The Henson Journals

[128]

Quinquagesima, February 14th, 1926.

Even conservative churchmen like Hooker, in their defence of the ecclesiastical system, are hampered by the consciousness that much of what existed was indefensible.

Stubbs. "Lectures on Medi & Mod. Hist" p. 373.

Is not this precisely the case of informed & honest champions of current Christianity now? Is not the real problem of Prayer–book Revision just the evident indefensibleness of much in our formularies which yet we dare not reject, or even markedly mitigate? For the cause of Truth is not the only, and certainly not the most powerfully pleaded cause, that Prayer–Book Revision is designed to serve. The Bishops are dominated by a desire to placate the Anglo–Catholicks, and so to avert a crisis, not by a single–minded enthusiasm for truth. And, indeed, even if there should be in any of them a worthier conception of his duty, how can he with sufficient confidence declare what course the service of Truth requires him to take? Obsolescence, obsoleteness, falsehood – these merge into one another strangely, and every one is truth to some section of the Church.

[129]

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. The Epistle reads like a protest against all that we are, and do!

The rain began falling about 8 a.m., & continued to fall with steady vehemence. A most comfortless day.

At 3.30 p.m. I left the Castle, and motored to Jarrow, picking up Lionel on the way. There I had tea with Lilburn, whom I found in the highly sentimental mood proper to a parson when vacating his parish! This was, indeed, his last Sunday at St Peter's, and the people seem genuinely distressed to lose him: but he has been more than 12 years in the place, and at St Oswald's, West Hartlepool, he will have more elbow–room. I was rather surprised to hear that he was 53 years old. The church was crowded, & the candidates who numbered 61 (24 males and 37 females) were attentive & reverent. They were all of a suitable age. The more experience of confirmations I have, the more convinced I am, that confirmation ought always to be a post–puberty experience. It is "thrown away" on Sunday School children! After the service we returned to Auckland. There was some threatening of fog which made the chauffeur's job difficult.

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