The Henson Journals

[102]

Saturday, February 2nd, 1929.

Eleven years ago on this day, I was consecrated a bishop in Westminster Abbey. I was then the most abhorred clergyman in England: I suspect that I am as much now. Then I was decried as a "heretick": now I am denounced as a kind of episcopal Jacobin. Probably there was an element of truth in the one description: whether there is any in the other I am more doubtful. I hate change intensely, but I hate the hollow fiction of pretending no–change, when all has changed. Undoubtedly, fortune has treated me ill in these last months. My personal position became so inextricably entangled in the fate of the Revised Prayer Book, that when the last miscarried, I was professionally "finished". And what does that matter? When one has lived more than 65 years in the world, one has few illusions left, and no ambitions. My principal anxiety now is how to carry the waxing burden of the bishoprick until I can decently lay it down.

[103]

I motored to Durham, & presided at a meeting of the Missions Board. Old fat Wykes resigned the Secretaryship which he has held for 21 years. I made a flatterous speech, & then we elected Shaddick as his successor.

I read through Norman Sykes's little pamphlet on "Church & State in England since the Reformation", which he sent me with a request that I should read it. I was able to tell him that in my judgment it was an admirable summary of the facts, & in its opinions very just. He is evidently a Modernist and an Erastian, but neither his Modernism nor his Erastianism is paraded offensively.

The Times states that the Pope is going to convene an Ecumenical Council in 1930. In that case, the Lambeth Conference will be rather overshadowed. Like S. Gregory Nazianzen I doubt if any real advantage to the Church comes from assemblies of the Bishops.

---