The Henson Journals

[13]

Monday, January 12th, 1931.

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A mild beautiful morning which, though frosty, was almost springlike. I spent the morning in adapting yesterday's sermon for use in Liverpool cathedral next Sunday. It doesn't please me, but it will have to serve.

I walked round the Park in the afternoon.

Some words of mine in Sunderland when I preached at the consecration of St Mary Magdalene's Church, & in the course of my sermon referred to Disestablishment as probably not a remote contingency, must have been reported in some Swedish newspapers, for I received from Gothenburg, a long & quite mad communication which jumbled up Disestablishment and the Peace of the World in an absurd mingle–mangle, & incidentally had an unkind reference to Söderblom as the winner of the Nobel prize.

Shebbeare, the Rector of Stanhope, has become Master of the Beagles. Ought I to indicate the disgust which I certainly feel at the announcement? If he were a good parish priest, known to have his heart in his spiritual work, his parishioners & neighbours might condone his action, but as he is quite notoriously a "slacker", they will not take it well. The growing sentiment against "blood sports" is gratuitously alienated.

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