The Henson Journals

[146]

Friday, January 2nd, 1925.

Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option.

Burke. iv. 165

The "Church Times" has a fierce & unscrupulous "review" of the charge, which is rather a denunciation of the author than a criticism of his work. On the other hand, Godfrey writes to tell me "with what special admiration" he has read the charge. "Your charge will have a great pervasive effect, not measured by its actual circulation nor probably perceptible to yourself".

Two schoolmasters – King and Martin – came to lunch.

I walked round the Park in the teeth of a hurricane. Patrick Wild, the son of the Bishop of Newcastle, came to go to a dance with Fearne. He is a nice looking lad, who has not yet left Charterhouse, and looks forward to being ordained. Will he succeed in holding to his purpose during the new strains and stresses of an academic course? He is the type the church needs, & which is now rarely found among our Ordination candidates. Youth is the grand desideratum now.

[147] [symbol]

The Bishop of Durham is one of the best public speakers in England. He has a vigorous intellect, considerable learning, a biting wit, and, except for a cranky fondness for the word 'considering' as an adjective, very good English. The idea is current in some quarters that he makes a special appeal to, and speaks for, the intelligent and educated business man. Of this there is no evidence whatever. Dr Henson will never lack an audience, and, unless he repents, will never be a leader. His utterances lack 'unction', and they are spoiled by contempt… Thank God he has no following. He is a voice crying in the wilderness: not the herald of a new Gospel, but the last, lost, lonely camp–follower of a defeated army.

The Church Times. January 2nd, 1925.

It is no doubt an excellent discipline to "see yourself as others see you", and, of course, there are elements of truth in the writer's description, though nigh smothered in venom.

That brazen anarch, Arnold Pinchard, sends me his annual letter to "members and friends" of the English Church Union. It is a sufficiently impudent document, and makes one ask more anxiously than ever, Quo tendimus?

---