The Henson Journals

[83]

2nd Sunday after Epiphany, January 19th, 1930.

I slept badly last night, and spent much of it in reading a novel of Francis Brett Young – "Portrait of Clare" – a post–War production. The sense of failure has taken hold of me, and on all hands I find myself "at a loose end". I don't see the direction in which I ought to turn. The control of ecclesiastical affairs has passed out of my hands: and I am conscious of having lost such 'following' as I had. But that is not the worst. I am really perplexed in my own mind, & can no longer see my way in the vital matters of faith and morals. The 'Anglo–Catholicks' are to my thinking impossible: the 'Modernists' are destructive. 'Protestantism' is plainly moribund. I do not know how to express myself, and yet my position almost compels me to have a mind, and to utter it. I am no longer intelligible to the younger men, as I am no longer congruous with the older. It were easy, intelligible, and (in certain moods) attractive to go 'without the camp', but it would not be entirely honest, and could not be rightly done save under the coercion of a clear and constant conviction.

[84]

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the chapel at 8 a.m. We were 7 communicants including John. The epistle, with its call to an honest performance of immediate duties, was, perhaps, the message that I most ought to heed. "Mind not high things but condescend to things which are lowly."

I read through Bethune Baker's essay on 'Early Traditions about Jesus'. It is carefully written, but avoids any definite profession of belief in either the facts or the teachings of the New Testament. We are told what the early Church believed, & reminded of the gulf between the 1st century and the 20th.

"It is enough for us to note that if Jesus prescribed no definite organization for His disciples, yet by what he was & said & did He laid the foundation for the organization of the Church and the ministry & sacraments, which began at once to come into being."

So much is the verdict of History: the affirmation of Faith goes farther.

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