The Henson Journals

[6]

Monday, April 20th, 1925.

St Peter's owes much to the munificence of Bishop Baring who contributed no less than £3000 of the £7000 which the church cost to build.

Brief History of St Peter's, Bishop Auckland.

Bishop Creighton wrote the article on Bishop Baring in the Dictionary of National Biography. There he says that 'though a wealthy man' the Bishop 'lived with great simplicity, and gave back to the diocese in donations for church purposes more than he received as the income of his see'. At that time the episcopal income was £8000 per annum. Bishop Baring held the see for 17 years, so that the accumulated income would have amounted to no less than £136,000, a great sum. Baring, though 'privately educated', took a double first–class in classics and mathematics at Oxford in 1829. He published nothing save a few charges, which are certainly very commonplace. But as Vicar of All Saints, Marylebone he 'became renowned as an earnest, simple preacher of the evangelical school'. He is one more example of the intellectual sterility which goes with Evangelicalism.

I wasted the day in writing letters, and in preparing a sermon for the "Jubilee" commemoration of St Peter's. Why did Bishop Baring dedicate that church to S. Peter, seeing that the Chapel in the Castle is dedicated to that Apostle?

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