The Henson Journals

[122]

Friday, October 7th, 1927.

Still the bright warm weather continues. I made a start on an "Open Letter to a Peer" for the Bishoprick.

In the afternoon I had a meeting of the Bishop of Jarrow, Fedden, Ferguson, & Dick to discuss what had best be done about the projected new church on Annfield Plain. The closing of mines & consequent dispersing of the miners are creating difficulties. It is useless to build churches when the population has disappeared.

I was pleased by the arrival of a grateful letter from Derek Elliott. He says that he is very happy at Durham School.

My congress sermon has attracted much notice in the newspapers, mainly unfavourable.

The Bishop of Birmingham has made another onslaught on the "magical" view of the Sacraments, with which he credits the Anglo–Catholicks, & which they indignantly repudiate. This fresh affront, following so closely on the "tangle–of–apes" sermon in the Abbey (which has been politely censored by the Dean of Westminster), will confirm the impression, which is certainly dawning on the public mind, that Barnes is as bigoted as the bigots whom he condemns, and more tactless & unmannerly. He makes it almost impossible for the Anglo–Catholick clergy in his diocese to treat him with deference. He is the only Bishop on the Bench who has been nominated by a Labour Prime Minister: & he was born on the First of April.

[123]

In the corrupted currents of this world

Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,

And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above;

There is no shuffling, there the action lies

In his true nature, and we ourselves compell'd

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults

to give in evidence.

Hamlet.

"The wicked prize itself buys out the law" – that is the key to the impunity which exploiters of native labour, like the planters of America and the "Nabobs" of the 18th century, can count upon, when they build their vast fortunes by cunning dishonesty, and even violence. "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" says the honest and unflattering Apostle in the first century. How he could have illustrated his proposition in the twentieth! And of all Mammon's achievements the chloroforming of the churches by its artful contributions is the greatest & most morally ruinous.