The Henson Journals

[179]

Monday, August 6th, 1928.

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Was the church of Russia more effectively the "conscience" of the Russian Nation when dominant & persecuting under the Czars than it is now coming to be when prostrate & persecuted under the Bolshevists?

What is really the function of the conscience in every man? "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord". That is a description of the conscience – the Divine light within. It shews what is right, & shows up what is wrong. But this function has a strictly limited sphere of exercise? The conscience cannot either direct the intellect or provide the aesthetic sense. It may function most freely & fully when the intellect is infantine and the aesthetic sense almost savage: it may fail to function precisely when the intellect is most highly developed & the aesthetic sense is keenest. An ignorant slave–girl perishing in the Roman amphitheatre illustrates the one; an Italian despot of the Renaissance, the other. Indeed the dissociation of the conscience from intellectual and aesthetic attainment is so apparent & so normal that it suggests inevitably the question whether there be not some inevitable antagonism between the ethical & the other essential factors of human nature, a question which sceptics & artists have not been slow to answer in the affirmative.

[180] [symbol]

But we cannot rightly make sharp distinctions. Truth & Beauty are Divine as well as Righteousness, & we may not sever science & art from morals. Yet it is apparent that in experience these are rarely harmonized. Humanity is familiar with the conflict between Culture and Religion, and it is notorious that the Church has its strongest hold on the least intelligent & educated sections of European society. Fanaticism is the prolific parent of every kind of evil. "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness!" said the Lord: & Religion degenerating into fanaticism ceases even to be moral. Hence the conscience revolts against the Church. Ecrasez l'infame was the involuntary protest of the individual conscience against a debased & tyrannous Church. But is not the Church led by its faith into a perilous contempt for secular obligations, so that orthodoxy comes to appear more important than morality? The argument for persecution is based on the intrinsic superiority of supra–mundane interests. Heresy which conflicts with eternal welfare is the worst offence, which at all hazards must be restrained. On the lines of that logic all the barbarities of the Christian persecutions find their justification. Secularism is the answer of humanity to the intolerable effects of Fanaticism: & Religion is finally crushed by its own excesses. Culture divorced from Morals sinks into decay & dissolution.

[181] [symbol]

The day was rainless and sultry. I spent almost the whole morning in writing letters. Among these was a letter of condolence to Mrs Darwin.

The newspapers announce the resignation of the Bishop of Wakefield. He has been 31 years a Bishop, first as Suffragan of Dover, and then as the Diocesan of Wakefield. Eden was the favourite disciple of Bishop Lightfoot, of whom he ever speaks with reverence & affection. His simple & loyal nature is extraordinarily attractive. Not in any sense a great man, he was obviously a good one. He was one of the many able men whom the Archbishop of Canterbury used to the full, & who never quite realized how much they sacrificed in his Grace's service. He was 'told off' to 'devil' in the matter of elementary schools. It was a veritable 'ploughing the sands', and has, of course, led to the impasse in which we now find ourselves. The problem of religious education in the State Schools was one of the 3 urgent problems which clamoured for solution when Abp. Davidson acceded to the primacy. Anglo–Catholicism and Modernism were the other two. In all three cases he has pursued the same policy of avoiding the real question, and taking refuge in a working pis aller: and he leaves us after 25 years with all problems unsolved on our hands.