The Henson Journals

[60]

Thursday, May 28th, 1925.

[symbol]

I made a vain attempt to get speech with Storr, who was about to go to Mattins in the Abbey when I called. He says that the "Call to Action" has made a solitary flutter. I called on Downing at the Ecclesiastical Commission's Office. He asked me what manner of man the Vicar of Escombe might be, since he had written in very insolent terms to Sir A. Wood! I could but tell him to ignore Hodgson altogether. I have certainly some strange clergymen in this diocese. I went to Hugh Rees, and bought a few books. Then I went to King's Cross, and caught the 1.15 p.m. express to Darlington. The train was inconveniently full. Clayton and Leng met me at Darlington. On arriving at the Palace, we got to work on the letters, of which there was a considerable accumulation.

The difficulties of episcopal office are intensifying, and they all run back to two facts – the cleavage in the Church disclosed by the Anglo–Catholics, and the failure of the supply of Ordination Candidates. The first paralyzes discipline: the last arrests work. What the situation will be in five years' time I hardly dare contemplate. The only consolation I can discern is the certainty that there must be some decisive change in the present intolerable position.

---