The Henson Journals

[164]

Thursday, June 15th, 1922.

Dearden, from S. Matthew's, Darlington, came to submit the plans for his church. He tells me that the Papists are making a good many converts in that district, mainly from the members of the Anglo–Catholic churches there. Ainley, from near Shildon came to consult me as to his personal plans. He has been offered the senior curacy of Bishop Auckland. I advised him to accept it, and he departed averring his intention to do so. Both these young men stayed to lunch. Then I went to the Garage, and watched William wrestling with the problem of the motor–mower, which is easier to pull to pieces than to reconstitute!

Clayton and I motored to Heworth, and I confirmed 132 candidates. Before service I examined two boys who were under the regular age. The performance was a mere farce as far as they were concerned, but may have been useful as impressing others with my resolve to have the diocesan rule observed. Also I had speech with Taylor, one of the candidates, who is dreaming of Ordination. He is 42 years old, and is employed as a foreman–blacksmith at £275 per annum. He has collected, he said, a library of 6000 volumes. After the Confirmation we went in procession to the churchyard, & I consecrated an addition thereto. Then we motored back to Auckland, arriving at 10.p.m. This practically finished the confirmations for this year. I have with my own hands confirmed 6696 persons, & the Bishop of Jarrow cannot have confirmed fewer than 1000.

[165]

"It is significant of much that in the seventeenth century members of Parliament quoted from the Bible: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from the classics: in the twentieth century from nothing at all".

G. M. Trevelyan

This is both a shrewd and suggestive obiter dictum. There was a background of knowledge behind the speeches of the Puritans, and, though of another & slighter kind behind the speeches of the Whigs and Tories. There is none behind the speeches of modern politicians. Does this mean more than the fact that public life in the earlier time concerned the educated few, and now concerns the uneducated many? But, however explained, it implies that we have no standard of soundness, no measure of excellence. Wordsworth's famous sonnet in which he compares the Puritan revolutionaries of the 17th century with the French revolutionaries of the 18th points the same contrast:

France, 'tis strange,

Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then,

Perpetual emptiness! Unceasing change!

No single volume paramount, no code,

No master spirit, no determined road;

But equally a want of books and men!

The lines hold now of politicians on both sides of the English Channel.

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