The Henson Journals

[81]

1st Sunday after Trinity, June 22nd, 1924.

At breakfast I questioned DrMilligan about the supply of Ordination candidates. He said that there was a sad & disquieting shortage. The divinity students had fallen from an average of 60–70 to one of 30–40. He thought that a mistake had been made in shortening the period, & lowering the standard, of training for the service candidates. The better men are now loth to associate themselves with the illiterate persons, whose Ordination they had witnessed. And many of the former were feeling their inferiority acutely, & expressing regret that they had been allowed to receive Ordination without adequate education.

I walked with Mrs Milligan to the Cathedral which was crowded with delegates, & there I heard an excellent sermon from mine host. It was simple in plan, well–expressed, & delivered with much quiet impressiveness. After service I went into the Vestry, & shook hands with the Minister (McLean Watts) & his elders. They were all kindly insistent on my preaching again.

At 3 p.m. the "Convention Service" was held in S. Andrew's Hall. There were a good many vacant seats in the galleries, & I should judge that the Hall was not more than 4/5ths full. It is said to seat 3500 people. A tiresome canting prig called Landers, the new secretary of the Convention, interpolated a sermon under colour of a "brief statement" about certain departed persons, who were, according to him, super saints whose lives [82] ought not to have been terminated! This performance irritated me, & dissipated the attention of the assembly. Add that the atmosphere of the Hall was close, & the audience surfeited with much oratory, & it needs not to offer reasons for the failure of my sermon. That it was a failure I cannot doubt. The audience was not in the mood for a discourse of that kind. A fervid eulogy of Prohibition was more in their style, &, indeed, they had been indulging in something of the kind overnight. Then I suspect that a large proportion of the delegates are "Fundamentalists" i.e. Biblical fanaticks. They probably know that I am both an anti–Prohibitionist, and a "modernist", and were not too well pleased to listen at all to so unsatisfactory a divine! Mainly they seemed more ardent than theological.

After the service I was handed a cheque for eight guineas, which, contrary to my general use, I did not refuse: but I was so annoyed at the whole course of things that I determined not to lose money on it as well as time, temper, & energy.

After tea, Dr Milligan took me to call on old Mrs Story, who yet lives though more than 96 years old – a very selfish old woman from all accounts who by sheer persistence in living has grown into something like a calendared saint! Her two ageing victimised daughters were with the old lady.

So ended a tiring and rather futile Sunday.

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