The Henson Journals

[42]

Tuesday, April 5th, 1927.

This day has been mostly spent in writing letters. I dictated a letter to Dick consenting to celebrate the Holy Communion on Easter Sunday evening, & stipulating for some ventilating of the Church and an unmutilated service. To have refused to celebrate could not but give the impression that I endorsed the fanatical attitude of the Anglo–Catholicks on the subject of evening communion; and this would have been the more undesirable since there has been an active campaign against the revised Prayer Book in that district. I wrote to Lord Sands replying to a long letter about Reservation. Also, I wrote at some length to the Prime Minister on the appointment to the Newcastle Bishoprick which be vacant when Wild's resignation takes place in August.

[Lionel and I motored to Howden–le–Wear, and there, in the squalid little parish church, I confirmed 31 persons from the parishes of Howden–le–Wear & Hamsterley. Their combined populations are 3392. On the usual reckoning there ought to have been 66 persons who reached the age of 14 last year. That nearly half should have been presented is far above the average. But I received a melancholy impression. Perhaps the miserable building disgusted me. We are too much the victims of our immediate environment. After service we returned to Auckland.]

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