The Henson Journals

[288]

5th Sunday after Easter, May 9th, 1926.

[symbol]

Let us pray especially at this time for the Nation,

and therein for the Prime Minister and the other

members of His Majesty's Government, that they

may be granted wisdom, sympathy and strength

for their difficult duty:

Let us pray for the men now unhappily on strike, that

they may be led to a worthier sense of their duty as citizens, and may be

preserved from violence and crime.

I used these "biddings" before the Prayer for the Church Militant when I celebrated the Holy communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. Then I turned to preparing a sermon for tonight, when I have to preach in Sunderland. It is, perhaps, inevitable that I should say something about the Strike, & what can I say which will be honest, useful and safe? How can I express my abhorrence of the whole conception of the "general Strike" without giving the impression that the Bishop of Durham is precisely what Mr Cook says he must always be, the paid apologist of the Capitalists? The task of the"preacher of righteousness"would certainly be made vastly more easy if one were, like the Baptist, a dweller in the wilderness, clothed in leather & camel's hair, and feeding on locusts and wild honey!

[289] [symbol]

Captain Bradford, who is in command at Durham, sent me a bundle of papers setting forth the arrangements that had been made. The special messenger drew his packet from a secret place of concealment behind his waist–coat with so much solemnity that I was disposed to think that some communication of real importance had arrived, & I think that he himself thought as much. But there was nothing that mattered.

---