The Henson Journals

[118]

Wednesday, December 17th, 1924.

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I spent the morning in preparing a "charge" for the Ordination candidates. After lunch I walked round the Park with Clayton, & then had an interview with old Colonel Beedon, the churchwarden of Gainford, who desired to lay before me the special needs of that parish, to which a new Rector has to be appointed by Trinity College, Cambridge. Then Clayton & I motored into Durham, & had tea with Wilson, who accompanied us to Eighton Banks, where I admitted to office the new minister, a poor, anomic exhausted character creature named Bailey. After the service we returned to Auckland, leaving Wilson in Durham on the way.

I have a complaint against Gwilliam, the Vicar of Heworth, who, it is alleged is introducing various new "Anglo–Catholicisms" into the services of the parish church to the scandal of the parishioners! It is strange and disconcerting, but too plain to be denied. There is a tide running in the direction of Rome which nothing can arrest, not reason, nor education, nor duty, nor interest. The casuistry by which the best clergy explain away their definite and most solemnly accepted pledges is as contemptible as it is effectual. I am completely non–plussed, for my appeal lies necessarily to the conscience, and, when that fails, I have no other.

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