The Henson Journals

[149]

2nd Sunday in Lent, March 4th, 1928.

[symbol]

A considerable fog lay on the country like a pall, & I started the day in a double depression of sunlessness and lumbago! Why am I so abjectly the victim of immediate conditions? It impinges on my self–respect to be thus plainly the slave of circumstance & temperament.

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. there were 13 communicants, including Peter and the 4 Brydens. The Papist, Princess Lippe, was in the Ante–Chapel. She seems a more liberal–minded kind of Papist than is now common. At least, it doesn't seem to be a matter of conscience with her to abstain wholly from Protestant worship.

I read through Temple's Christianity & the State. It is quite a good piece of work, though, perhaps, the argument leads a little too rapidly to the conclusions of 'Christian Socialism' He adds an Appendix 'On the Relations between Church & State' in which he comes to much the same decision as that stated in my book.

Also, I read through Hugh Macmillan's extremely interesting Paper on "The Ethics of Advocacy" which was read before the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow on Feb: 23: 1916.

[150]

"Yet even in the case of this lawyer Saint (sc. St Ives of Brittany ) the popular prejudice against his profession was only grudgingly overcome, and at his yearly festival the people still sing this refrain:

Advocatus sed non latro

Res Miranda populo

Which I may freely render:

An advocate but not a thief,

A thing wellnigh beyond belief.

In pictorial art too, the Saint is commonly represented with a cat beside him as his symbol, for the reason, as Mr Baring–Gould tells us in his Lives of the Saints, that the cat is regarded 'as in some sort symbolizing a lawyer who watches for his prey, darts on it at the proper moment with alacrity, and when he has got his victim delights to play with him, but never lets him escape from his clutches."

Hugh Macmillan. 1. c. 6.

[151]

Ella, Princess Lippi, Geordie Gore, and Peter went with me to Staindrop, where I preached to a rather scanty congregation, which included Lords Barnard and Gainford with their wives. I preached badly, for the sermon, an old one, was not particularly suitable, and I was not in 'good form'. It is always thus with me. When I am more than usually ineffective somebody turns up among my hearers, whom I would like to impress for good. Why will not people come to Church? Spurrier is an exceptionally earnest and devout clergyman, & naturally a very attractive fellow: yet the congregation was woefully inadequate. Why? We returned to Auckland after the service.

[The parish clerk at Epworth gave out there 'a hymn of my own composing' to mark the return of King William to London after a journey, thus:–

King William is come home, come home,

King William home is come;

Therefore together let us sing

The hymn that's called Te D'um.

Clarke Wesley family. P. 233]

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