The Henson Journals

[221]

Low Sunday, April 15th, 1928.

The Deanery, Gloucester

In the recent discussions of the Revised Prayer Book much prominence was given to a new Rubrick on the matter of "Fasting communion", and it was decided, mistakenly as I think, to insert a rubrick which should both affirm the antiquity & laudableness of the Catholick custom, and assert the legitimacy of the Anglican practice which refers the whole subject to the conscience of the Communicant, & condones the general neglect of the Fast before Communion. The whole discussion has for the man in the street the appearance of solemn trifling. Is he mistaken in so regarding it? It is certainly wrong that any Christian should approach the Lord's Table without reverence, or living in known & serious sin, or without faith, or with no purpose of right living, or with malice towards others. But what security against any of these disqualifications is provided by the Roman rule which insists on actual abstinence from food for at least 4 hours before reception? There appears to be no obvious, or natural, or necessary connexion between moral rightness and physical discomfort and domestic inconvenience. The whole discipline of "Fasting" is archaic.

[222]

Ella and I went to the Cathedral, & received the Holy Communion in the Lady Chapel at 8 a.m. The Dean celebrated. The communicants were mostly men. The wealth of stained glass windows has no parallel in our bleak & naked majesty of Durham, nor can we show anything as rich as these Cloisters. There were finished as early as 1420.

We attended Mattins, and heard a sermon on Sunday observance from Archdeacon Ridsdale, the Canon in residence. He has a considerable voice, and a good delivery. The discourse was not ill–expressed, and contained some good stuff, though the references to the "Sabbatarianism" of the last generation were rather unfair. The Chancel is acoustically good. I was interested to observe the considerable proportion of men in the congregation.

^[paragraph strikethrough]^ Canon Peacock came to lunch. He was for many years beneficed in the Durham diocese, and evidently keeps up with his connexion with the Durham clergy. He suggested that an exchange between Bailey of Heatherycleugh and Baily of S. Ignatius, Sunderland, might be welcomed by both parties. But I fear the discrepancy in the amount of the incomes will be fatal to that suggestion.

[223] [symbol]

The Dean motored us to make a call on Colonel Calvert at Forscombe. While we were there, a lady described to me as the sister of Ian Hay with a young Canadian named Graham, who is in Cambridge as a "Sir George Parker" student called. I had some talk with the youth, who impressed me as intelligent and amiable. Then we went on to Ashleworth Manor, a delightful 15th century house. Mrs Gillespie, the wife of the Headmaster of the Cathedral School, said that I married her in S. Margaret's Westminster. That was to her first husband: she has married a widower with a family of three girls. We saw this brood before returning to the Deanery. There were also present with them two long lads, spending their vacation with their headmaster.

After dinner we listened to an entertainment broadcast from London. How far may we regard this broadcasting as favourable, or hostile, to Religion? It is rather disconcerting to find an individual person, who may be really a very inferior person indeed, suddenly raised to a pinnacle of national importance & influence by a mechanical device, apart from which he could never have emerged from the obscurity which matches his natural inferiority.