The Henson Journals

[223]

July 20th, 1922.

Dear Mr Griffith Jones,

I am interested to hear your account of Mr Shores. He is an eccentric man with some ability who has, perhaps, not steered his course very wisely.

Thank you for letting me see the enclosed. I don't quite understand the business of applying for livings, & frankly I doubt if ever it really assists towards the object with which presumably it is undertaken. There is undoubtedly among the Bishops a considerable prejudice against such application, & I share that prejudice myself. For behind all all appointments to spiritual service there is the assumption that God is calling men to His Work: and this assumption is difficult to vindicate when men exert themselves to secure appointment. I have a similar feeling about exchanges, although I am obliged to admit that situations are not uncommon in which an exchange seems the only way of escape.

Please remember me most kindly to your wife, and, when you see her, to Lady Renshaw, and everybody at Barochlan.

Yours sincerely,

Herbert Dunelm:

The Rev Mr Griffith Jones

Hunsingore Vicarage, Wetherby.

[224] [symbol]

A Prayer for use in the Diocese of Durham during the period of acute depression of Industry.

Almighty God, who through thy son Jesus Christ hast taught us to know thee as our Father, we pray thee of thy great love to look with compassion on our present distress: Bring us out of our troubles, and, if it be thy will, restore to us such a measure of prosperity that we may be able to serve thee with a quiet mind. Pour into our hearts the spirit of brotherhood that in this time of trial we may indeed bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. Keep us from all jealousy and division, and so govern our hearts by thy good Spirit that we may learn wisdom from our affliction, and turn away from all that makes for envy and strife. Give wisdom to the rulers of the nations that by their counsels peace & industry may be restored to the peoples of the world, and prosper, we beseech thee, all who in sincerity and truth are seeking to set forward on earth thy kingdom of justice and love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

[225]

Thursday, July 20th, 1922.

I wrote to Mrs Blackwall suggesting that if her husband could not take up his duties at Gateshead on October 1st, he shd withdraw his acceptance of St Cuthbert's. It is curiously unfortunate that his bicycle smash should have happened just at this juncture.

I wrote a prayer for use in the parishes. The Rural Deans pressed the request that I should put forward something in view of the continued unemployment. I yielded but with considerable reluctance.

Mr R. T. Heselton came to lunch. He was sent by Macdonald as a young man who might well become an Ordination candidate. He impressed me as good material.

George Nimmins came to see me, and stay the night. He is still astonishingly silent, but he wins golden opinions, & goes forward steadily.

Brillioth arrived. I walked with him in the Park before dinner. He has been staying in Ripon Hall, & there of course the atmosphere has not been "Anglo–Catholic": but I suspect that he is temperamentally disposed to the Anglo–Catholic position, and the general influence of Oxford tends in that direction. He is trying to understand the situation in the Church of England, but his specific object – a study of the Tractarian movement – holds him to the literature of the Anglo–Catholics, & almost inevitably disturbs his ecclesiastical perspective.

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