The Henson Journals

[139]

Thursday, September 1st, 1921.

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Our conversation last night took a personal turn. "Why was it that you changed our views?" asked the bishop. "Has not the extent of the change in my views been greatly exaggerated?" I rejoined. "Well: it is the case, isn't it?, that you were once a "spike"? he said. "No", I replied, "that is altogether a mistake. I never had any other sentiment for 'spikes' than that of half–amused contempt; but I disliked dissenters as traitors to the national tradition; & I believed in 'Apostlic succesion'". The extent of the change in my ecclesiastical position is precisely limited to those two points. I see now that the dissenters had larger justifications for their position than I had thought; & I know that 'apostolic succession" is a fiction; and this change did but express the effect of lengthening experience and increasing knowledge. Undoubtedly it found confirmation from the repeated demonstrations of the moral inadequacy of the results of sacramentalism. The Dreyfus case made a great impression on me, & the shifty behaviour of our "Ritualists" hardly less. The one evidence of truth which I must demand from any ecclesiastical theory is moral power, &, when I found that the "Catholic" Church with its monopoly of covenanted grace could present in its members no perceptible moral superiority over the humblest Protestant sectaries, I refused any longer to believe in the Catholic theory. It is clear to me now that the points on which the "Catholicks" insist as vital are, in truth, of quite minor importance.

[140]

The Bishop had tea with Princess Beatrice & Princess Marie Louise at the bazaar yesterday, & found the Royal ladies much perturbed at the reports of the 'Modern Churchmen's' Conference which they had read in the papers. He mentioned that the Bishop of Durham was staying with him. "He holds strange opinions," doesn't he?" inquired H.R.H.: to which the Bishop rejoined that his guest shared her distress at the doctrinal aberrations in Cambridge, and meditated preaching about them at the forth–coming Church Congress. "I hope he will", she said, "for many people are much disturbed". The circumstance that I am myself a suspected person among the orthodox won't make the task of preaching easier; for, if I satisfy them, I shall be railed at as a deserter of the liberal cause; and if I don't satisfy them (which is almost certain to be the case) I shall kindle fresh denunciations of my own doctrinal defects! Yet there is no gainsaying the fact that the opposition to my consecration does mark me out as morally required to state my own position with respect to the issues raised at Cambridge. I do not think Christianity can survive as a moral & spiritual factor if the Founder be brought frankly into the rank of humanity. His worship, and His Redemptive power, appear to depend upon His Deity. I cannot find that on this point there has ever been any faltering from the date of S. Paul's epistles to the present time. Can we, & must we, now retire from that ground?

[141] [symbol]

The newspapers this morning are ill reading. Riots in Belfast, most threatening demonstrations of the unemployed in London, and the insurrection of the Moplahs in Southern India disclosing an ever more formidable character. Demobilized sepoys who served in Europe are said to be a prominent factor among the rebels. Old Sir James Crichton–Browne has spoken with great decision on the subject of preventing venereal disease by self–cleansing after intercourse. He ridicules every other method. Apparently, we are to teach young men as a matter of course how to guard themselves against taking harm when they go with prostitutes. How is it possible to do this without teaching them also that we expect that they will go with prostitutes, and don't take any serious objection to their doing so? What other meaning can they place on our anxious concern that they should be accurately informed as to their right behaviour after intercourse? We must, of course, repeat the old platitudes about purity, self–respect, a chivalrous treatment of women &c: but then we must go on to teach them with the utmost precision & detail (for everything turns on their knowing thoroughly what to do with the preparations they are admonished to buy when they go with prostitutes) how they can be impure with impunity. How can such instruction operate in any other way than as an incentive to sin? How can it be given without dragging the teacher down to the level of a particeps criminis?

[142]

After lunch William photographed us all in the garden. Then the Bishop accompanied us in the motor to Brook Hall, where we had tea with General Seeley and his wife. On the way the motor developed internal trouble, & we telephoned to excuse our failure to arrive, but a car was sent to bring us on, & while we were having tea, William arrived with our car, & in due course carried us home safely. The roads in the Isle of Wight are for the most part narrow, over–grown with hedge–rows, and winding. During the season they are infested by char–a–bancs crowded with visitors. Accordingly they are comfortless & unsafe for motoring. There are many good pictures in Brook Hall, and a Holbein miniature of Henry VII. The house is partly old, dating from Henry VII's reign; the substructures are medieval. General Seeley expressed himself with some vigour against the proposed division of the Winchester diocese. He sad that there were not 50 persons in the Isle of Wight who knew or cared anything about the Enabling Act. But "his dearest friend" is Hugh Cecil, and he attached enormous importance to the 'National Assembly". Frank Seeley was there, & told me that he & the Bishop of Peterborough had married sisters. Happily this information preceded a discussion on the economic situation. I should certainly have "put my foot in it" by speaking contemptuously of the Bishop of P. if I had not had this information. However General Seeley [Seely] volunteered the opinion that the said bishop was a hopelessly 'muddleheaded' fellow!

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