The Henson Journals

[82]

Friday, September 16th, 1927.

The sun belongs to a system containing some 3000 million stars. The stars are globes comparable in size with the sun, that is to say, of the order of a million miles in diameter. The space for their accommodation is on the most lavish scale.

A.S. Eddington

It is the enormous scale of the Universe as disclosed by the astronomers contrasted with the petty measurements of the world as presented by the Bible and the Church that disturbs the imagination of the educated modern Christian, & disgusts him with theology. There is no necessary contradiction between his knowledge and his faith, but he seems forced to live in two spheres, & when he enters Church to pass from the one to the other. Huxley's ribald phrase about 'The peep–show of Genesis' utters a mass of sceptical teaching which disinclines the mind for belief as an enervating climate disinclines the body for exertion. Christian Apologists fail, not because their arguments are bad, but because nobody is any longer interested in them. The Christian Revolution with its articulated scheme of the 1st Adam's Fall and the 2nd Adam's Victory lies so completely outside the range of educated thinking that its truth or falsehood interests nobody.

[83]

I spent the morning in writing letters, and preparing a "statement" about Sunday Schools to be read from the pulpits on October 15th when special intercessions (intercessions) for Sunday religious instructions are to be made. I emphasize the value of Sunday Schools as protecting the Nation from the danger of "lop–sidedness" in education: Colonel Craster & his wife went away after lunch: & Ella received a party of tennis–players.

Pemberton had some talk with me about the Castle. The situation is really quite desperate.

[Leslie's "The snake in the Grass, or, Satan transformed into an Angel of Light" is dated Feb: 24th 1697: and is an extraordinarily telling composition. He dwells on the number of the Quakers, and on their anxiety to shake Themselves clear of the extravagances of their leaders.

"Their numbers (increased by being neglected) are now become formidable, chiefly for the many souls seduced by them: they not only swarms over these three nations, but they stock our plantation abroad." (Works. IV. 21)

Leslie says that the Quakers were "mostly a trading people, and chiefly among themselves" (Ibid.93). He says that a Quaker "had pretended an immediate call from heaven to commit theft, or robbery, and sacrilege, in taking out of the Church an hour–glass", and had been defended by George Fox (Ibid. p. 103). Leslie says justly that with the same plea, the communion plate might be taken away.]