The Henson Journals

[101]

Saturday, September 9th, 1922.

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I started a sermon for the 25th anniversary of Knowlden's appointment as Vicar of St Aidan's, West Hartlepool, but having occasion to turn up my Journal for 1897 in the hope of finding material, I was lured into reading that very melancholy and tangled record. I had totally forgotten that in June 2nd 1897, I attended the Romanes Lecture on 'Machiavelli' in which John Morley protested against the divorce of ethics from politics. I few days earlier, on May 21st, I was present in the Oxford Police Court to witness the trial of Mr F. E. Smith, Fellow of Merton, for assaulting the police. My sympathies appear to have been somewhat vehemently on the side of the defendant. Who could have foreseen that he would become Lord Chancellor in little more than 20 years? There is hardly anything more seductive, or more saddening than reading one's own Journal. It is astonishing how quickly one forgets 'the manner of man' one was, and it is salutary to recall one's past as it actually appeared then when it was fresh. For other people, one's own contemporaries, may have more retentive memories than one's self, and they may have no other practice in their minds than that /one, to ourselves unrecognisable & almost incredible, which yet was true at the time. This reflection may mitigate the resentment which naturally rises in our minds when we find ourselves misrepresented, that is, presented in wholly obsolete and nearly forgotten forms.

[102]

Mr Campbell Dodgson arrived at lunch time, & afterwards, he, Ernest, Boden, and I played bowls. After tea I wrote cheques for the household accounts, and dealt with correspondence. The Vicar and Mrs Parry Evans came to dinner. The conversation never rose above the merest prattle, filling the ear but leaving nothing in the mind.

The "Church Times" (Sept. 1st, 1922) has a very truculent article headed "Schools of Thought". It ends with the following.

"At any rate, Catholics emphatically refuse to accept a tolerated position as a legitimate party in the Church, a school of thought for which a place must be found. Either the Church of England is wholly & entirely Catholic or she is nothing at all. Religion cannot be partitioned out".

The 'Holy Synod' of Constantinople has formally informed the Archbishop of Canterbury that after careful examination, it "has concluded that as before the Orthodox Church, the ordinations of the Anglican Episcopal Confession of bishops, priests, & deacons possesses the same validity as those of the Roman, Old Catholic, & Armenian Churches possess, inasmuch as all essentials are found in them which are held indispensable from the Orthodox point of view for the recognition of the 'Charisma' of the priesthood derived from Apostolic succession".

So we may be confident at last that our sacraments are valid and own our other ministries legitimate! We are at least as sound as the Papists!!

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