The Henson Journals

[195]

Thursday, October 7th, 1926.

Instigante diabolo. I wrote a short letter to the Times headed "The Industrial Christian Fellowship", directing attention to the impudent paper calling on its members to thank God for the interference of the Ten Bishops in the Mining Dispute.

Then I revised and completed the Article for the Bishoprick.

Old Mr Collier and his son came to lunch. He was very subdued. I gave him a copy of the Tyndale lecture by way of consolation!

I motored to Durham, and there presided over a meeting of the Board of Maintenance. When this ended, I returned to Auckland where the annual meeting of Archdeacons & Rural Deans, postponed from the summer on account of my illness, was to take place. There were no absentees. After tea in the State–room, we had a conference from 5.00 p.m. to 7.15 p.m. We numbered 18 at dinner including Ella and Fearne.

Canons Cosgrave, Wykes, and Knowlden were appointed a Committee to draw up a scheme of preparation for Confirmation. It is notable that all three are High Churchmen, though, perhaps, (with the doubtful exception of the first–named[)] none is an Anglo–Catholick. Evangelicals are for all practical purposes quite useless.

The Rural Deans are naturally senior men. None is under sixty, several are above seventy: one (Crudace) must be nearly eighty. Only two out of the 14 – Douglas and Lillingston – could be described as Low Churchmen: only one, Cosgrave, might be called an Anglo–Catholick. The remainder are "moderate High Churchmen", who, I should suppose, have never worne "vestments" in their lives, and would hardly know what to do if a parishioner desired to make confession, or prayed to be anointed with oil. They have an uncomfortable sense that things are going badly, & a vague fear of "what is coming on the earth".

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