The Henson Journals

[362]

Thursday, October 3rd, 1929.

A most beautiful morning but with an autumnal keenness in the air. Yesterday's gale has withered & scattered the leaves from the trees.

Ella, as I expected, is replenishing her supply of "Protestant" fervour for the Establishment by the company she keeps at the St Paul's Deanery. She writes to me in the approved style of censure, ignoring as they all do, the salient & determining factor in the situation, and assuming that nothing but an almost insanely eccentrick individualism can have induced me to say that I can no longer defend the Establishment. Did a man's wife ever help him at a pinch when his duty and his interest pulled in opposite directions? I doubt it. Women are more tenacious of their causes than men, & less influenced by principle. In this case I really do not think that the dear lady has any real grasp of the issues involved, & simply can't get away from the assumptions & phrases of respectable "Society"!

[363]

"To reconcile the rigour and activity of this [Presbyterian] censorship of morals with its small apparent result is perhaps the most perplexing problem of the Scottish Reformation. With all its great qualities, Scotland has never stood high either in chastity or in sobriety among the nations of Europe: & the ecclesiastical records bewail at all times the astounding iniquity of the people ……. Nor should we fail to note that a certain unnatural vice made its appearance in Scotland soon after the Reformation, which is said to have been quite unknown there before. In 1570 two men were burnt at Edinburgh for this offence: & the vice grew to alarming proportions in the noontide of Protestantism about the middle of the next century."

v. Mathieson. Politics & Religion in Scotland. 1550–1595

vol. I. 188f

Here is food for reflection.

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