The Henson Journals
Sun 7 May 1922
Volume 32, Pages 89 to 90
[89]
3rd Sunday after Easter, May 7th, 1922.
Before getting up I read old Dr Whyte's 'Appreciation' of Jacob Behmen, of whom he writes in language of almost ecstatic eulogy. He is "the greatest of the mystics, and the father of German philosophy, & was all his life nothing better than a working shoe–maker." His life–time, from his birth in 1575 to his death in 1624, fell in a great time.
After breakfast I wrote to Archbishop Söderblom, & then took my way to S. Cuthbert's. There was a larger attendance than I had expected, and the communicants numbered 94. The service was certainly impressive.
I lunched with the Ritsons: and then was motored by Moulsdale back to Bishop Auckland. On the way, he informed me that the invitation to become Vice–President of the Anglo–Catholick Congress, which I declined, was intended to be an olive–branch, or even an amende, & begged me to notice that the attacks on me had ceased in the "Catholick" journals!
[90] [symbol]
The institution of the Revd W. A. Garland as Vicar of S. Mary, Tynedock, took place at 6.30 p.m. There was a large congregation, and the service was impressive, and, I trust, also edifying. I was certainly pleased with the reverent demeanour of the large choir – 12 men & 22 boys. Wilson & I went back to Durham immediately after the service had ended. On the way W. explained to me that the ruinous state of the stone walls was the result of subsidences caused by coal–getting.
I was told that Craven, the Vicar of S. Francis, has become engaged to be married! He is the pillar of "Anglo–Catholicism" in the district, and celibacy is all but an article of the 'Anglo–Catholic' creed. But like the cords with which the Philistines bound Samson, these futile requirements of an artificial ecclesiasticism are broken by the first movement of Nature. To be marriageable is to be at all times liable to marriage: there is no middle way between obligatory celibacy and full freedom to marry. In defence of their ideal of the priesthood many young Anglican clergy fight a losing battle with Nature, and, when at last they cease fighting, they have grown too old for satisfactory marriage. And they carry into their married life a sense of humiliation, almost a sense of moral failure, as if they knew themselves to have chosen the lower life.