The Henson Journals

[43]

5th Sunday after Easter, May 17th, 1925.

The preeminent characteristic of modern Christianity is the boundless philanthropy it displays. Philanthropy is to our age what asceticism was to the middle ages, and what polemical discussion was to the 16th. and 17th. centuries. The emotional part of humanity, the humanity of impulse, was never so developed, & its development, its Protestantism at least, where the movement has been most strickingly evinced, has always been guided & represented by the clergy.

Lecky. Rationalism in Europe. i.345.

I seem to be moving into a great tangle of difficulties. This unhappy discipline case at Sunderland may develop unpleasantly. Clayton's departure opens the door of an endless confusion, for I have come to leave in his hands much that, perhaps, I ought to have kept in my own. To replace him is impossible: to find another chaplain will be difficult. The continuing shortage of Ordination candidates is making diocesan administration ever more perplexing. Meanwhile, the general course of events in the Church is not prosperous. We seem to be moving towards some kind of a catastrophe, possibly to a definite breaking up.

[44] [symbol]

I celebrated the Holy Communion at 8a.m. in the Chapel. Then I prepared notes on Patronage with a view to my speech to the Worcester Diocesan Conference. Bryan Bourke came to lunch. At 2.30p.m. I left the Castle in the car, & motored to York (63 miles) in 21/4 hours. I put up with Leng at the County Hotel. I walked to the Deanery, & had tea. Lady Cunliffe & Miss Headlam were there with my wife & other ladies, all of whom had been concerned with the great rally of G.F.S. girls in the Minster yesterday. Later, I returned to the Deanery for supper, & had much talk with the Dean.

I don't quite know what to make of Foxley Morris. He has been bred in the "straitest sect" of Tractarian Pharisaism, and it is enormously to his credit that he has broken away from them to the extent which is apparent. But alike by his family tradition, and by his artistic temperament he is held to that faction, & conflict between his intelligence & these non–rational factors may account for much that has the aspect of illogicality and even of duplicity. He speaks privately with much vigour against the Anglo–Catholics, & he introduced vestments into the Minster with much pomp of publicity!

---