The Henson Journals

[267]

Tuesday, October 6th, 1925.

Even in the Hickson Mission there was very noticeable the act of throwing out hope where hope could not be materially rewarded, the pathos of it all. I refer to the instance when Mr Hickson laid his hands upon all the inmates of a blind institution and not one received sight:

v. Letter by 'Frank Owen, Tugela Rivers, Natal' in 'The Church Chronicle for the Province of South Africa' May 28th, 1925.

Now today I must prepare a speech on Durham Castle to be broad–cast from Newcastle on Thursday night. It is these insistent "stay–stomachs" which destroy my normal appetite! The editor of the Westminster Gazette wrote to ask me for an article "to stem the tide of pessimism by dwelling on the growth of the broad religious spirit underneath all the ecclesiastical & sectarian controversies of the time". I told him that I couldn't, and wouldn't if I could!

There was nothing further from Lord Halifax in the Times, so that I hope that foolish business is at an end! The old man has been fawned on and flattered for so long that he has come to forget that others have names, feelings, and even rights as well as himself.

[268]

It would be a melancholy thing in the close of life, to have no reflections to entertain one's self with, but that one had spent the revenues of the bishopric of Durham in a sumptuous course of living, and enriched one's friends with the promotions of it, instead of having really set one's self to do good, and promote worthy men: yet this right to use of fortune and power is more difficult than the generality of even good people think, and requires both a guard upon one's self, and a strength of mind to withstand solicitations, greater (I wish I may not find it) than I am master of.

Bishop Butler in answering a complimentary letter on his appointment to the Bpk. of Durham. (Hutchinson's History of Durham. 1. 580)

In 1563 Bishop Pilkington made a return for the present count of Durham. There were 11,772 households, which would suggest a population of about 60,000. These were gathered in 118 parishes, roughly one incumbent to every 500 people. Now there are 268 parishes for about 1,500,000 people, roughly one incumbent to every 5,600 people.

[269]

Our modern enthusiasts for "sexual education" are greatly deceiving themselves if they think it would be possible, with safety, suddenly to introduce into the modern school a quantity of information about subjects connected with some of the most dangerous passions known to human nature. The schools of today are so exclusively intellectual & the character–training they provide is so inadequate & superficial, that the boys & girls have not a sufficiently practised will–power, a well enough developed consciousness of responsibility, or a pure enough sense of honour, to enable them to make a proper use of their dangerous knowledge!

Foerster. "Marriage & the Sex–Problem". P.199.

I finished the address on Durham Castle, & wrote a series of letters including one to the Bishop of Norwich, who had sent me his recent charge, which I found dull and common–place, even beyond what I had anticipated. I fear his Lordship is not an interesting person!

After lunch Jimmie walked round the Park with me. Ella went to Gateshead, & opened a Bazaar for one of the parishes there. Lockyer came to lunch, & I offered him the Vicarage of Newbottle.

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