The Henson Journals

[119]

Monday, June 3rd, 1929.

The post brings acknowledgement of 'Disestablishment' from divers of the clergy, and bishops. Save for a characteristically brusque condemnation from Headlam, there were no comments or criticisms worthy of notice.

Dearmer in 'The Parson's Handbook' p. 200 gives some account of the practice of sitting for the Psalms, which is now being adopted by the extreme Anglo–Catholicks. It seems to be connected with the Puritan objection to chanting the Psalms. The minister read them to the people who were commonly too illiterate to read them alternatively with him. Hooker (E. P. Bk V. ch. 37) insists that the Psalms must not be read by the minister only. The peculiar excellence of the Psalms is the reason for the importance given to them:

"This is the very cause why we iterate the Psalms oftener than any other part of Scripture besides; the cause wherefore we inure the people together with their minister, and not the minister alone to read them as other parts of Scripture he doth".

If the Psalms be regarded as praise, & not as lesson, they ought plainly to be said or sung standing.

[120]

The Headmaster of Leatherhead wrote to tell me that John McKitterick would leave the school at the end of this term in order to go to Cambridge. He asked me whether I would transfer my payment of school fees to a younger McKitterick, who will be at the school for some years. At first I resolved to refuse the proposal as I want to free myself from continuing financial claims: but, on reflection, I thought it would be base to withdraw this assistance from Mrs McKitterick, who appears to be an excellent mother.

But it is a serious matter for a man in his 66th year to accept responsibility for the education of a boy of 14. In this case the direct burden is comparatively petty, but one thing leads on to another, and it is always difficult, & often painful, to terminate a human relationship. I have no personal interest in either of these boys, for beyond confirming the elder in his father's church at Gateshead, I have had nothing to do with either of them. Yet expectations grow in young minds like weeds in a fat soil: & it is always ill to disappoint the young.

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