The Henson Journals

[460]

Tuesday, August 8th, 1916.

736th day

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The post brought me a letter from Gilbert. He is in hospital with a wound which he describes as very trivial. He received it in a very desperate situation, which he describes very vividly. I thought the letter sufficiently interesting to send on to Lord Durham.

Mrs Salvin came to lunch. The Vicar of Muggleswick called to ask me to preach at his Harvest Thanksgiving on the 29th Sept:, & I promised to do so.

I read the Report of the Archbishops' Committee. It really is in some respects a curiously childish document. Gore & Frere call the tune throughout. A. L. Smith is quite conspicuously fatuous: he writes in conjunction with a fool called Kemp; & Douglas Eyre is as absurd as a saint of his order might be expected to be. The only element of common sense is provided by Sir Lewis Dibdin who contributes a criticism of Frere, which knocks the bottom out of his special pleading. The real difficulty in the existing situation is never even alluded to, but the ridiculous assumption is tacitly made that it does not exist. What is that difficulty but the inner division of the Church of England? The Archbishops & Bishops affect to speak as if they were the spokesmen & leaders of an united church, whereas they know but too well, and all the world knows, that the English Church is split from top to bottom by the unconfessed schism of the Tractarians. The break–down of the Establishment, which is offered as the reason for these essays in constitution making arises from no vice in the Establishment, but from the circumstances that a large & growing section of High Churchmen repudiate its terms. Would these men be satisfied & reconciled by the system proposed in this Report? Assuredly not, & the mass of ordinary Englishmen, whose only complaint is that the terms of Establishment are so generally repudiated by the Tractarian clergy, would probably be alienated altogether.

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