The Henson Journals

[450]

Wednesday, August 16th, 1916.

744th day

The Revd Frank C. Rollin, a son of a chemist in Durham, now a Congregational minister near Bradford, called to ask me to address a meeting of ministers in Bradford. This request I declined, and had some conversation with him. He said that he had been in South Africa during the war, and that the South African Church had received a great accession of strength from the British Army, which treated it as if it were the established Church! He anticipated that the present War would strengthen the Church of England. Many Nonconformists, 'going with the multitude', had registered themselves as Anglicans, had attended Anglican Church Parades, & become familiar with the Anglican service. They would probably not revert to Nonconformity later. He said that Anglicanism had made considerable advance in Bradford during recent years, but almost wholly 'High Church' Anglicanism: that Congregationalism had tried to propitiate Socialism, which is very strong in that city, by affecting to approve it, & had lost influence, for Socialism remained extremely anti–Christian.

[448]

A thunderstorm in the afternoon brought a rain–fall of tropical violence. The Chapel was flooded, the drains being quite inadequate to such a deluge. The Charnwoods arrived about 3 p.m., and attended Evensong with me. Gee arrived at tea–time. I had some conversation with him about the Report of the Archbishops' Committee on Church & State. He was a member of that Committee, and ought not to have signed it. He told me that the Duke of Devonshire scarcely ever attended, & then was mostly asleep: that the Bishop of Liverpool took practically no part in the proceedings: that the whole business was from the first in the hands of Gore, Frere, & Hugh Cecil. This, of course, is precisely what I had conjectured. Gee also told me that the Archbishop of Canterbury expresses himself as highly delighted with the Report, and has written with effusive gratitude to the members of the Committee. It is evident that his Grace has now 'gone over' to the neo–Tractarian camp; and that we must henceforward make our count with the fact. This "Report" will 'torpedoe' the whole case for 'Establishment'. It is very difficult to repudiate its claim to be a representative statement: and, if that character must be conceded, the claim of the Church of England to remain 'established and endowed' cannot possibly be maintained. The Master of Balliol's name might almost seem to preclude the notion of sacerdotalism: Dr Gee is reputed to be an Evangelical, yet both men sign without indication of dissent a report which might have been drafted by Gore & Frere. It is one more amazing example of the futility of these "hybrid" Committees, where zealots are combined with some indifferent or feeble exponents of general interests. It is the easiest thing in the world for the first to hoodwink and exploit the last.

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