The Henson Journals

[45]

Tuesday, May 8th, 1923.

Modern life is hard, and in many respects increasingly so, on youth. Home, school, church, fail to recognise its nature and needs, and, perhaps most of all, its perils…Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion & arrest as in our own land & day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, & passive stimuli just when an active, objective life is most needed, early emancipation & a lessening sense of both duty and discipline, the haste to know & do all befitting man's estate before its time, the mad rush for sudden wealth and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth – all these lack (in America) some of the regulatives they still have in older lands with more conservative traditions.

Stanley Hall. 'Adolescence'. Preface.

I motored to Satley, and confirmed 37 candidates from that parish and Thornley. Then I went on to Stanley, and confirmed 93 candidates, from the parishes of Stanley, Crook, and Tow Law. Here there was a very crowded church, but, though many were standing, the attention was close & the behaviour good. The candidates of both sexes were satisfactory in point of age. Out of the 130 confirmed only two were under 14, and for these special permission had been asked and obtained.

[46]

On the whole, the clergy, whom I have seen this afternoon, impress me as sincere & religious men, not well–educated or brilliant or, indeed, remarkable in any way, but hard–working and devoted, with a genuine concern for their people. Their confirmation candidates seemed to have been carefully prepared, and carried themselves with much gravity & earnestness.

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