The Henson Journals

[14]

23rd Sunday after Trinity, November 19th, 1922.

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Grant, O God, Thy Blessing upon my preaching this day. Thou knowest the distress of Thy People, and the perplexity in which we stand. Turn the hearts of those who are resisting Thy purpose of unity among all who serve & honour Thee in Christ, and draw us together into a fuller knowledge of Thy truth, and a deeper love for one another through Thy Holy Spirit, for Jesus Christ's sake.

Amen.

It is probably the case that most of my episcopal brethren view with a displeasure (which they dare not openly avow) my preaching in the Westminster Chapel. All the "Catholics" do so on the ground of principle: all the timeservers, on ground of expediency: those who hold with me, because they feel themselves in a sense challenged & even rebuked by a proceeding, which they must needs approve, and which, since they approve it, they ought to emulate. The "Lambeth Appeal" was welcomed as providing a 'way of escape' for these timorous Protestants. They could invite conference, & postpone action. But the "Catholicks" are forcing the pace. While they talk and wait, the Church of England is being transformed against them. It does not appear to me doubtful that a modus vivendi with the non–episcopal church is really a remoter possibility today than it was when the Lambeth Conference met.

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I breakfasted pleasantly with Lord Scarbrough, and then made my way to Westminster Chapel, where I preached to a congregation of some 2000 people on 'Christian citizenship'. Tommie Hall and my God–daughter Audrey came in to the Vestry afterwards. I lunched with Sir Albert Spicer. There were several interesting people at lunch including an American who had just returned from the Near East, where he was engaged in assisting the Christian refugees. He told me that Kemal was a strong man, who kept his word, but found it difficult to restrain the savages by whom he was surrounded. I went to Athenaeum, & had tea. Then I walked to Westminster & called on Barnes. I found him on the floor with his two boys manipulating a locomotive! We went to the evening service in the Abbey. The Bishop of Dover preached a Mission service. There seems to be a Diocesan Mission proceeding in London. I went to 12 Beaufort Gardens, & had supper with Fleming. There was a McGill Professor of Moral Philosophy, Caldwell, at supper. Fleming's son, a youth in the early twenties, inquired about Ernest, whose acquaintance he had made in Oxford. Fleming walked with me to Park Lane. He told me that Lloyd George told him that he had never received so many letters of abuse as when he made me Bishop of Hereford ! It is not to be forgotten that the little Welshman stood to his guns, & refused to yield to the pressure brought to bear on him.

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In Barnes's study I took up Bishop Knox's book By what authority ?. It is an elaborated attack on 'Modernism'. Thus from the side of the Evangelicals as well as from that of the "Anglo–Catholics", the attempt is being made to banish the 'liberal' elements from the Church. In mind and method the two Bishops – Knox and Gore – are curiously similar , though Knox's intellect is a far less sympathetic and enterprising than Gore's. Both really are resolved on making no concessions whatever to the critics, but both are very ready to adopt and make the most of any critical conclusions which they can make serviceable to their championship of 'orthodoxy'. Both profess the utmost candour and independence, but both are quite evidently in bondage to their respective traditions. They are both very clever men, adroit and alert rather than either thorough or candid. Both have in view a public which is timorous, excited, ignorant, & frightened. They can count upon an eager welcome for their books, for these affect to give an authoritative assurance that the critics are really ill–informed, prejudiced, and quite woefully mistaken. I fear the appearance of their books at this juncture indicates a combination of conflicting bigotries against such relics of intellectual liberty as have survived among us. And this combination will certainly work out to the advantage of "Anglo–Catholicism" for 'orthodox' . Protestantism of the Bibliolatrous type represented by Bishop Knox's following has no future whatever. It will be used and trampled on!

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