The Henson Journals

[174]

1st Sunday in Lent, March 5th, 1922.

A wet morning with fairly high temperature. I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. There were 7 communicants including William and James. I remained in my study until lunch time, and prepared my notes for my engagements later in the day. Clayton and I left the Castle at 1 p.m., and motored through driving rain, & over infamous roads to Hartlepool, where, in S. Hilda's Church, I dedicated a War Memorial of members of the Boys' Brigade, who had fallen during the War. It had been intended that the actual dedication should take place out of doors, and a platform had been erected for the purpose, but the incessant rain made this impossible. The tablet was carried into the Church & dedicated there. The enthusiastic Dr Morison insisted on showing me the Institute, and expounding his schemes for developing it. Then we went to St Oswald's Vicarage, and had tea with the Vicar & his curate, two unmarried clergymen living together. The Revd A.W. Chute is a Wykhamist, & was at Magdalen. He has been 11 years in Orders, of which the last 3 have been spent at St Oswald's. I had an hour's conversation with him before service, & was pleased with him. S. Oswald's Church is an unusually fine modern building, designed by Hicks of Newcastle, & built at the expense of Mrs Matthew Gray. There was a crowded congregation at Evensong, where I preached. My subject was "Temptation", and my text 1. Cor. X. 13. I showed the pastoral staff to the Choir in the Vestry. After service we returned to Auckland, arriving shortly after 9.30 p.m. The weather had somewhat improved, & William, who had been soaked & mud–covered on the outward journey, was able to drive with comparative comfort.

It was a real satisfaction, and not less a real surprise, to find at St Oswald's two clergymen, still under 40 and unmarried who had been at Oxford & Cambridge, and carried themselves like the clergy with whom one was familiar a generation ago when one was young one's self.

[175]

"The addresses against which we are asked to pronounce were given at a conference of scholars, and, but for the agitation, would not have penetrated to the general public. The tone of them was reverent, and as a whole they do not seem to us to merit the description of them given in the petition.

The Bishops have to take into account the fact that the advances of science and criticism have partially broken the traditional frame–work in which the truths of Christianity were set in an age when very little was known about the universe in which we live, or the laws of nature. There is no reason to think that our Lord meant to throw intellectual difficulties of this kind in the way of his followers, or that he would have compelled any man to outrage his scientific conscience as a condition of being his disciple.

The most serious of these unhealed wounds is nearly 400 years old. The doctrinal implications of the abandonment of the geocentric hypothesis have not yet been really faced.

The results of nineteenth century science & biblical criticism are also important, though less vital than the difficulties created by the discovery of Copernicus.

It is not only the right but the duty of the most learned of our clergy to endeavour to terminate the conflict between religion and science which deprives the church of much valuable support, and causes a vast amount of mental distress, doubt, and hypocrisy.

It is not possible to check the activities of scholars by ecclesiastical authority without crippling them in their work, & it is not desirable to proceed against every scholar who seems to us to have gone too far in departing from Catholic tradition.

At the same time we think that the petitioners are justified in feeling alarm at certain doctrines which have lately been supported by episcopally ordained clergymen. Christianity is and always has been the worship of an historical Person, and those who separate [176] between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the Object of the Church's worship, paying homage to the latter, while depriving the former of every title to worship or even reverence, are turning Christianity into a religion of an alien type, which the Church rejected from the first.

It is not enough to preach a high sacramental doctrine, or to accept the Church's formulas, if the connexion with the historical Christ has been severed: & we think it right to declare our conviction that the so–called Modernist position, of which the ex–Abbe Loisy is the most distinguished exponent, is contrary to the Christian faith.

We are glad to believe that nearly all the contributors to the Cambridge Conference volume would concur in this judgment, and we do not think that there are any prominent clergymen in the provinces of Canterbury & York who can justly be charged with not believing in the Divinity of Christ."

The above is Ralph's suggestion for an episcopal pronouncement in answer to the E.C.U's protests against the Cambridge Conference. I agree with it all, but think it is hardly adequate. The first part indicates more difficulties than the last part removes: so that in its total effect, the pronouncement would be rather the text for more heresies than the correction of any! Then it may be doubted whether anything is really gained by saying that "there is no reason to think that our Lord meant to throw intellectual difficulties of this kind in the way of his followers, or that he would have compelled any man to outrage his scientific conscience as a condition of being a disciple". Partly, He shared the scientific beliefs of His generation, & His Religious Teaching is to that extent disadvantaged by the measure of error which those beliefs enshrined. Partly, His Teaching takes for granted the Theism of the Prophets. It is incredible that He would have accepted as a disciple any one who repudiated that ethical Theism. Yet the prophetic belief did conflict with the "scientific conscience" of the Greeks as well as with their religious doctrine. Surely it is as true to day as it was in His age, that " His Law is our tutor to bring us to Christ". Apart from the presuppositions of Theism there can be no discipleship, but the "scientific conscience" of moderately educated men finds offence in these very pre–suppositions.

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