The Henson Journals

[75]

Friday, January 15th, 1926. Lambeth Palace.

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There was more snow during the night. I did not go to the Chapel fearing the effect of the cold on my teeth! but read through Professor Goudge's pamphlet "Conflicting tendencies in the Church of England" instead. It is a woeful piece of mischievous sophistry, & sufficiently surprising as coming from a Regius Professor at this juncture. He actually allows himself to speak of "the packing of the Episcopate, which seems to be now in progress", though later in the pamphlet he refers to "our Bishops, to whose wisdom and justice to their clergy we have all in late years owed so much", and he assumes the necessity of "the restatement of our faith in view of modern knowledge". He is plainly a muddle–headed man as well as a hot partisan, & he labours under the curious delusion that he is a heaven–born peacemaker! But we have come to a woeful pass when this kind of trash can issue from an Oxford chair. "Since the Reformation the history of the English Church has been a tragedy" –but before the Reformation there was no English Church in such sense that its "tragedy" could be thus separately marked. No doubt the Professor holds that the golden age lies behind the Reformation!

[76]

We had a certain amount of division of opinion over some of the "Black Letter" festivals. The Nativity of the B.V.M., and the Name of Jesus disclosed the strength of the "Anglo–Catholick" sympathies of some bishops. I was in a minority over both. In the afternoon session we got on to the Baptismal Service, & I was surprised at the desire to shorten the existing service. I actually carried a motion adopting a shortened form of the initial exhortation which the clergy recommended. The darkest horse of the Episcopate is the Bishop of Gloucester, whose speeches have a piquancy of the absolute incalculable. Barnes speaks with effect, & improves his position daily.

The "Times" reports the death of Rawlingson, the senior burgess for Cambridge University. This is a serious loss.

In the page of photographs which now adorns that newspaper, there was included a very fine view of Durham Castle. No doubt its insertion is the result of Mr Hogge's enterprising mendicancy.

I attended a meeting in the Chaplain's room which Donaldson convened to hear Colonel Stanley & Sir Windham [sic] Deedes expound their colonizing scheme. They were very confident & optimistic.

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