The Henson Journals

[48]

Friday, May 23rd, 1924.

I left the Admiralty House after breakfast, and drove to King's Cross, dropping Ella on the way at the British Museum. I left at 10 a.m. and reached Darlington at 2.50 p.m., where William met me with the car. He told me that the fatal letter had come from Johannesburg, and that he was invited to go thither. So I must make up my mind to part with him.

Chancellor P. V. Smith arrived about 5 p.m. His natural dullness is so powerfully re–inforced by his deafness that it is almost impossible to carry on conversation with him. The obvious requirements of a decent hospitality compelled me, none the less, to essay the well–nigh hopeless task, and by the time I showed the old gentleman to his bedroom, I was physically exhausted! It was as if I had been practising for open–air addresses for two hours on end!

"The time is long past for supporting any form of Christianity on a foundation of historical disguise" – Coulton. 'Five centuries of Religion', p. 321.

This is certainly true, and yet I do not think I am mistaken when I say of the most energetic religious movements in the country that the [sic] are supported, almost confessedly, 'on a foundation of historical disguise'. The 'Anglo–Catholics' almost exult in outraging History.

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