The Henson Journals

[248]

Saturday, April 17th, 1926.

I do not depreciate spiritual work – I hold it higher than secular: all I say & feel is, that by the change of times the pulpit has lost its place. It does only part of that whole which used to be done by it alone. Once it was newspaper, schoolmaster, theological treatise, a stimulant to good works, historical lecture, metaphysics etc., all in one. Now these are partitioned out to different officers, and the pulpit is no more the pulpit of three centuries back, than the authority of a master of a household is that of Abraham, who was soldier, butcher, sacrificer, shepherd and emir in one person. Nor am I speaking of the ministerial office: but only the "stump orator" portion of it – and that I cannot but hold to be thoroughly despicable.

F. W. Robertson. July 1851 (ii. 60).

In the 75 years since the great preacher wrote thus, the process of decline has continued, mainly by the rapid shrinking of the sphere within which the preacher's meagre functions are acceptable or accepted.

[249]

We lunched with Sir Archibald Edmonstone and his family. The property has been held by this house since the 14th century. At tea there came W. P. Ker's brother, his sister Penelope, and his wife. We talked much of "W.P.". Herbert Guthrie Smith came to dinner. He said that there were but two mammals which are indigenous to New Zealand – two bats, of which one is a queer creature which ran as well as flew, was very rare. He was himself one of the very few persons who had seen it. Two other mammals – a rat and a dog – which had been supposed to be indigenous, were now known to be foreign importations. Two plagues, bought in from England, were a great nuisance – the bramble or black–berry, & the blackbird. To destroy the first he kept on his "run" a flock of 500 goats: & to get rid of the last, he employed poison! He spoke highly of the Maoris. The two most eloquent speakers in the New Zealand Parliament were men of this race. There was no race prejudice between the colonists and the Maoris, & a good many white men married Maori girls. It was however, a rare & untoward occurrence for a white girl to take a Maori for husband.

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