The Henson Journals

[95]

Friday, September 23rd, 1927.

I worked at the Congress Sermon all the morning. Mr & Mrs Murray Smith came to lunch. She is becoming a very wizened little old woman, but she says she is the same age as myself – 64! Brook and Fosca came to lunch, and to say Goodbye. Also, Judge Moon and Garth, who leave the North almost immediately. Old Canon Croudace brought his grandson to be privately confirmed in the Chapel. Then Bates of Redmarshall came to beg for a living.

Jack Boden has published a small book with a very big title – "Can these bones live? Modern Christianity, Social Life and the English Church." He quotes sayings of mine not infrequently, and without first ascertaining whether I should approve of their publication. I don't think his residence in London since his Ordination has done him much good, & his habit of spending much of his time at the Oxford and Cambridge Club has not helped him to form just estimates of the things and persons about whom he dogmatizes into a suggestion of plusquam–pontifical infallibility. He says that when he was ordained he "gave up, on any shewing, between £800 and £1000 a year", and he gives a quite imposing list of his own achievements. There is no suggestion of religious vocation in his story.