The Henson Journals

[39]

Monday, December 21st, 1925.

The blunt fact about the Church in not a few villages is that, to all intents and purposes, it is dead; and that in many more villages it is dying. The two reasons for this state of things need no searching out. The first reason is that the parsons are, in the main, lacking in intelligence, in character, or in spiritual experience. The second reason is that very little of what is read, sung, and said in the churches is now believed. To go on pretending, because of a lack of courage to face facts, that it is believed, can have one result only. Could doctors, newspapers, or ironmongers successfully appeal to the public with such blindness to actualities as the Church displays in its choice of men, in its defiance of accepted truth, and in the inadequacy of services rendered? In many of our villages the Church plays a no more impressive part than many a Buddhist temple in a Far Eastern village.

Quoted from "England's Green & Pleasant Land" in a Review in the Spectator. Dec. 19th 1925.

[40]

I walked into the city, & visited Andrews, where I bought books for Christmas presents. Also I managed to get a copy of Saturday's "Times" which contained letters from Sir Offley Wakeman and the Bishop of Salisbury, both "going for" me over Hereford. I wrote a brief letter designed to rap their knuckles, & at the same time end the correspondence. Then I presided over a meeting of the Barrington Trustees i.e. the two Archdeacons, after which I returned to Auckland. Frank James, formerly my legal secretary & registrar at Hereford, wrote to express his approval of my letter in the "Times". "Our good Bishop was, I am afraid much too impulsive at the early stages: & his action hampers us greatly. But your letter is unanswerable".

I sent copies of my book to the Rural Deans, and to Lords Darling, Londonderry, Durham, & Cave. Also, I sent the tract on Durham Castle to Arthur, Frank, Audrey Hall, Elsie Knowling, Alfred Spelling, Gilbert Simpson, John McKitterick, and F. R. James.

How far can one justify expenditure on Christmas gifts? Perhaps, they tend to sweeten life; &, if so, the money spent on them is well–spent.

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