The Henson Journals

[95]

Saturday, January 26th, 1929.

A fair and frosty day, healthy & good for work. Lionel returned about prayer time, & later went through the bag of accumulated letters. I worked at the Preface, & wrote to George Macmillan suggesting that, as his firm published "The National Church" twenty years ago, so it should publish the epilogue on Disestablishment.

Mr Charles Ian Pettitt, a student from S. Chad's, came to lunch, and afterwards walked round the Park with me. He applies for Ordination, & offers as his title the Assistant Chaplaincy of St Chad's.

I worked at the Preface, which becomes more unsatisfactory, the longer it grows! Now it occurs to me to divide it into two portions, of which the first will be apologetic, and the last expository. It seems unadvisable, since I have cast the fat into the fire, not to grasp the nettle boldly (what a mixture of metaphors to be sure!) and strip the conventional effectiveness from the stock arguments against Disestablishment. I shall certainly make myself yet once more the most odious person in the Church, but that is after all a familiar situation: and I must not "fall between the two stools", by standing at last for nothing!

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