The Henson Journals

[109]

Thursday, May 30th, 1929.

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"'Free Churches' there are in Christendom today – a great variety of them: of State Churches also a few remain, with their proper character as branches of Christ's Church Catholic only too visibly affected, so that in the instance nearest to ourselves, for example, the believers are not even free to worship God after the manner they desire. But a church unimpaired in her supernatural character and unhindered in her spiritual activities, and at the same time in friendly concert with the temporal power, whose Christian character she is to secure while herself in turn secured by it in her peculiar rights & privileges – where else, I repeat, has such an arrangement, so honourable to both, been reached? It has been reserved, so far as I know, for the Church & nation of our fathers only."

Principal Martin D. D.

U. F. C. of S. Moderator. 1929

[110]

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The General Election takes place today. No less than 28,600,000 persons above the age of 21 have the right to vote. Of these the majority are women, who for the first time are treated as in all respects politically equal to men. The questions, to which the decision at the polls must provide the answers, are numerous, complicated, and extremely important: but the choice of the electors is restricted to one of three persons – Baldwin, Macdonald, & Lloyd George. Virtuous mediocrity is distinctive of the first: vapourous [sic] idealisation of the second, and vulpine bombast of the third! It is not an attractive or a satisfactory prospect. The main feature of the election has been the apathy of the electors: and the only safe forecast of the result is that there will be unusually large abstention from voting at all, & that no party will secure a working majority. It is certain that the Government will lose many seats, and that the Liberals will gain many. It is also certain that 'Labour' will carry the industrial districts, & probable that it may poll more votes than either of the other parties.

[111]

"Incorruptibility in the Examination room is as much a late product of modern civilization as incorruptibility upon the judicial Bench."

Rashdall. Universities 1. 458

Rashdall's discussion of the value of a medieval Degree in Arts is illuminating. "The actual rejection of a candidate must have been a matter of the rarest possible occurrence. ." But there was some educational value in the disputations which had to be gone through & the lectures which had to be attended. "It is probable that incompetent students were more often prevented from entering at all by laziness or conscious incapacity or a hint from their Masters than actually rejected at the Examination itself." More importance was attached to conduct & character than to passing Examinations. "Thus at Vienna we find that in 1449 of forty–three Candidates for the License seventeen were rejected" all for other causes than failure in the Examination.

'It may be laid down as a general principle in all spheres of medieval life that rich and noble persons enjoyed in practice exceptional privileges.'

Universities were in nowise exceptional.

[112]

Pattinson came to lunch. I proposed to him that he should accept appointment as temporary chaplain. If experience showed that his ability and temperament proved his competence for the post, I would consider a permanent appointment. He accepted this proposal with apparent alacrity. After he had gone, Lionel and I walked round the Park. Dick came to consult me about an offer which he had received from the Evangelical Pastoral Aid Society. He is asked to become Secretary with a stipend of pounsign500 per annum. I advised him on no account to put his neck into the noose of a partisan trust. He said that his own judgement inclined to the same conclusion. This pleased me, but it means that I must accept more responsibility for his career than I would like! He has done well, & will merit preferment.

We had tea in the garden, a circumstance which attests the warmth of the weather. After Dick had left, I read Rashdall's interesting and immensely learned History of the Universities. A notice in the Times Literary Supplement announces that 'Disestablishment' will be published tomorrow at the price of 4/6.

[113]

"However the title originated, the office is clearly an imitation of the Parisian Chancellorship. It is the Cathedral dignity reproduced in a University Town which possessed no Cathedral. And this fact is the key to the peculiar character of the Oxford Chancellorship – its almost unique combination of the functions of a continental Chancellor with those of a continental Rector . . . . . "

"At Oxford all the causes which would tend to throw the Chancellor into collision with the University were absent. The Chancellor was a member of no hostile corporation: he owed his own existence to the University. The Bishop was too far off, and his diocese too enormous, to meddle much with the details of administration . . . . ."

"The Chancellor, by becoming dependent on the University, made himself practically more & more independent of the Bishop from whom he derived his authority."

Rashdall. ii. p. 355f

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