The Henson Journals

[115]

5th Sunday after Easter, May 21st, 1922.

"By the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God" – here is the method of the Christian witness, and the secret of its power. The Gospel is verily, as Butler said, "a republication of natural religion". i.e. it does but state clearly, and with a challenging authority, the witness of men's consciences. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." Nothing surprised, and distressed me more in the discussion last Thursday than the distinction between 'Christian morality' and other morality, which the Bishops of Sheffield and St Alban's made, apparently without any consciousness of the gravity of their words. To use contraceptives might be right enough, was right enough, for others, but for Christians it was flagrantly wrong! I dissociated myself in the discussion from such a distinction as underlies this language. Morality is either sound or false: and, if sound, it alone is really morality. Christ's claim is uttered in the rightly-active conscience. Anything that cuts through deluding sophistries, and brings into action the very spirit of man, facilitates the acceptance of the Gospel. The modern practice of emphasizing as distinctively Christian what can be nothing else than intrinsically right implies a confusion of mind, and leads to some very unhappy consequences as if the non-Christians were by that circumstance set free from moral obligations.

[116]

I celebrated in the Chapel at 8.30 a.m. Ellershaw assisted, and about a score of the students communicated. It is a devotional place, built by Tunstall, & lengthened by Cosin, or Crewe. Ellershaw said that this was the first occasion since the Bishop's Castle was given up for use as a College, that the Bishop had celebrated in the Chapel. I am like Falstaff "Gabbling o' green fields" before I die! There was a great congregation at Mattins in the Cathedral, when the Bishop of Ripon preached the University Sermon. His text was S. John XVI. 28 "I came out from the Father, and am come into the world: again. I leave the world, & go unto the Father": and his sermon was evidently, though not confessedly, directed to the issue raised by the Cambridge Conference. After service he and I lunched with Cruickshank & his wife.

I attended Evensong in the Cathedral, and afterwards had tea with Bishop and Mrs Quirk. Then Wilson and I drove to St 'Giles' where I instituted the new Vicar, Aird. There was a good congregation including the Mayor, and I think the people were impressed. Stephenson, Donald Jones, and Beavan were the assisting clergy. I expounded the Pastoral Staff to the Choir in the vestry after service. The weather became very close & sultry. There were rumblings of thunder, and occasionally heavy drops of rain. I returned immediately to the Castle, where I had arranged to stay the night.

---

Issues and controversies: corrected spelling of Beavan; a