The Henson Journals

[230]

Wednesday, August 20th, 1930.

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["[In brief, where the Scripture is silent the church is my text: where that speaks, 'tis but my comment: where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason.["]

Sir Thomas Browne

Ella and Fearne accompanied me to Shildon where I officiated at the marriage of the Vicar's daughter, Mary, to an old Dunelmian, Alexander Cavell, who is an assistant–master at the Leys School, Cambridge. There was a crowded congregation in the parish church, and evidently much popular goodwill. We stayed to drink the health of the newly–wedded pair, and then got away about 4 p.m. It was certainly "a pretty wedding".

A queer parson – the Rev. George Gordon, Waterton, Angmering – came to see me; he asked if I could give him some kind of roving commission in the diocese. I gave him tea, & said that I would consider his proposal.

Hague came to see me about being licensed.

[231]

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["]I love the Quakers, and I have great pleasure in seeing them in private, in society, and in their religious assemblies. They inspire me with involuntary admiration. Clothed with all that is most simple, plain, and modest, but at the same time, most neat, finished, and perfect, it has seemed to me that their mind shares in the whiteness of their beautiful linen, and must be as pure and as carefully tended as their clothes.["]

v. A journey through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784 by B Faujas de Saint–Fond ed. by Sir Archibald Geikie,2 vols. Glasgow. 1907

The French Geologist has left a charming description of the Quakers & their worship (p113–

120). Voltaire had made the sect fashionable in France, & Saint–Fond found his own favourable impressions deepened by personal acquaintance. He was, however, too sceptical & scientific to be taken in by the Quaker assumption that the speakers in the silent meetings were driven into speech by the pressure of the Holy Spirit. "Many of these discourses", he observes dryly "are below mediocrity".

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