The Henson Journals

[133]

5th Sunday after Trinity, July 12th, 1925.

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The magnificent weather continues, and Canterbury unfolds her beauties under a cloudless sky. Ella and I went to the Cathedral at 8 a.m., and received the Holy Commn together. I was pleased to observe so many of the King's School boys among the communicants. Two of them came in to breakfast; pleasant boys enough, who, I understand, hope ultimately to be ordained. At 10.30 a.m. I attended Mattins. The preacher, Canon Gardiner, though possessed of a good voice, was not easily heard: & I gathered but a vague notion of the discourse.

I read through Gore's tract on the Anglo–Catholic movement. It repeats his familiar position, & makes some suggestions. His characteristic recklessness comes out in the assumption that, until the method of appointing bishops has been so changed as to make the bishop really representative of his diocese, no moral authority attaches to the Bishop's commands! After all, men know what the system of appointing the bishops is before they take Orders, & pledge themselves to canonical obedience.

After lunch the Dean took me for a walk through the Cathedral, & showed me some things which I do not remember seeing before. The sandals, staff, chalice, &c, which were found in Archbishop Hubert Walter's grave are preserved in one of the side–chapels. In another, which was apparently used as a secret treasury, the frescoes are almost unfaded, & of extreme beauty. I was impressed by the number of altars [134] [symbol] in the cathedral. There cannot be less than six or seven. There appears to be no serious attempt made by anybody to provide a theory of the Eucharist which might justify this multiplication of altars. The Reformers were on strong ground when they swept out of the churches all the altars but one, & thus made every celebration attest the unity of the local church. The medieval doctrines of the Invocation of Saints, and Transubstantiation found natural expression in the multiplying of altars, where saints could be severally invoked, and the sacrifice of Calvary repeated in the Mass. Our cathedrals embody the beliefs of the Medieval Church, and are, in fact, unintelligible apart from those beliefs. Restoration involves the mediaevalizing of the modern church. Liturgical experts are the most effective instruments in the process of "undoing the Reformation".

I preached in the Cathedral at the second evensong at 6.30 p.m. My sermon was substantially identical with that which I preached in Halifax on June 24th. The congregation was large, but, perhaps, not so large as I had expected. It included the papist priest whom I met yesterday, and Archdeacon Cody from Toronto. Canon Gardiner thanked me rather effusively, but the others were obviously not well–pleased. The Bishop of Dover came in to supper: and talked in the garden afterwards with the Dean & me. He is a good hearty commonplace man, unencumbered with ideas, & mainly unconscious of problems!

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