The Henson Journals

[11]

Tuesday, December 8th, 1925.

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So long as the middle classes remain the governing body & main power in the nation, so long will the Church of England remain as the representative of their religious peculiarities & convictions, their plain good sense of duty, their love of order, their intense loyalty, their indifference to ideal excellence, their dislike of novelty, their suspicion of all departures from the common & familiar types of human honesty & goodness. So long also will they interpret and justify the prayers & creeds of the Church of England, not by some standard of the Catholic Church in this or that century, but by the same feelings which demanded and modified the Reformation at its origin. It is only when political power shall have been transferred to new hands, & new classes shall have supplanted the old, that the Church of England will cease to be their exclusive representative, or the rigid exponent of the Reformation. Only then will it be called upon to modify its teaching, and enlarge its sympathies.

v. Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII. vol.ii. p.479.

That time has arrived. Power has passed from the middle classes to the multitude, which has no traditions, & is swayed, not by ideas, but by instincts.

[12]

There was a rapid thaw during the night so that most of the snow had disappeared from the land, & the morning broke on a normal landscape. I received a request from the Bishop of Hereford to preach on S. Ethelbert's Day, May 20th, when the 1250th anniversary of the founding of the Bishoprick is to be commemorated. Probably, the old see will have been broken up by that time!

I expended yet another morning on Master William Tindale [sic]! After lunch I walked round the Park with Beck. Clayton & I motored to Darlington, where I confirmed 91 persons in S. Luke's Church. The interposition of the surplice choir between me & the candidates – an arrangement necessitated by the fact that the church is not yet completed. The chancel being as yet unbuilt – disconcerted me greatly: & there was a good deal of coughing which completed my discomfiture. Yet, the candidates looked sincere, & may be presumed to have been instructed. We returned to Auckland immediately after the service. The chains were taken off the tyres, & the moist state of the roads gave a welcome sense of security in motoring.

Major Hills was returned for Ripon in place of Edward Wood by a majority of over 5000.

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