The Henson Journals

[34]

13th Sunday after Trinity, September 14th, 1930.

The Jewish conception of the Sabbath as a day of rest rather than the Christian conception of the Lord's Day as a day of Thanksgiving dominates the Scottish treatment of Sunday. While the Church, primitive, Catholick, and Anglican, inaugurates the "Easter Day in every week" with the Eucharist, these Presbyterians do not assemble for their "diet of worship" until noon, when the freshness of the day has given place to its heat. Their religious exercises do not generally extend beyond the said "diet", which is now limited to an hour and a half, or even less. Both in England and in Scotland the secularizing spirit of the modern world is transforming Sunday into "a bank–holiday every week". The transition from rest to recreation is easy and rapid. It is becoming general. As the organization of Sunday travel and amusement is perfected, the churches are emptied of all but the strongest believers, and these grow fewer as the years pass. What the future of religious observance is to be when Sunday is frankly secularized is [35] not hard to see. What rôle is left for an ordained ministry when Religion is generally severed from all traditional observances? Such questions are humiliating to ask, and their honest answering leads one into a profound melancholy.

Our hostess carried us to the parish church for the noontide service. There was a good congregation, and a fair proportion of men. We had a hymn for the children, but I could see hardly a child in the church. This paucity of children is a sad spectacle. The minister, Mr Rutherford, is a young man of handsome appearance. He has a strong voice, and a dramatic manner. The sermon from the text in the viiith Psalm,"What is man?" was too rhetorical, & apparently extemporaneous. Unless the preacher is careful, he will without doubt decline into a wind–bag: and this would be a pity, for I judge him to have the makings of a considerable preacher. However, the congregation listened very attentively, & was no doubt edified. We are often assured that the Scotch have an appetite for sermons, and these must be of a strong intellectual character. The truth is that sentimental sermonettes are as common in Scotland as in England.

[36]

A stout old minister, who had been in the congregation, was introduced to me after the service. He was the late minister of the parish, where he had held office for 44 years. It would be difficult to imagine a more complete contrast between him & his successor. I suspect that the presence of his predecessor in the parish, of which he takes a substantial part of the stipend, must be rather trying to MrRutherford, all the more trying if he possesses a popularity which the said predecessor never possessed.

MrDuncan's long tenure of the parish illustrates what is unquestionably a defect of the Scottish system – the immobility of the ministers. In England, the patronage, in spite of its theoretical absurdity, has greater elasticity, though even there dullness & incapacity have great staying power. It is curious that the only part of the English patronage system which is sound in principle, the episcopal patronage, is precisely that which is most loudly and generally denounced. The Evangelicals are convinced that their relative unimportance in the hierarchy is due to the unfairness of episcopal patrons. It is really due to their own illiteracy & fanaticism.

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