The Henson Journals

[47]

26th Sunday after Trinity, November 20th, 1921.

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"Pray ye that the Lord send labourers into his vineyard" – was there ever a time in the history of the Christian Church when that prayer ought more constantly to be on our lips? For the failure of vocations is so general that the Church is threatened with a partial collapse of its machinery. While we discuss the vexed question of clerical education, there is another question which must be answered before clerical education is a practical matter. Where is the material which is to be shaped into efficient clergymen? The failure of vocations is general over the whole area of Christendom. Every missionary church feels it acutely, & the need abroad tends to draw away from the Church at home its younger & more devoted members. The Church is like a nation subjected to an unremitting blockade. It is just withering away for lack of essentials. For without the ordained Ministry, Christianity cannot extend, or be maintained. When the reason of this failure of vocations is sought, we seem brought up against the same insoluble problem as that which is raised by the relative richness & poverty of epochs in poetic & productive power. "The wind bloweth where it listeth: thou hearest the sound thereof but must not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit". Probably at all times genuine vocations have been few: but there have been enough aspirants to the clergyman's profession to serve the cures: but now these have failed both in quantity and in quality. No doubt the comparatively inadequate remuneration which the clergyman receives has a powerful influence in deterring men from seeking Holy Orders: and, perhaps, the decline in social consequence which for a variety of causes has befallen the clergy is more potent in the same direction. This is a secularist age; and its influence is wholly hostile to such an ordering of life as the clergyman's career implies. How can the clergyman's career survive Religion itself? My own position in this famous house is a picture of the Church in the Nation, nay of Christianity itself in the modern world. On every land are the symbols and witnesses of former greatness; the names & phrases persist but the meanings have gone out of them. Instead of the people paying dues & rents to the Bishops: the Bishop pays rates & taxes to the people. They have no real use for him now, but they have not yet emancipated themselves from the tradition which he represents sufficiently to make them able or willing to do away with him once & for all! He lives on by their sufferance.

[48] [symbol]

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. After breakfast I went to my room to prepare myself for my engagements at Lanchester. But my mind is too restless, and agitated for any really good work. The prospect of the "National Assembly" is sufficiently disturbing; for while I dislike and distrust the whole autonomist experiment, of which that Assembly is the principal factor, it is obvious that the experiment is going to be thoroughly attempted, and that my personal action cannot stand outside it. What course, consistent with my own self–respect, lies open to me? In any circumstances the rôle of a Bishop of Durham would have been an extremely difficult one: but in the actual circumstances it is almost impossible. The shortage of Ordination candidates has now almost brought the Church in this diocese to a deadlock. My predecessor, confronted by the same dilemma, grasped the horn which seems to me the wrong one: but the other horn implies a situation which is hardly tolerable.

Either. ordain any rubbish that presents itself; and so supply the parishes with some kind of clergy: or, refuse ordination to all but suitable men, and reduce the parochial staffs almost to nothing – that is the alternative. Bishop Moule adopted the first course; I have adopted the second. If mere incompetence had been the only disadvantage of ordaining the unfit, I can conceive of the policy commending itself as the lessor of two evils, for, when all is said, is not incompetent service preferable to no service at all? But, when to incompetence must too often be added the risk of grave scandal, no prudent bishop can dare to embrace the policy. Dowson, Strophair, Coates, Frost – here are 4 cases of men ordained by Bishop Moule within the last 5 years, who are not merely incompetent but also variously scandalous, though the scandal in the cases of the two last is due to their physical rather than their moral defects. Chronic indebtedness leading to mendicancy & dishonesty is a probable contingency when men of no means, and inferior ability are ordained. They are, of course, almost invariably married, & their wives are as little satisfactory as themselves. The disadvantage to religion in this diocese arising from the ill–repute of these squalid clergy must be very great. Few of these humble illiterates, even when honest & industrious, commend any respect among the people.

[49]

I left the Castle a few minutes before 2 p.m., and motored to Lanchester. There I confirmed 27 candidates, no other parish being represented save for a single elderly female from Esh. I stayed on for Evensong at 6 p.m., and preached to a large congregation. The parish church is so beautiful, stately, and interesting that ministering in it was pleasant, but my sermon, delivered from notes, was dull, and, I fear, unedifying. We motored back to the Castle after the service, arriving at 8.20 p.m.

The Rev. Lewis Heatherington, Vicar of Lanchester, was ordained in 1898, and is, presumably, about 50 years old, for he told me that he was 28 years old when we was Ordained. He is unmarried: and has an unpleasantly professional manner of speaking & reading. He is evidently a High Churchman, though, happily, there are no signs of "Anglo–Catholicism" in the conduct of service. The parish contains nearly 3000 people, & is in the patronage of the Lord Chancellor. On the common estimate that 20 persons reach the age of 14 out of every 1000 persons every year, he ought to have presented about 45 persons. He actually presented 26, of whom only 8 were males. He told me that both Roman Catholicks and Nonconformists were numerous in the parish, so that, perhaps, the number was not unreasonably small. I was annoyed by the use of the new Psalter, which made us sing the Psalms for the 30th evening, instead of those ordered for the 20th. I called the Vicar's attention to this illegality, and was informed that the late Bishop had authorized the use of the new Lectionary and Psalter! This illegal proceeding on the part of Bishop Moule makes it difficult for me to insist (as it is evidently my duty to do) on obedience to the Law. The extraordinary folly of the bishops in becoming themselves partners in law–breaking, is now coming home to them in their total inability to retrain the excesses of the Anglo–Catholicks. I cannot myself understand the process of reasoning by which men, solemnly and publicly pledged to maintain the discipline of the Church of England, do themselves set an example of law–breaking, and provide precedents by which illegalities they cannot condone can be justified.

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