The Henson Journals

[86]

Thursday, June 19th, 1930.

The torrid heat continues. Last night it was impossible to sleep, and I carried into the day the listlessness which a failure to sleep never fails to inflict.

I went to the Assembly & sat there until 12.30 noon, when I came away with the Bishop of Oxford. We drove to the Oxford University Press House in Amen Court, and there lunched with the secretary, Milburn, an able and amiable man. He told me that the sale of the Revised Bibles was still very small, but that of the Authorized Version continued very large.

We returned to the Assembly where a debate on Education was in progress. Colonel Martin moved a resolution welcoming the new Education Bill. This brought on to the platform a succession of "Die Hard" fanaticks, among whom the Bishop of S. Alban's was prominent. The probability that the motion would be defeated seemed so great that I moved the adjournment of the debate, and this motion was carried rather to my surprise.

[87]

[symbol]

The "Times" contained no report of my speech to the 'Individualists': but the Morning Post, the Daily Telegraph, the Yorkshire Post, and the Manchester Guardian had fair reports. The last paper described me as 'the new bishop of Durham'. There was a brief & spiteful snippet in the Daily Herald, to which it is probable that I owe the following epistle.

Midland Grand Hotel

17.VI.30

Dear Sir,

If you represent the spirit of the Church of England, then the sooner it is smashed to atoms the better. If you represent the spirit of Episcopacy, then the Church would be cleaner without Bishops. If you represent the spirit of Xty, it is no better than Bolshevism.

But you don't.

You are: egotistic, quarrelsome, dogmatic, contentious, bitter. What would Christ think of that?

It if had depended on the Church you would never have been made a bishop.

[88]

[symbol]

You were anathema to church people then. A politician made you a Bp. The church never would.

I suppose you were sick at not being made Archbp. Of Canterbury – or York at least.

Just clear out now, & never mind about Disestablishment. If we do disestablish, we shall take every building – every stone – every penny. Then you and your sort can go out into the highways, & see what you will get.

Yours

A Presbyter of 60 years.

This is the composition of a literary man, and in the hand–writing of a gentleman. It is difficult to imagine, still more difficult to understand, the frame of mind in which an educated man advanced in years, and professedly Christian could compose such a letter, & address it to a complete stranger.

---