The Henson Journals

[120]

Thursday, October 6th, 1927.

The fine weather continues. This morning I wrote letters. After an early lunch, we all motored to Newcastle, in order to attend the Enthronement of the new Bishop. There was an immense crowd in the Cathedral, and the service was both dignified & admirably arranged. The Bishop's sermon was simple and evidently sincere: but there was in it no touch of greatness. It was such a talk as an assistant curate might have made on being instituted to the incumbency of the parish where he had served. I half expected that he would have alluded to his years of work in the Durham Diocese, and to the presence of the Bishop of Durham as a pledge of co–operation. But neither in the Cathedral, nor in the Town Hall, did he make the slightest allusion. Possibly it was prudent to avoid giving umbrage to the jealous temper of the Novocastrians, but it had an odd aspect. We had tea with the Duke of Northumberland and the other folk in the Town Hall, when addresses were presented to the new Bishop. The we returned to Auckland, and Kenneth Hodgson came to see me before going to Oxford. I wrote a cheque for £39:10:0, and sent it to the Bursar at Wadham. after dinner I wrote to him a parting letter in which (as he is a Shakespearian) I quoted Polonius's lines on friendship. Oxford is a wonderful place for making friends, but many of them are not worth making.

[121]

The old historical glory had faded: and, under the insignificance of repose, it was chiefly a lower description of men who were tempted to enlist in the ecclesiastical service. The humbleness of their livings, and even the well–meant cheapness of their education vulgarised them still more: so that learning & refinement, being scarcely attainable, ceased to be expected: and, with too few exceptions, vegetating in the manse, and the formal performance of the parochial duties, came to be the ultimate object of clerical ambition. A church that is poor, resident, and working is the best of all churches, both for the state and for the people: but it is not one that, in peaceable unsuspecting times, can sustain an elevated clergy. Accordingly the descent of the Scotch clergy throughout the last half of the 18th century was steady and unmarked.

Cockburn's Memorials. p. 224

Mutatis mutandis This is also the story of the English clergy.