The Henson Journals

[91]

Wednesday, September 21st, 1927.

He was perhaps the most significant preacher of his generation: the only one who suggested to his hearers the presence of a prophetic gift. His sermons before the universities or at S. Paul's were almost always upon moral & social questions.

Beeching on Dean Church in D.N.B.

Certainly, Church's sermons impressed me more than any that I had heard, and there are some which I like better to read. "In a letter (21 Sept. 1857) to a correspondent who consulted him on the cultivation of style, he says the only training in style he had recognised in himself, was watching against the temptation of "unreal" and "fine" words: and he adds that he owed it to Newman, if he could write at all simply & with a wish to be real."

Lionel and I motored to Newbottle, where, in pouring rain I consecrated an addition to the churchyard, & afterwards preached the sermon at Evensong, it being the Patronal Festival of the parish. We returned to Auckland after the service.

Several fanatical letters arrived from Protestants moved to exasperation by my letter to the Times. I suppose it is extraordinarily difficult for them to understand how a man both dislike[s] Anglo–Catholicism, and loathes Protestantism! But I abhor all "enthusiasm"!