The Henson Journals

[35]

Wednesday, October 8th, 1924.

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One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat with distinctness: that the world is built somehow on moral foundations: that, in the long run, it is well with the good: in the long run, it is ill with the wicked. But this is no science: it is no more than the old doctrine taught long ago by the Hebrew prophets.

J. A. Froude. Short Studies. i. 14.

"In the long run" – but first "the good" have perished in their martyrdom: and "the bad" have 'slept with their fathers' after a long career of secular prosperity. The great rectifications of History are effected with no regard whatever to the deserts of individuals. Not History, but Religion, teaches the moral government of the World: the most that History can do, is to offer some faint confirmations of the Witness which Religion bears. The crucial terms of the argument are coined in the mint of Religion. What are "moral" foundations? By what rule are "the good" distinguished from "the wicked"? What is meant by "it is well with the good"? The Hebrew prophets based themselves, not on History, but on the Divine Witness within the human spirit:– "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good". But they were often confronted with the paradoxes of experience, their own & that of others. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him".

[36]

I motored with Clayton & J. G. Wilson to Heatherycleugh, and there instituted the new Vicar, Bailey from St James's, W. Hartlepool. After having tea with the Baileys, I returned to Auckland by way of Durham, leaving Wilson at his own door.

It is unusual in these days to receive a letter garnished with a quotation from Virgil. Nothing less has been my experience today. Haigh, the successor of the Dean of Canterbury as chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, writes to acknowledge receipt of the Sunderland sermon, & he adorns his letter with 4 lines from the Aeneid, bk. ix.

sed magnum stridens contortum phalarica venit,

fulminis acta modo, quam nec duo taurea terga,

nec duplici squama lorica fidelis et auro

sustinuit: conlapsa ruunt immania membra.

which are thus rendered in Loeb's version:

'but with a mighty hiss a whirled pike sped,

driven like a thunderbolt. This not two bulls'

hides nor the trusty corslet with double scales

of gold could withstand. The giant limbs totter

and fall'.

I trust that his Eminence realizes his controversial collapse in this fashion, but I think it more probable that he applies the lines to the Anglican bishop!

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