The Henson Journals

[66]

Thursday, February 12th, 1931.

A brilliant morning and a bitter wind. Bishop Stubbs in his Charge to the Diocese of Chester (October, 1886) asks a question – "Who is entitled to call himself a layman of the Church of England?" And he answers thus "A lay member of the Church who is to be qualified to make any claim [to the exercise of control in Church matters] must surely be one who is habitually a partaker of the sacraments and ordinances of the Church, & who has never by any act of disobedience or schism separated himself from her Communion.

Stubbs was greatly afraid that the establishment of parish councils would lead to "the work falling into unfit hands, the hands of the excitable, the idle, and the polypragmosynic" [[Greek characters] the character & conduct of the [Greek characters] curiosity, officiousness, meddlesomeness. The epithet was often given to the restless Athenians esp. by their political opponents, as in the plays so entitled by Timocles, Diphilus, and Heniochus. L. & S.]

Our experience under the Enabling Act, has more than justified the fears which Stubbs expressed: and we are only at the beginning of our troubles, for the system is not yet really operating.

[67]

["]You may take it from me, as one of the results of a life of much study of one sort or another, the warning that there is no real power in paradox, and that where a book bases its claim on startling revelations, its conclusions are apt to be either very old or very false.["]

Bishop Stubbs, Charge, 1893.

"He often preached particularly at his Ordinations, & usually with great intensity and purpose" – this precedent of Stubbs, when Bishop of Chester might be conveniently followed sometimes by the Bishop of Durham. [v. Letters p. 260, 278.

I frittered away the morning in the vain attempt to compose an address for the Diocesan Conference. In the afternoon I walked round the Park with the doctor. Hibbs, the curate of S. Patrick, Spen, one of the hamlets of Winlaton came to see me. He is quarrelling miserably with his Rector, who, if his resentment did not wholly pervert his opinions, is heading for a scandal. Our weak point in this diocese is beyond all question the poor quality of the incumbents. Forster, a student of S. Chad's, came to see me. He aspires to be ordained at Trinity next year.

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