The Henson Journals

[199]

Tuesday, October 4th, 1921.

"Lord, let me not live to be useless!" – was this prayer fitting on the lips of a Christian man? Did not John Wesley, when he framed it, assume that what seemed to him "useful" was the true aspect & character of human life? Ought we not rather to regard living as itself an appointed task to be honestly fulfilled? Faber was not mistaken when he wrote "The Old Labourer":–

God judges by a light

That baffles mortal sight,

And the useless seeming man the crown has won:

In His vast world above,

A world of larger love.

God hath some great employment for His Son.

We have no power to weigh the quality of human lives, least of all our own. The categories of judgement which we apply are necessarily conventional, and the convention may be no more than the formulation of a popular error. Influence exhales from character, not from action, except in the measure that action reveals character: and the distinctive work of the Christian is to be so Christlike as to bring Christ's influence to bear on other men. When the Christian life has ceased to be possible, then, and then only, has the Christian become "useless". The prayer of John Wesley, therefore, must really mean something like this:– "Lord let me not so fail in my discipleship that my personal influence shall cease to be Christian".

[200]

My dear Fawkes,

I suppose some reports must have appeared in some papers of a sermon I preached in Durham on the occasion of instituting a clergyman to the parish of S. Oswald. I enclose the MS. from which you will judge how far it can be called either a criticism, or a condemnation.

My Congress Sermon follows much the same line, though in a larger argument. It is a definite expression of my own belief that Foakes–Jackson & Lake are on the wrong lines: a clear assertion of the legitimacy of Christological speculation, & an earnest plea against anything of the nature of a heresy hunt. I quote Sanday, Hort, & Westcott by way of sobering the critics, & inducing the Orthodox to restrain their braying. Personally it means that, though myself orthodox in instinct and, probably, also in conviction, I will not sanction any kind of persecution.

I regret more than ever that this unhappy Conference was held. Rashdall is, of course, head & shoulders above the general body of his following: & he is, I think, genuinely Christian in feeling & purpose. But his version of Jesus is, when severely pressed, either humanitarian or 'Arian', & neither will serve to sustain the Christian 'Religion': neither is the solution of the "problem of Jesus". He is also the most weirdly tactless of men, destitute of pastoral sympathy. He cannot understand what his words must sound like to ordinary Christians: &, therefore, he provokes against himself an amount of misunderstanding & resentment out of all proportion to his actual departures from [201] traditional orthodoxy. In himself I regard him as an exemplary Christian, unselfish & sincere in no common degree: but his passion for "honesty" in the region of religious belief carries him to great lengths of unreason & uncharity.

There's a vast deal of nonsense being talked & written under the name of "Psychology", but I am not versed enough in this "science" to handle it effectively.

Yours afftly

Herbert Dunelm:

George Macmillan with his wife and daughter arrived before lunch. I instituted the new Vicar of St Andrew's, Roker, in the Chapel. After lunch I motored our guests to Raby, where we [sic] are shown over the house by Lady Barnard, a charming woman almost grotesquely ignorant of the famous castle with its wealth of pictures &c. I showed William the kitchen, in order that he might have in his mind the 3 great medieval kitchens – the Deanery kitchen at Durham, the Abbott's Kitchen at Glastonbury, and the kitchen at Raby. We returned to Auckland for tea. I wrote to Fawkes and Wynne–Willson, from whom I had received rather perturbed letters respecting some report of my sermon in St Oswald's (v.p.167). The papers announce that the Dean of Bristol has been appointed the Bishop of Bath & Wells. It is everywhere assumed that the wealth of the tobacco–king Wills his father–in–law has been not less effectual than his own merits in gaining this promotion.

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