The Henson Journals

[149]

2nd Sunday after Christmas, January 4th, 1925.

The wind had fallen, and snow covered the land to the depth of several inches when the light of morning disclosed the scene. I celebrated the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. in the Chapel. Patrick Wild was among the communicants. Ernest went into Durham by the early train to attend the service of the "Dons and Beaks".

I wrote to William. Then I read through an admirable little volume of Hibbert Lectures, "The Challenge of Life" by L. P. Jacks, which is full of good things, and yet leaves one with the inevitable question it raises only answered by a phrase. After lunch I took the dogs with me, and walked round the Park with Patrick Wild.

In view of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission's meeting this week, I read again Maitland's Canon Law in England, with the object of assisting myself to form a just estimate of the position taken up by Darwell Stone. He fails to indicate what authority would be superior to his own version of what Catholicism requires an English clergyman to do and teach: and no final Court that cannot possess that superiority in the minds of "Anglo–Catholicks" will serve the turn of the Church of England.

After dinner I read aloud to my ladies Count Paul von Hoernsbröch's "Fourteen Years a Jesuit", which I have been re–reading with fresh interest.

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