The Henson Journals

[373]

Friday, February 25th, 1927.

A white frost at daybreak leading in a damp misty day[.] Frank writes to ask me to preach the University Sermon on the Sunday (June 26th) immediately preceding the Encaenia. I don't like to refuse but these intermittent sermons fritter one's energies away woefully.

I worked at the Edinburgh Article, and finished it, but I shall not send it to the Editor until I know what the final form of the Composite Book is to be. The Evangelicals are cutting a very poor figure, and I strongly suspect that Ernest Worcester has been "carried away with their dissimulation". His letter to the Times seems to be most naturally explained as an indication that he proposes to join the dissentient Trinity on the first opportunity. If so, he will probably carry with him his neighbours of Bristol and Bath & Wells. This would make a not very homogenous groups of 6 bishops, as against 34 who stand by the Book.

I walked in the rain for more than an hour, and had an interview with Mr Spedding the dentist.

We gave a dinner party to the following guests: –

Captain and Mrs Henson

Miss Joyce

Braley and his wife

Dr Mackintosh & his wife

Mackintosh expressed himself rather strangely about vaccination. He objected to a medical method being imposed on the people by the law. Such a procedure disturbed the proper relations between a doctor and his patients. I pointed out to him that the issue raised was not one between the doctor and his patient, but one between the community and the individual citizen. Why should anyone be allowed to plead conscience for endangering the health of his neighbours? He says that the miners are, in many cases, earning so little as to be in actual want, but his opinions on vaccination disinclined one to attach importance to his opinions on anything else.

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