The Henson Journals

[133]

Thursday, October 13th, 1927.

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A blackbird with a white head haunts the garden, and disports itself before my dressing room window. It suggests an aged clergyman by its appearance, but its activity belies the suggestion!

I worked all the morning at the Sermon for the Bishopwearmouth Freemasons; and walked with Lionel in the Park in spite of the rain during the afternoon. Two Ordination candidates – William Watson and Henry Wilfred Watson – both starting their course at St John's College with the assistance of Diocesan grants came to be inspected.

The Times prints an extremely well–written & effective Reply to Dr Barnes from old Bishop Talbot. It will open the door, I fear, to a considerable volume of resentment which has with difficulty been restrained from expression. We hardly needed a 'heresy hunt' in addition to all our other difficulties. I judge Barnes to be a very obstinate man, and I suspect that he has become the hero of a considerable body of some religious and extremely anti–ecclesiastical people, who flatter him and push him farther along a road which, as a Bishop (perhaps even as a professed Christian) he ought never to have entered upon. It will be in the highest degree repugnant to me to be driven publicly to 'throw him over'; but it is not easy to see how I can avoid doing so if the situation develops so that I am compelled to declare myself.

[134]

The Church Quarterly Review for October 1927 contains 2 articles of unusual interest viz:

1. A Lutheran review of Anglo–Catholicism by Friedrich Heiler, Professor Extraordinary of Comparative Religion, Marburg

2. Modern novels and Christian Morals by the Rev. S. Addleshaw B.D. Vicar of St Mary's, Ely & [?]

The latter provides remarkable illustrations of that breach between Civilization & Christianity of which I spoke in my Congress Sermon.

"When we turn to the chief novelists of the present day we find ourselves in a world in which the principle of the Christian life is almost entirely wanting. It is not merely in so–called moral questions that some writers are definitely opposed to Christian teaching, but that their whole outlook is entirely different from that of true Christians".

The trend of modern fiction is away from Christianity and illustrates a view of life antagonistic to the moral teaching of the Church.

If we take at hazard five novels out of the library, we shall find that at least three glorify illicit passion & leave us with the impression that the whole duty of man is to do what he likes and not what he ought".