The Henson Journals

[85]

10th Sunday after Trinity, August 8th, 1926.

I went with mine hostess and Ella to the parish church and there received the Holy Communion at the early celebration. The communicants barely exceeded a dozen, but at this time of year many are absent on holiday. Save that the furious barking of some litigious dogs in the village during the Consecration Prayer destroyed the solemn stillness which is the special charm of rural Communions, the service was reverent and helpful to edification. After breakfast I wrote to George Nimmins.

We attended Mattins in the parish church, and heard a short and sensible discourse from Mr Paterson, the Rector. The congregation was not large, but it was largely composed of men, & was both devout & attentive. We had tea at the Rectory, a noble house built at the end of William III's reign, and little altered. The endowment of the benefice is not inadequate. Nevertheless, attempts have been made to sell the house. Happily so far they have been unsuccessful. The Rector seems to be an intelligent as well as a cheerful man: I hear that he is an efficient and popular incumbent. There came to tea a sister–in–law of Bishop Chavasse, and the Bishop's daughter. Also, an old Mr Keith, who said he had met me at the time of the Kikuyu controversy in Oman's house. The Rector showed me Inge's article on these intervening bishops. It appeared in the Sunday Express (August 1st) and is sufficiently trenchant, too trenchant indeed to be as effective as it ought to be.

Some rain fell in the course of the afternoon. The atmosphere became very sultry and oppressive. The glass is low enough to justify apprehensions.

[86]

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The Vicar Rector of Hartlebury told me that he had been one of Dean Vaughan's "doves". In the north there still linger some of Lightfoot's "lambs". Both indicate a method of training men for Holy Orders, which in itself and in its results differs greatly from the "seminary" system which the Counter–Reformation created, and bound upon the Church of Rome, and which the Tractarians & their followers have introduced into the Church of England. The personal influence of a genuinely great man, based on voluntary allegiance and sustained by continuous contact, is, perhaps, the most powerful & salutary shaping power to which an adolescent can be subjected: and the result must be considerable, and ought to be excellent. It is, we may fairly claim, the method by which statesmen, artists, and lawyers are trained for their work. It was the method by which Jesus Christ trained His Apostles for their ministry. But when its adoption in the Church of England is considered, two questions are at once raised. Where are the competent Masters? Where are the financial resources for maintaining the students, who are to be disciples? Both Vaughan and Lightfoot were men of means: and most of their pupils were maintained by well–to–do parents. Moreover, these pupils were all graduates of Oxford or of Cambridge, & were largely selected as men of exceptional ability. Such men could profit to the utmost from their close association with the Master, whom they elected to follow: but would the men of humble origin, humble abilities, & no real education, who now form the majority almost the totality of our Ordination candidates, be able to get much help from a Vaughan or a Lightfoot? I doubt it. They need to be taught the elements, & to be held by the crude simple disciplines of a school, if they are to be shaped into anything not wholly incongruous with the work of a teacher, and the career of a parish clergyman. So the Seminaries are inevitably replacing the Masters in the Church of England.

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