The Henson Journals

[75]

Saturday, September 10th, 1927.

A dull, damp, depressing day all through. After dealing with the correspondence, I wrote most part of a sermon for tomorrow. It is lamentable to find how difficult the composition of sermons has become.

Mr Pawicke refers me to my Sermon at the dedication of the Baxter Tablet in Christ Church, Newgate Street. That sermon was printed in the Contemporary Review (January 1925) and does not contain anything that is fairly identic with Mr P.'s account of what I said. I was concerned mostly with Baxter's type of theology, and his ecclesiastical policy. These did, as I said, continue unchanged, though his opinions on particular points (e.g. hell) did become milder as the years passed.

The sermon which I am pledged to deliver to the Church Congress at Ipswich on October 4th begins to weigh on my mind. It would seem natural to preach about the Revised Prayer Book, but the subject is as polemical as it is obvious. Nobody is agreed with anybody else as to the content or probable effect of the Book. Its fortunes in Parliament are uncertain, and it would be foolish to discuss a Book which may never be legalised. The Lausanne Conference suggests a discussion of the hackneyed subject of Reunion, but, if I said what I think about that assembly, I should delight the 'Church Times', and distress my friends. There remains the Economic Situation!