The Henson Journals

[271]

2nd Sunday in Advent, December 5th, 1926.

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Some confusion as to arrangements, which was cleared up at the last moment by Spurrier's arrival yesterday, leaves me free of any preaching engagement today. On the well–known principle, "Ubi episcopus, ibi ecclesia", I shall hold my sacred [synaxis] in my own room, & with no other companions than godly George Herbert's assistant angels! This is a mode of worship more attractive than familiar.

There is again a sharp frost. I fear that the rhododendrons & fir–trees planted last week after 10 days in the train will have small chance of survival.

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. There were 7 communicants including our guest.

I spent the morning in writing an article for the Evening Standard on "Religious Intolerance. 1780 and 1926. a contrast".

Then I wrote to Lord Londonderry about the project for emigrating the miners who will be permanently unemployed. I fell to reading Mathieson's account of British Slavery & its Abolition and finished it before going to bed. What a strange paradox is this British Christianity! Our treatment of the slaves was worse, with the possible exception of the Dutch, than that of other European nations. One curious fact is that the French displayed a more extreme horror of any mixture with the negroes than anybody else: now they are the least sensitive on the point. Why is this? Is it the result of their having gained a vast African Empire? The Church of England comes out of this bad history very badly. So far as Christ had any witnesses in these slave–holding colonies, they were sectaries of one sort or another. Why is this?

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