The Henson Journals

[149]

7th Sunday after Trinity, July 26th, 1925.

Before getting up I read Lecky's Map of Life in bed. He is dominated a little too obviously by the political controversies of his own time, but he says many wise things, of which the wisdom is more plainly seen now than it was at the time when the book was published (1899). Speaking of the introduction of parliamentary government into 'nations which are wholly unfit for it', he proceeds:

"In such countries democracy lends much less naturally to the parliamentary system than to some form of dictatorship, to some despotism resting on and justified by a plebiscite". The present state of affairs in Italy and Spain is a remarkable commentary on this forecast.

Lecky is quite clear that "in practical politics public and private morals will never absolutely correspond". Public opinion finally determines the moral standard of statesmen, and 'it will never be the exact code on which men act in private life. It is certainly widely different from the Sermon on the Mount'. This is assuredly true: but when once its truth is clearly recognized, how wide a door is opened to all this guilty compromises with iniquity on the plea of the requirements of expediency, which have stained the pages of history with crimes!

[150]

There was a small congregation in the parish church at Mattins, for the parishioners exceed 500 in number, and there could not have been more than 60 or 70 present, most of whom were females, & many of them children. However, I preached to them on I. Corinthians xiii.13. In the Evening I preached again to a congregation which may have numbered 90 persons. My coming had been announced in advance, & any Bishop might be thought to have a certain attraction for a rustick community which hardly gets a change from its incumbent from one year's end to another. Yet there could not, on the most favourable view, have been more than one third of the available persons present. The decline of church–going has evidently extended to the country parishes.

When we stopped at a village not far from Peterborough in order to replenish with petrol, the shopman, as soon as he learned from Leng that it was the Bishop of Durham whom he was serving, started to speak with some enthusiasm of my broad–casted sermon on Easter Day. He said that as many as 45 persons had come to hear it as his plant, & had heard admirably. This sets one thinking. At present the thing is a new toy, but it would seem to have possibilities.

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