The Henson Journals

[356]

Thursday, June 17th, 1926.

Mr Turner sends me an acknowledgement of my book on "Spiritual Healing" which I sent him last week. He has but glanced at it, but seems favourably impressed. He notes "the amount of information the work contains, the critical way in which you deal with the problems involved, and especially the beautiful language which you use." This is civil enough, but what I had hoped to elicit was the informed & deliberate judgement of an eminent surgeon on the main question, & on my manner of answering it. But the haste in which men live, & the pressure of immediate duties have destroyed the old responsible handling of even important issues. We take refuge in conventional generalities, and vague compliments which are worthless!

The publishers send me a substantial volume of 723 pages – History of England by George Macaulay Trevelyan. It covers the whole period "from the Earliest Times to the Great War." I read through the account of the English Reformation, and was delighted with its just perspectives, insight, & fine feeling. He does justice to Cranmer, whom he rightly presents as the true founder of Anglicanism. The character–sketch of Q. Elizabeth is admirable, & the close connexion between the triumph of the Reformation in England, and in Scotland is well shown. In both cases the movement was patriotic as well as religious, and owed its triumph to the fact. Papistry implied for England subjection to Spain: and for Scotland subjection to France. The Reformation guaranteed independence.

[357]

I adventured to walk unassisted, & managed better than I expected. If I could resume my normal mobility, I should soon shake off this nightmare fiction of illness!

Alderman Pattison of Durham has just died. He was a quondam Chorister of the Cathedral, and wonderfully devoted to the great Church, where he regularly attended the services. He took infinite pains in transacting his business, & my personal relations with him were invariably most pleasant. He, and old Rushworth, the furniture dealer, who died a short while ago, stand out more clearly than other townsfolk in my recollections of life in Durham.

I paid the terminal account for Jimmie's residence at St John's College. This concludes my expenditure on that account. I received a characteristically affectionate letter from Jimmie, who is to preach his first sermon in July. How well I remember my first sermon on June 12th 1887 – 39 years ago almost exactly. My text was "I could not see for the glory of that Light." I recall my alarm at seeing Mrs E. Talbot, the wife of the Warden of Keble, sitting under the pulpit in St Paul's Oxford. At that time, I think, the Oxford Tractarians thought they had gained a recruit, who might be worth making a fuss with. But I knew better even then, though at that stage the full extent of the chasm which parted me from what they called "Catholicism" was but dimly perceived even by myself. But I knew myself to be "a man of another spirit."

[358]

Is it really necessary that the miners should have no other organ of expression that Messrs Cook and Smith? Everyone so far as I can learn, who has any personal contact with the miners, reports them as being extremely anxious to resume work, by no means unable to understand the necessity of reducing the cost of production if the mining industry is to be saved, and not unwilling to concede an increase of the working day if an honest effort to reorganise the industry be made. The Prime Minister's proposals are so violently denounced by the Labour Party in Parliament & by Mr Cook outside, that the thought inevitably suggests itself that both are extremely anxious to prevent the miners having a chance of considering them without prejudice. The Prime Minister's attitude, strong, conciliatory, and persistently helpful, is certainly making an impression on the rank & file of the Trade Unions, who are growing impatient of Mr Cook's violent & barren negations, & is rather ashamed of becoming the recipient of Russian funds, contributed confessedly with no goodwill to the prosperity of Britain. If left to themselves, & given liberty to express their genuine opinions, I think it not improbable that Messrs Cook & Smith might be found to represent no more considerable opinion than their own. Cannot some way be found for getting access to the mind of the miners through some trustworthy and less prejudiced channel?

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