The Henson Journals

[77]

16th Sunday after Trinity, October 5th, 1930.

Summer time ended last night. The morning was brilliant, and we started the day at a riper stage of its matutinal glory. The Chapel, illumined by the sun, was most beautiful, & did its full part in assisting our Eucharistic worship. I celebrated the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. We numbered 12 communicants, of whom six were males!

Olaf writes to his father from Peshawar where he has been in the midst of the riots:–

"I should think a Peshawar City crowd is more bestial than any other in the world. They yell, & foam at the mouth, their eyes get bloodshot & they look just like a pack of carnivorous animals."

The description may be set beside S. Luke's account of S. Stephen's Martyrdom:– "Now when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, & they gnashed on him with their teeth …… they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, & rushed upon him with one accord." These Orientals are fiendish when excited, as we have been recently reminded by events in Palestine and China, not to say also, India.

[78]

I stayed in my study all day, save when I left it for meals, & for an hour's walk in the Park with Ella. I wrote letters and read. It is not often that I have no preaching somewhere in the diocese on Sunday, but the frequent addresses during the week, and many engagements, make it impossible for me to prepare sermons, and I do not like to preach without careful preparation. It might be urged that, in the present shortage of clergy, I might read the service & celebrate in the parish churches, but (though, of course, a clear necessity would certainly require me to do so) I do not think it wd be prudent to "cheapen" the Bishop too much, nor shd the people think that he is a kind of "reserve man" to be called on for any & every emergency.

It is, perhaps, an indication of the loss of consequence that has befallen the Episcopate, that I received last week from a firm of estate agents an inquiry as to my willingness to sell Auckland Castle. I was assured that a possible purchaser had appeared. The end is visibly approaching.

[79]

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I wrote to the Bishop of Liverpool definitely declining his proposal that I should collaborate in a project to publish a series of brief expositions of the Report of the Lambeth Conference designed to demonstrate the relevance of the said Report to the actual needs and aspirations of modern folk. I doubt if I could bring myself to collaborate in such a scheme even if I were really in harmony with its object, for I cannot write in the bondage of such collaboration. In this case, I am not sufficiently enamoured of the Lambeth Report to accept the task of urging its claims on the public. Inevitably, I should adopt the tone of a critic, perhaps even a hostile critic: and then my inclusion in the number of co–operating writers could not but acquire an anomalous & bizarre aspect. The extreme gravity with which most of the Bishops speak about the Lambeth Resolutions, as if they did really bring light into the darkness, affects me with sentiments of wonder and amusement. How anyone who was actually present at the discussions, and observed the conditions under which these Resolutions were finally shaped & adopted, can attach much weight to them passes my understanding.

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