The Henson Journals

[175]

Thursday, September 22nd, 1921.

But beliefs worth calling beliefs must be purchased with the sweat of the brow. The easy conclusions which are accepted on borrowed grounds in evasion of the labour & responsibility of thought, may or may not be coincident with truth: in either case they have little or no share in its power.

Hort: "The Way, the Truth & the Life, xxxiv

Hort says some very profound and searching things: but his assumption that the Fourth Gospel is essentially Dominical, and must be taken as giving the key to the Synoptic tradition, separates him so far from our "Modern Churchmen" that he is of little service in our present conflict. He was fully awake to the problem presented to Traditionalists by the advent of Knowledge, but the knowledge by which his generation of believers was staggered was that contributed by the physical sciences. He had no experience of such a situation as that which confronts us today, when our own guns are being turned on us, I mean, when the appeal to Scripture is made the basis of a refusal to accept the Apostolic Witness about Jesus Christ. Even in his day, however, there were many charlatans of science, who were mere bond slaves to the correct tradition of their schools. "The air", he wrote, "is thick with bastard traditions which carry us captive unawares while we seem to ourselves to be exercising our freedom and our instinct for truth." He pointed out with respect to these "bastard traditions" that "the danger of them lay in their disguise."

[176]

I spent the morning in writing letters, and in preparing a speech. After an early lunch Ella and I motored to Sunderland, where I dedicated a memorial to the men of the Borough Police Force, who fell in the War. The function took place in the police station, and was simple but impressive. Save for the members of the Corporation, the mourners, and a few ladies, the whole company consisted of policemen. Sykes acted as my chaplain, and read the lesson. After tea, we motored home, making a call on Mrs Challoner at Warden Law on the way. As we passed through Durham we inquired after the Bishop of Jarrow, & learned with much satisfaction that he is making a good recovery from his operation. During our absence, Elizabeth Smith arrived on a visit.

Ralph writes to me at some length, and in a grave vein. "Even a short visit to a place like Auckland insensibly strengthens one's conviction that an institution so deeply rooted in the past, & with such splendid traditions, as the Church or England, cannot be destroyed by the vagaries of one generation. Religious societies have an amazing toughness of constitution. I doubt sometimes whether even the Olympian gods would have died if the Greeks & Romans who worshipped them had not themselves become extinct. But perhaps we are faced with the same danger. The masses are not Christian, and the upper & middle classes are beginning to be squeezed out of existence by the barbarians, as they were 1500 years ago".

All this is very characteristick [sic], & very stimulating.

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