The Henson Journals

[218]

Wednesday, September 2nd, 1925.

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A number of letters arrived in the morning post: & I spent the morning in answering them. Miss Haldane took us to lunch with Miss Christie, a stout pleasant lady who has travelled in Central Asia, & collected many curious & interesting objects. Her house is a very museum of treasures, inherited and acquired: and it is also itself interesting. It includes parts of a monastic foundation, and was occupied by the unhappy Archbishop Sharp on the night preceding his assassination. After lunch we were shown the Japanese garden. General Hunter–Weston and his wife were staying with Miss Christie. We returned to Cloan for tea, & then Lord Haldane, Ralph, and I had a great talk about the economic situation. His lordship's optimism appears to be quite impervious to attack, but it is more fertile in cheerful generalisations than in practical proposals. A telegram from Leng announced that the car had broken down at Shotley Bridge, & was returning to Bishop Auckland! This is sufficiently humiliating, & also not a little alarming, for the car is quite indispensable for a series of diocesan engagements as soon as I return home.

Ralph read through so much of my proof as I had with me, and expressed approval.

After dinner I had much talk with mine host about the future of religion in Great Britain. He thought that the Churches were [219] [symbol] failing for lack of a creed: but Religion seemed to him more interesting to the people than ever. I asked him whether his own countrymen still were concerned for theological speculations, and he answered, Yes: but when I inquired further whether it would now be possible for a secession to be effected on a theological issue, he replied, No, for they no longer believe. The interest in religious questions is an interest of curiosity, perhaps of scientific curiosity, but implies no quickening of the conscience. As Sir Oliver Lodge said, 'the modern man is not troubled about his sins'. Ought he to be troubled? He will regret his follies: if they bring him into conflict with the laws of health, or with the law of the land, he will not escape their due punishment. But neither follies nor crimes need be also sins: & it is only with sins that Religion is concerned. With sins it would seem that Christianity is vitally concerned, for before all things it is the Religion of Divine Forgiveness, and its supreme boon is redemption. What appeal has it save to sinners who know themselves to be such? No Religion can survive, & certainly none is worth preserving, which does not influence conduct: but Christianity seems to be ceasing to do this, & the essays in a distinctively Christian morality break down before the stern unrelaxing conditions of social life. Commerce & politics are as completely outside Christian control as science and the harvest.

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