The Henson Journals

[97]

Friday, July 4th, 1924.

It has been often observed that in the intercourses of nations, they are apt to take over from one another, not the best, but the worst of their respective qualities. I have sometimes reflected that much the same might be said of the intercourse of churches. At least I have noticed that when Anglicans become intimate with Roman Catholics, they rarely receive from their intimacy that lofty sense of unity & that corporate loyalty which are the proud distinction of the R. C. Church, but neither appear to covet its inferior traits, its dislike of science & fondness for superstition: &, similarly, when Anglicans consort with Nonconformists the result of their comradeship is less apparent in the zeal for personal independence & personal religion which are or used to be, the noble traits of nonconformity, than in the habit of domesticating coercion in social politics which is the bad tradition of Puritanism. This habit has nowhere been more evident, & nowhere more mischievous than in the repeated efforts to combat the vice of drunkenness by prohibiting the liberty of drinking. This policy lies open to the moral objection which, with fatal effect, has been urged against the interdict and its modern counterpart the boycott – that its penalties fall, not on the guilty but on the innocent.

[98]

After breakfast Scarbrough carried me off to Clerkenwell, to show me such relics as survive of the great medieval house of the Hospitallers. I was much interested by what I saw. The old gate–way with its library, and the fine crypt under St John's Church was well worth seeing. In the latter there is a finely carved recumbent effigy of a Spanish knight with his little squire nestling at his feet. It was bought in London, & has been identified as belonging to the 16th century. In the open space outside the Church the site of the round church is marked by a circle of stone. It appears that the fashion of building round churches was not confined to the Templars.

[I went to the Athenaeum, & wrote letters until lunch, after which I made a vain attempt to see Ella. I visited the Roman Catholic Cathedral, & then went to the House, & had tea. After this I visited Duff, the Patronage Secretary, in Downing Street. It appears that Jones, the ex–curate of S. Oswald's, has had the impudence to "put in" for S. Aidan's! I think I spiked his guns.] Then I returned to the Club, & dined. The Archdeacon of Winchester joined me at table, & told me the exact truth about the situation in his Cathedral.

[99]

A stout, rather gross–looking man was introduced to me in the Club, as Dr Hutton, successor to Dr Jowett in the ministry of Westminster Chapel. He expressed himself as convinced that Prohibition had "come to stay" in America: that it had greatly increased the prosperity of the people: and that the very suggestion even of mitigating it would be rejected with indignation. This, of course, was "common form" in a Sectary. He went on to describe the extent and success of the traffic in alcohol, as carried on at present: dwelt on the ferocity with which Prohibition is being enforced: and gave examples from his own knowledge of the ease with which the law was broken. He told a story illustrating the compatibility of even an excessive consumption of liquor with good health and extreme longevity.

Archie Fleming described to me the ardour with which the younger ministers of the Church of Scotland are embracing the policy of Prohibition, and said that a vigorous effort was being made to make total abstinence a condition of membership of the society which in the Scottish Church corresponds to the C.E.M.S. among ourselves. I get the impression that the clergy to some extent, and the Nonconformists generally, are pretending to approve a policy imposed on them by the fanaticism of the rank–&–file of their congregations: & that their own convictions, & in many cases their own practice, do not accord with their professions!

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