The Henson Journals

[68]

Low Sunday, April 23rd, 1922.

May it be granted to my prayer that what I say and do in this place may assist, and not hinder, the cause of Christ's Kingdom! It is not, indeed, easy to trace much connexion between that cause, and a "patriotic service in the nave of the Cathedral", or to recognize the everlasting Gospel in a "Sermon on Shakespeare", but "God fulfils himself in many ways", and He can find His own through any disguise. I went to the Cathedral with the Dean at 8 a.m., and received the Holy Communion in the Lady Chapel. The medieval glass in the East Window gleamed and glowed in the morning sun. Always when I want to compare my Durham with these southern churches I am struck by its lack of historical memorials, & its nakedness. The mighty fabrick itself is peerless, but it has come to us nude and battered. In other cathedrals there are painted windows, and tombs, and side–chapels, which fill them with beauty and interest. The Deanery is a commodious and remarkably interesting house, largely Norman in style. Gee has had it equipped 'with every modern convenience', and furnished it in excellent taste. His wife, for whose comfort and convenience he mainly thought, and whose comparatively ample income provided the necessary money, did not live to come into occupation of the house, a circumstance to which the Dean makes not infrequent reference, & which exhibits sadly enough the futility of all human programmes.

[69]

At 10.30 a.m. the service in the cathedral was held. The nave was completely filled, and the congregation included the Mayor & Corporation as well as a number of khaki–clad soldiers. There was, however, nothing "special" about the service, which was just Mattins, nor was there even the National Anthem, which might, perhaps, have seemed inevitable in a 'great patriotick service'. My sermon on the text, "He hath set eternity in their heart", was a slightly–adapted repetition of the sermon originally written for the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, & since repeated in S. Martin's, Trafalgar Square. It was not, perhaps, altogether suitable, and I got the impression that the congregation was both puzzled and bored! Yet I must honestly maintain that it was rather a good sermon none the less!! A reporter carried off the MS. promising to return it.

After service I called at the Palace, and had an interview with the Bishop, who was kept at home by reason of an extensive extraction of teeth. We discussed the proposed episcopal pronouncement on the Cambridge Conference, and I learned that what I had conjectured was the fact viz: that the Bishop of Ripon was acting in conjunction with the Bishops of Gloucester and Ely. It appears that the Archbishop himself is 'taking a hand' in the work of draft–making. There is, I think, a perceptible chastening of the confident orthodoxy which was paramount in episcopal minds a few years ago.

[70] [symbol]

I attended Evensong in the cathedral at 3 p.m., and heard an ecstatick discourse from a local parson. After tea the Dean drove me for an hour in the motor. I noticed that the orchards were full of blossom, and the hedge–rows & fields studded with primroses. On returning to the Deanery I took occasion to show him the drafts of the Episcopal declaration, & I was gratified to receive his marked preference for my own draft. I do not, however, expect that my fellow Bishops will share his opinion, & my main anxiety is whether they will approve anything that I myself can accept.

I picked up in the study a book which looked so inviting that I forthwith wrote to the publishers ordering 2 copies:– "Bishop Butler, an Appreciation with the Best Passages of his Writings selected and arranged by Alexander Whyte D.D. Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, St Mary Street, Edinburgh".

Gee said that it had been in his mind to urge me to adopt the official signature 'Duresme' instead of 'Dunelm'. I notice that Butler seems to have used both forms. It would have been whimsically pedantic to abandon the form which had been continuously used by the Bishops of Durham for many generations, & there is nothing to recommend 'Duresme'. If 'Dunelm' shd be given up, it could only be for the more intelligible 'Durham'.

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