The Henson Journals

[46]

13th Sunday after Trinity, September 2nd, 1928.

A beautiful autumnal morning, the sun conquering the mist & filling all things. I celebrated the Holy Communion in the chapel at 8 a.m. There were 14 communicants including John, the 3 Brydon boys, and 3 Ellands. The chapel in the sunshine looked extraordinarily beautiful. Neither Lambeth nor Bishopthorpe has anything so fair.

I spent the morning in reading through a book by the Revd Douglas S. Guy B. D. "Was Holy Communion instituted by Jesus?" It is published by the Student Christian Movement, and is a very thorough piece of work. Its conclusion is in substance orthodox, though it leaves the question open. In a note on the Anglican Prayer of Consecration he maintains the ligitimacy[sic] of using in the absence of any belief in the institution by Jesus:–

"So long as we feel, as we certainly may, & as almost all devout scholars do, that St paul had proper authority from the Christian Church for the statement, & that it rightly conveys the mind & intention of Jesus, we may well rest content to use the words which bring us as near the actual facts of the case as in God's providence we can get at present." p. 205.

Is that satisfying? Could it permanently satisfy?

[47]

This author is very confident that no ill consequence need follow the abandonment of the belief that Jesus Himself instituted the Sacrament as of perpetual obligation. But is his confidence reasonable? He, and all his generation, were bred in the belief which now, for critical reasons, he is prepared to surrender: and their feeling towards the Sacrament ^has^ survived the assumption on which originally it was based. But will this younger generation, taught from the first, that Holy Communion is an ecclesiastical development based, of course, on a Dominical tradition, but probably not directly ordained by the Lord, be able to think with the like reverence? Take the parallel case of the Scripture. We were assured with the utmost confidence that the acceptance of Biblical Criticism would increase the interest, & not reduce the authority, of the Bible. Has our experience confirmed this assurance? Is it not manifest that the younger generation, which never had held the Bible in awful regard as the very Word of God, is now very generally casting it aside as without any authority at all? The Christian tradition will not survive the abolition of its historic roots.

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