The Henson Journals

[121]

Tuesday, July 22nd, 1924.

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I worked all day at the Liverpool Sermon, & did complete it after a fashion, but very poor stuff indeed. Miles Thompson came to lunch & stayed the night. He walked with me in the Park, & we both got very wet, as the rain fell persistently.

The "Sunday Times" and the "Evening Standard" wired to invite me to say something about Welldon's indecent attack, but I contented myself with wiring "The Bishop of Durham thinks that the Dean's words need no comment".

A Methodist minister, aged 38, the Rev. Charles Taylor by name, came to see me with a view to Ordination. I enquired into his motive for taking so serious a decision, & he replied that he disliked the irreverence of the Methodist services, & the tyranny of the Methodist laity. I desired to know what estimate he had formed of his present ministry, & he said that he regarded himself as validly ordained, but wished to have a larger ministry than that of the Methodist church. I pointed out that the English Ordinal could not properly be used save for a layman, & that, if he did not regard himself as really unordained, he was not a fit subject for Ordination. His present income was £260 per annum, with a furnished house rent & rate free together with an allowance for his 3 children of pounsign10 apiece. I was not very encouraging, and said that I would consider his case.

[122]

My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state that she appears every moment to be on the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation, – that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself: I mean justice, – that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well–spent life.

Burke. Speech on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings

9th day. Monday, June 16th, 1794 (Works XII. 395)

And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would no longer be studied.

Burke. 'Reflexions on the French Revolution (iii. 357)

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