The Henson Journals

[253]

Monday, August 12th, 1929.

The choice of subjects for preaching becomes ever more difficult. There was little difficulty when as parish priest one had to preach every week continuously to one's own congregation. The appointed lections provided sufficiently for the topics on which to preach. But occasional preaching to special audiences stands on another footing. Sometimes, indeed, the occasion dictates the subject, but not always. Moreover, since the occasion & the audience are both abnormal, the sermon stands outside the course of one's regular study & personal interest, with the result that the work of preparation is rendered more difficult, & sometimes less attractive. It may necessitate turning away from the main line of personal interest & knowledge, & addressing one's self to the dreary & profitless effort of "vamping up" information ad hoc, than which no form of human endeavour is both more repulsive and more fruitless! I am pledged to preach four of these special sermons in the course of October and November at Durham, Nottingham, Edinburgh & Cambridge, & I am wholly at a loss for suitable subjects!

[254]

Royal supremacy entailed ecclesiastical uniformity; national religion destroyed the various uses, the local shrines, the side–chapels, & the particular altars of medieval veneration; & the aristocracy of saints submitted to the absolute monarchy of monotheistic doctrine just as the estates of the realm and the liberties of feudal magnates succumbed to the dogma of the sovereign state. The great rebellion was inevitably preceded by the new sovereignty; and the act of parliament, which had most to do with the execution of Charles I, was the act of 1534, which made the supreme head a stumbling–block to protestant religion and to independent members of the body of the church.

Pollard's "Wolsey." p.219.

This is as suggestive as it is certainly true. The first result of the Reformation was to make the Monarch absolute: but the later consequence was to arouse against all the forces of popular enfranchisement.

[255]

I resumed the dreary rôle of being painted. Afterwards, I took my Painter to Witton Castle, and had tea with Sir Edmund and Lady Chaytor. This was my first visit to this very interesting house, part of which dates from the 12th century.

The Dean's persistence with the perilous project of building a sacristy on to the Abbey is evidently arousing much hostility, which may well lead to highly unpleasant developments. It is certainly a very unfortunate circumstance that just at this juncture the question of ecclesiastical control of famous "national monuments" should be directly raised.

Mrs Darwin arrived on a short visit. She says that Katherine & her husband have been staying with her, and that both have abandoned church–going. I am not in the least surprized, for religion in her milieu had never been more than a convention, and in his something even less than that. But what must come of it all? These are the best of the generation now in power, what of the worst?

---