The Henson Journals

[21]

4th Sunday after Easter, May 18th, 1930.

Ella and I went to the Minster, and received the Holy Communion together at 8 a.m. The celebration was in the Lady Chapel, & the Dean was the Celebrant. The vast window looked sublimely beautiful: and everything was most solemn and dignified.

At 10.30 a.m. was mattins in the nave, when I preached to a congregation which filled, perhaps, three fourths of the floor. The loud–speaker seemed to act well, and though they are displeasing to the preacher, they are said to be welcome to his audience. There was a choral celebration after mattins, to which I stayed as a non–communicating worshipper. There was the utmost simplicity combined with a quiet dignity, entirely congruous with the great building.

We lunched with General and Lady Shute. They were most friendly, and assured me that my sermon to the troops had greatly impressed the men, a fact sufficiently certified by their abstinence from coughing. Normally, they almost drowned the sermon by their coughs. This, at last, was pleasant to hear. We motored to Bishopthorpe, and saw Mrs Temple and her mother. Temple himself was absent on some preaching engagement.

[22]

We attended Evensong in the nave of the minster. The singing of the choir is certainly greatly improved under the present organist, Dr Bairstow. A number of people came to tea, and among them Bex, the Editor of the Yorkshire Herald, once Editor of the Hereford Times. How well I remember the transformation of the latter from belittlement & even hostility to something which might almost be called admiration for the Bishop of Hereford. Well, well: one learns to be very indifferent to the praise and to the censure of local newspapers. I have experienced much of both, and all undeserved! There was also present a young clergyman named Lambert, who is a member of the Church Assembly. He seemed intelligent and disposed to be friendly. I was surprized at the dislike and contempt which he expressed for the Enabling Act, and the pretentious autonomy which is bestowed on the Church of England. If he is representative of the younger generation of clergy, then the Establishment has not many friends therein. The wheel has gone full circle.

[23]

["]With the same grace of style and the same keen perception of things, Renan was not unlike Newman. It is a remarkable coincidence that he practically left the Roman Church on October 9th, 1845, the very day on which Newman was received into it. Men may be divided into two classes according as they face onwards or backwards. And the tragedy of Newman's life, with his splendid gifts and unsurpassed powers, is that he was father of them that look back.["]

R. H. Murray. 'Studies in the English Social & Political Thinkers of the 19th century', p. 276.

Murray has a fondness for comparing great figures of opposed camps. Thus he places together Michelet and Carlyle, the idealists respectively of the Multitude and of the Strong Man. He has a pictorial genius, and readily seizes points of resemblance: but I am not quite so sure as to his critical judgement.

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