The Henson Journals
Mon 8 December 1930
Volume 51, Pages 194 to 195
[194]
Tuesday, December 8th, 1930.
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The Times has an obituary notice of Sir Henry Graham, whose death at the advanced age of 88 has just been announced. He was living in the Palace of Westminster while I was rector of S. Margaret's, and he was a regular member of my congregation. I came into personal contact with him when his daughter Elsie's infatuation for Harold Knowling, then a solo–boy in The Choir, began to attract attention. His consent to their marriage seemed to me creditable to him, and seemed to be working out very happily, until the Great War carried Harold out of the country and into vicious courses. It is a sad story.
Ella's state begins to cause me anxiety. Dr Wardle surprised me by saying that she was very nervous about herself, and that she "looked older than her age" (61). I have always supposed that she was of an unusually placid disposition, &, in my eyes, she looked young. But I think she may have been more shocked than I realized by Mary Maxwell's death, and she has certainly rushed about far more than is good for her. My protests have been both unceasing & unavailing. In that matter she would have her way.
[195]
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"I wish our scientific friends were more ready to recognize that the natural language of devotion is poetry, not science. Poetry as its own wat of conveying the truth, higher truth it may be, than can be expressed in the language of science, but at any rate a different way. A man who interrupted a violin solo by saying "The fellow is only dragging the tail of a dead horse across the entrails of a dead cat" would be a nuisance. So is a man who wants to bring a test tube to a Catholic Eucharist. The faithful often use very materialistic language, I know: but the Sacrament is a sacred drama for them, and they don't want to have their attention called to the stage properties. Even the main doctrines of our faith – the risen & ascended Christ on God's right hand – the future life and the abodes of bliss and woe – are all pictorial and symbolical. They are true in their contrast, not when they are taken out of it. This is what the vulgar rationalist never understands. For him life is as common and as free from mystery as a Bank Holiday crowd".
Inge, a broad–cast address on "Science & Religion". Times, Dec 8th, 1930.