The Henson Journals

[120]

Tuesday, February 14th, 1928.

["]It may be said of the accessible fragment of the Graeco–Roman literature of the Imperial age, that it is on the whole, since the vulgar literature of those days is as good as lost to us, the reflection of the dominant classes, possessed of power and culture, & these upper classes have been almost always taken as identical with the whole ancient world of the Imperial age. Compared with Primitive Christianity, advancing like the under–current of a lava–stream with irresistible force from its source in the East, this upper stratum appears cold, exhausted, lifeless. Senility, the feature common to upper classes everywhere, was held to be the characteristic of the whole age which witnessed the new departure in religion, & thus we have the origin of the gloomy picture that people are still fond of drawing as soon as they attempt to sketch for us the background of Christianity in its early days.["]

v. Deissmann. "Light from the Ancient East" p. 7.

This is illuminating, if true: but how far is it really true?

[121]

The Prime Minister, speaking last night in the House of Commons, calls attention to a phenomenon of grave import for Durham: "The most remarkable feature of this day is the growing importance, (I will not say of the Midlands, because they have always been important,) of the South of England, and particularly the area round London."

Armitage Robinson has a long letter in the Times, urging the Bishops to withdraw the alternative Communion Office! What has been refused to the Evangelical Party, and to the House of Commons, is to be conceded to one whimsical and self–opinionated scholar!

I had intended to write an Article for the Evening Standard, but I cannot discover a suitable subject. So I spent the morning in reading Deissmann.

In the afternoon Ella went with me to Durham. She attended a Missionary Sale, while I first presided over a meeting of the Finance Board, and, next, attended the Durham Castle Preservation Committee. Neither was satisfactory. We then returned to Auckland.

The Editor of the Church Times forwarded to me a request which had come to him from Pastor Guthke of Bertkow bei Goldbeck, Bez–Magdeburg, asking leave to translate my Cambridge Sermon.