The Henson Journals

[206]

20th Sunday after Trinity, October 29th, 1922.

Keble's lines for this Sunday exalt the spiritual value of solitude in mountains.

No sounds of worldly toil ascending there,

mar the full burst of prayer;

Lone Nature feels that she may freely breathe,

And round us and beneath

Are heard her sacred tones: the fitful sweep

Of winds across the steep,

Through wither'd beats – romantic note & clear,

Meet for a hermit's ear, –

My edition of the "Christian Year" bears date 1844. Some one has written in pencil above this poem: 'The popish tendency scarcely contradicted by the last verse'.

'Raise thy repining eyes, and take true measure

Of thine eternal treasure;

The Father of thy Lord can grudge thee nought,

The world for thee was bought,

And as this landscape broad – earth, sea, and sky –

All centers in thine eye,

So all God does, if rightly understood,

Shall work thy final good."

This is the Pauline claim: "All things work together for good to them that love God".

[207]

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. All my guests communicated. I remained in my study until lunch time preparing my sermons for Sunderland.

At 1.30 p.m. I left the Castle, and motored to Sunderland, where I preached to a congregation of members of Friendly Societies in the Parish Church. There were fewer than was expected, & an air of listlessness & unreality hung over pew & pulpit. Perhaps the political crisis has killed interest in every other subject. I went to the Rectory and had tea. Sykes was there. He talked to me gravely about overworking myself, and seemed really concerned, but what cure is there for the worry of such a time as this?

I went to S Aidan's, a little church in the parish of St Andrew's Roker, which the Vicar of St Andrew's finds rather embarrassing. It seems originally to have been an Adullam cave for discontented Protestants, who found the services of the parish church distasteful. That aspect has vanished, but a congregation deeply attached to the little Church exists, & the problem is how to transfer it to St Andrew's. This is an instance of the folly of solving one problem by creating another. I dedicated two small windows to the memory of five old choristers who had fallen in the war, and repeated substantially the sermon which I preached in Ripon Cathedral. There was a crowded church. After service I motored back to Auckland, & arrived at 9.15 p.m.

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