The Henson Journals

[27]

12th Sunday after Trinity, August 26th, 1928.

''Forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid''– this is one of those from the Prayer Book – and there are many such – which are entirely satisfying. A world of penitential self–analysis – tireless, futile, exquisitely painful – is gathered up in that simple reference to the fears of our conscience. Whatever face of pride we may succeed in presenting to others & to the great world, there is One in whose Presence we 'cannot so much as lift up our heads' and find ourselves perforce repeating the publican's prayer. 'God be merciful to me the sinner'. Our wounded vanity finds here its stern and sufficient corrective. The mirror is held up to ourselves, and we see what verily we are:

Best friends would loathe us if what things perverse

We know of our own selves, they also knew

Lord Holy One! If Thou who knowest worse

Shouldst loathe us too!

There is an immense attractiveness in the two positions – agnostic materialist and [saccrotalist] Christian – which, in different ways, the one by theory & the other by discipline, introduce a barrier, I might almost say a barricade, between the individual and his conscience: but both positions are impossible to a considering and educated believer. He must stand 'naked & laid open' before' the Judge within the breast.

[28]

Ella and I went to church, & received the Holy Communion together. It was a beautiful morning, fresh and bright. After breakfast, I walked with her in the garden, and again essayed the apparently hopeless task of making clear to her the reason why the situation which now confronts the Church in England is really not to be adequately covered by the formulae, which satisfied conservative Anglicans half a century ago. Modern democracy has taken away the Christian masque from the Pagan Countenance of European society. We have learned with the shock of surprize that the masses, previously silent & unregarded, though baptized, married, and buried with the rites of the Established Church, have never regarded themselves as members of a Christian Church, or consciously acknowledged any supreme authority in the Law of Christ. The explanation which M. Aulard offers of the painful facility with which Christianity was abolished in Revolutionary France holds mutatis mutandis of the strange inability of the Church of England to influence the English Parliament. The people generally are not, & never have been, deliberately Christian.

[29]

Pallinsburn i.e. Paulinus's burn, the brook in which the missionary baptized the crowds of tribesmen who hastened to follow their chieftain's example by professing the new religion – there is the key to our modern problem. It is common to speak of 'lapsed masses' but the phrase is ill–chosen, for they never have been so far Christians as to have anything from which to lapse. In the past they have obeyed authority, and authority has imposed on them a national system which was Christian. Now, at length, they are themselves in the seats of the mighty, and the national system is being re–shaped according to their own desires, and these do not often or easily accord with the faith & morals of Christ's Religion. Christianity for the general public is rather of 'pageants' then of principles. The ''No Popery'' prejudice disguises the absence of religious conviction, and the domestic conflicts of the Church of England provide excuses for a secularist habit. The Enabling Act brought into publicity the veiled weakness of the Establishment. After prodigious efforts carried on for nine years, no more than 3,500,000 persons above the age of 18, out of more than 20,000,000 could be induced to declare themselves members of the Church of England. The ecclesiastical pyramid stands on its apex.

[30]

[symbol] Not feeling able with adequate sincerity to join in the publick thanksgiving for the Kellogg Treaty called for by the two Archbishops, I did not attend Mattins but remained in my room & wrote letters to William, Ernest, and Kenneth.

Principal and Mrs Braley came to tea. I had much talk with him about education as it affects Ordination Candidates and the elementary school teachers whom he trains in Bede College (He said that most of them seem unable to move beyond matriculation level. They really seemed destitute of intellectual power.) He dilated on the low quality and habitual indolence of the county clergy, and instanced the Vicar of Duddington, a young unmarried man of 38, whom he found in bed when he called on him last week at 9.30 a.m.!

''We have the treasure in earthen vessels''

It is hardly less than a crime to place a man in the prime of his manhood in a little country parish, where the one problem of which he has to attempt the solution everyday of his life, is just how to pass 'the impractable hours' of an unoccupied & practically irresponsible life.

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