The Henson Journals

[317]

1st Sunday after Epiphany, January 9th, 1927.

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. The weather continues to be mild & almost springlike. I wrote to William and "Archdeacon" Spooner. Ella and Fearne accompanied me to Sedgefield, where we had tea at the Rectory, and afterwards attended Evensong in the Parish Church. I preached from the words in the Gospel for the day – "The boy, Jesus". The congregation listened very attentively. Geoffrey Sykes read the lessons in a curiously parsonic manner. He is training for the law.

Ella tells me, on the authority of Mrs Sykes, that a Miracle Play was performed in Sedgefield Church during the Christmas season! And I have been pressing the 88th Canon on the luckless Ellwood, and letting him see very plainly that I don't think it decent for him to break it! The truth is that everything in this Church of England is at sixes and sevens. I don't know a tithe of the law–breaking that proceeds in the diocese. Nobody cares enough about the doings in the parish church to mind what the parson essays therein. For the mass of the people the parish church is no more than a dissenting chapel, meaner in aspect in many cases, & more recent in building, but in character identical. And the clergy, save where they are Anglo–Catholicks, when they awake a certain suspicion, are regarded, and in many cases regard themselves, as only ministers of one of the denominations, no more and no less!

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