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
compos