The Henson Journals

[65]

Friday, August 25th, 1922.

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[^written in Greek, Matthew 22:32, Mark 12:27, or Luke 20:38^]

This is the final argument for Resurrection, and its relevance is clearly delimited. To those, living here on earth, who have known God to be real, near, potent, blessed in personal experience, it is triumphant. Since God is my God, and, being God, lives ever in His own self–springing life, I also cannot die. He cannot be in fellowship with that which is alien to himself. "In Him we live & move & have our being." He is not God of the merely physical, since "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth." This mystery of moral life is His Witness within us that we are verily akin to Himself. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." And therefore it is that a merely physical or material treatment of Man fails utterly. "Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live." No exuberance of physical energy can cross the abyss which separates moral life from physical. There is "a great gulf faced" between that which is "natural" and that which is "spiritual". But the last alone is distinctly human, and it is precisely that which we must needs identify with the Divine. "God is love". "God is light". But "we love because He first loved us", and "in His light we see light". Everytime we pray, serve our fellows, sacrifice ourselves, conquer our baser appetites, we present the irrefragable proofs of our Immortality.

Through love, through hope & faith's transcendent dearer

We feel that we are greater than we know.

[66] [symbol]

The view from my bedroom window is amazingly beautiful, and in the brilliance of the early morning is seen to perfection. "Nature's old felicities" were never more felicitous.

Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass

Untouch'd, unbreathed upon.

After breakfast we strolled for an hour in "the policies".

Mine hostess asked me to celebrate the Holy Communion in the Chapel of the house, which, she added, had been permitted by "the Bishop". I said that I had no robes, an objection which she countered by the assurance that they had "vestments" in the house. These foolish garments, illegal in England, are, I understand, allowed by the Scottish Episcopal Church. I am, of course, personally indifferent to such petty issues, though I prefer simplicity & abhor illegality. Accordingly, I can hardly refuse mine hostess's request, which none the less displeases me. For I find it difficult to justify such a handling of the great "Sacrament of Unity", and, if the Church of Scotland provided an administration of the Lord's Supper, I should resort thither myself, and counsel mine hostess to go thither also. But I can neither approve the infrequency with which the Sacrament is administered in Scotland, nor condemn mine hostess for desiring to communicate.

After lunch we (i.e. mine hostess, Marriott & ourselves) motored to the Linn of Dee. On the way we wrote our names in the King's Book at Balmoral. We had tea at the Invercauld Arms at Braemar. I sat with William, & enjoyed the views.

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