The Henson Journals

[217]

Monday, February 16th, 1925.

Christendom will not be true Christendom till the most commonplace Christian soul is expected to thank God for having given him a power, to some slight extent at all events, of forgiving sins like a priest, of diffusing the truths of the Gospel like an evangelist, and of reigning over his animal impulses like a king.

E. A. Abbott, the Fourfold Gospel. Section iii, p. xiv.

I wrote to the Bishops of Bradford and Oxford with reference to "spiritual healing".

Spurrier came to lunch in order to talk about the appointment to Ingleton, which is in his gift as Rector of Staindrop. I walked round the Park with the dogs: & then settled to reading Baudouin's "Suggestion and Autosuggestion". He uses a rather striking phrase to describe the older medicine – "a medical science which is ignorant of the better half of the human personality and is itself the worst of all suggestions". The book is brightly written, and, in spite of the uncouth terms which may be called technical, is very readable. He insists that "we have nothing to do with mesmerism, Christian Science, theosophy, spiritualism, or any form of occultism". The book assumes the soundness of the method of psycho–analysis.

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