Dean, which I was too somnolent to appreciate! The choir being absent on holiday, the service was read. There was a considerable congregation. We lunched pleasantly at the Deanery. The Streeters were there, and, sitting in the garden after lunch, Streeter, the Dean, & I talked long about economic problems. Then Ella and I had tea with Prebendry Wynne Wilson & his wife. The Vicar of S. Peters, Moore, made his appearance rather unexpectedly, & fawned on me after his fashion rather aggressively! I attended Evensong in the Cathedral, & heard an admirable discourse from Lilley. The Streeters came in to supper at the Palace. I had much talk with him about Ordination candidates. He says that the [sacerdotalist] colleges – Cuddesdon, Mirfield, & Kelham – are all filled with students, but elsewhere there is little prospect of candidates. Headlam's resignation of the editorship of the "Church Quarterly", and the transference of the office to the Theological Faculty of King's College, London, means handing the "Church Quarterly" over to Gore and Goudge. This change cannot be regarded as satisfactory by anyone who cares for truth & equity, or who values Theological liberty.

I learn with surprise and regret that Dr. Morris, the surgeon who operated on my throat two years ago, died suddenly in Hereford this morning.

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