Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality

by Harold Begbie

He early attained a high development, but he has not increased it since; years have come, but they have whispered little; as was said of the second Pitt, "He never grew, he was cast."—WALTER BAGEHOT.

Rumour has it that Dr. Henson is beginning to draw in his horns. Every curate who finds himself unable to believe in the Virgin Birth, so it said, feels himself entitled to a living in the diocese of Durham. They flee from the intolerant zealotry of the sacerdotal south to the genial modernism of the latitudinarian north.

But the trouble is, so rumour has it, these intelligent curates prove themselves but indifferent parish priests. Dr. Henson has to complain. The work of the Church must be carried on. Evangelicalism seems a better driving force than theology. Dr. Henson has to think whether perhaps . . .

One need not stop to ask if this version is strictly true. The fact seems to emerge that the Bishop of Durham, one of the ablest intellects in the Church of England, and hitherto one of the strongest pillars of modernism, is beginning to speak theologically with rather less decision.

Let us at least express the pious hope that the Dean of Durham, Dr. Welldon, has had nothing to do with it. A greater man than Dr. Henson, a greater scholar and a profounder thinker, has spoken to me of this new movement in the Bishop's mind with a deep impersonal regret. Modernism will go on; but what will happen to Dr. Henson? "A man may change his mind once," he said; "but to change it twice—"

The words of Guicciardini came into my mind, "The most fatal of all neutralities is that which results not from choice, but from irresolution."

There is much to be learned, I think, from a study of Dr. Henson's personality. He stands for the moment at a parting of the ways, and it will be interesting to see which road he intends to take; but the major interest lies in his abiding psychology, and no change in theological opinions will affect that psychology at all. Attach to him the label of "modernist" or the label of "traditionalist," and it will still be the same little eager man thrusting his way forward on either road with downward head and peering eyes, arguing with anyone who gets in his way, and loving his argument far more than his way.

When he was at Oxford, and was often in controversial conflict with Dr. A.C. Headlam, now Regius Professor of Divinity, Dr. Hensley Henson earned the nickname of Coxley Cocksure. Never was any man more certain he was right; never was any man more inclined to ridicule the bare idea that his opponent could be anything but wrong; and never was any man more thoroughly happy in making use of a singularly trenchant intellect to stab and thrust its triumphant way through the logic of his adversary.

It is said that Dr. Henson has had to fight his way into notice, and that he has never lost the defect of those qualities which enabled him so victoriously to reach the mitred top of the ecclesiastical tree. He has climbed. He has loved climbing. Perhaps he has so got into this bracing habit that he may even "climb down," if only in order once more to ascend—a new rendering of reculer pour mieux sauter. I do not think he has much altered since he first set out to conquer fortune by the force of his intellect, an intellect of whose great qualities he has always been perhaps a little dangerously self-conscious.

Few men are more effective in soliloquy. It is a memorable sight to see him standing with his back to one of the high stone mantelpieces in Durham Castle, his feet wide apart on the hearth-rug, his hands in the openings of his apron, his trim and dapper body swaying ceaselessly from the waist, his head, with its smooth boyish hair, bending constantly forward, jerking every now and then to emphasise a point in his argument, the light in his bright, watchful, sometimes mischievous eyes dancing to the joy of his own voice, the thin lips working with pleasure as they give to all his words the fullest possible value of vowels and sibilants, the small greyish face, with its two slightly protruding teeth on the lower lip, almost quivering, almost glowing, with the rhythm of his sentences and the orderly sequence of his logic. All this composes a picture which one does not easily forget. It is like the harangue of a snake, which is more subtle than any beast of the field. One is conscious of a spell.