BISHOP OF DURHAM FAINTS IN PULPIT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17830, 26 April 1926, Page 6

BISHOP OF DURHAM FAINTS IN PULPIT.

WHEN SPEAKING ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. LONDON. March 2. The Bishop of Durham (Dr Hensley Henson) while preaching at the Westminster Congregational Church, London, had a fainting fit and was unable to conclude his sermon. lie had been making an earnest appeal against the secularisation of schools and the general tendency to reversion to paganism, with special reference to the possible developments of Russian Bolshevik anti-religious influences, when it became apparent that he was speaking with difficulty. The acting pastor, the Rev Arthur ITird, handed the Bishop a glass of water, and, reviving a little, he bravely endeavoured to conclude his discourse, but to the consternation of the congregation his head dropped slowly, and for a moment he stood supported by the reading desk, his face resting on the typescript of his sermon. Help was at once to hand, and Dr Henson was led to a chair and attended by Dr Frederick Price, of Harley Street. In a little while he had recovered, and was able to sit while the service proceeded to its conclusion.

Informing the congregation that the Bishop would not be able to conclude his sermon, the Rev Arthur Ilird mentioned that Dr Ilenson had caught a cold while attending one of the debates in the House of Lords during last week and was suffering from neuralgia. The Bishop, he added, would not have spoken that evening but for his tremendous anxiety to deliver his message with regard to Christian teaching and modern education tendencies. They would be glad to know that the Bishop was recovering from his indisposition and would soon be well again, and they all deeply sympathised with him and were The Bishop of Durham was able to walk down the steps of the platform to the vestry, where he rested for a while before being taken to the home of his host. Dr Henson in his sermon spoke of the growth of Christianity into historical form and said that it would long operate as a restraining force in modern democracy, but the pace could not be maintained if Christian faith failed to find popular acceptance. “ We cannot ignore the formidable fact,” he said, “ that the masses of the people have never been Christian in any definite or effective sense.” There was some danger that the churches absorbed in their own activities and living in an artificial world of their own, were ignoring the general movement of society and failing to realise either the character or the magnitude of the calamity which it portended. The enemies of modern civilisation did not hide their light under a bushel. They made no secret of their aims and methods, and realised that in the school lay the key to everything* Let them have the shaping of the child and they could determine the type of the citizen. He thought it was regrettable that the atrocity and horror of he Russian revolution had largely obscured from English people its sinister significance. It was not enough for the children of Russia that they should know nothing of Christianity but they must be taught to hate and to despise it. In the report, of the British Trades Union delegation to Russia there was a profoundly disquieting absence of any condemnation, still less of any abhorrece of the bitter hatred of the Chris tian faith and morals which it describ pH. There was no disagreement as to the fact and there was a hardly concealed approval of it. “ Brethren,” he added, “ we shall be blind indeed if we do not see the lurid danger signal which Russia has raised before our eyes, and we shall be verily something worse than foolish if seeing it we yet refuse to

give heed to the warning it conveys.” It was not often that an English bishop enjoyed the privilege of joining in Nonconformist worship and addressing a Nonconformist congregation, and they should pardon him for having seized the opportunity of .focussing the attention of Nonconformists on this grave situation into which our English education was steadily moving. The Bishop was proceeding to express the view that the dual svstem which came into existence in IS7O, and was recast in 1592, was doomed, and was asking what was to take its place when he was stopped by his fainting fit.