The Henson Journals

[190]

Saturday, August 11th, 1928.

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A dull, sunless but warm morning. I sate about in the garden talking to Jack until Ella & Fearne arrived about noon. We all motored to Kelso, where Jack took the train to Edinburgh. On our way home Ella cunningly inveigled me into calling on some of her friends, & being "let in" for tea. I was as ill–tempered as the circumstances permitted, and found it difficult to recover my good humour. Shall I ever discover the processes of the female mind?

The church papers make extracts from my article in the Bishoprick adding observations of an unfriendly character. Of course they overflow with laudations of the new Primates. I wonder what they would have said if I had been appointed! They would have been festive reading.

Vernon Storr writes: "I had hoped that you might have been offered one of the Primacies, as I think did many. But you have a unique position at Durham, only it is rather far away from the centre of things."

I think it will be the case that I shall withdraw more and more from affairs in London, and "peter out" quietly in the diocese. It is hardly possible for me to play any useful rôle in the doubtful & shadowed interval before the final catastrophe befalls the Establishment.

[191]

In what sense can it be truly said that the Church is the conscience of the nation? The crucial terms 'Church', 'conscience', 'nation' require precise definition for it is obvious that all are used in applications which are, so to speak, artificial. We may postulate, then, that by the Church we understand all the individuals within the Nation who profess to live as members of the society of Christ's followers, that by 'conscience' we mean that element within the community which is properly analogous to that faculty of the individual man which is called his conscience, or moral sense, or (in the Bible) his spirit, that by the nation we mean the society commonly so described, socially homogeneous and politically unified. In what sense do the professed Christians within the State operate as its conscience. We must inquire how the conscience operates within the individual? "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord", says the Hebrew sage. The conscience is a principle of moral discernment, the power of illumination. "Thy word is a light unto my path" says the Psalmist. But more than a guiding light, the conscience is a judge, passing verdicts on conduct, & always doing so with Divine authority. "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we boldness toward God", says S. John. How far does the church give moral guidance to the Nation, & judge its formal procedures?