The Henson Journals

[110]

Saturday, January 5th, 1918.

1251st day

The plot thickens. Gore sends me a printed appeal which he is sending to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and apparently to all the Bishops, praying them to refuse consecration. He accompanies it with a private letter, affectionately worded, to myself. I received from Archdeacon Lilley and Prebendary Wynne–Willson accounts of the proceedings in the Chapter–meeting at Hereford.

The "Times" contains a long letter from Sanday headed "Modern Belief" in which he assumes my defence. It must needs have the effect of adding gravity to the controversy raised by the E.C.U. The doctrinal issue raised by Gore is raised also by Sanday: and for the second time the two men will confront one another as opponents.

I gave away the Prizes to the choristers: walked with Gilbert Darwin: wrote to Sanday: and attended the entertainment at the Choir School.

The afternoon post bought me two long letters from the Bishops of London and Winchester, expressed in terms of almost excessive courtesy, and pressing me to make some declaration of personal belief, which would relieve their minds & that of those who thought with them. Such appeals come too late when Gore has printed his appeal against my consecration. Nor do I trust the writers sufficiently to be inclined to regard their advice as dis–interested. They want to "save their face".

[111]

To the Rev. Canon Sanday

My dear Dr Sanday,

I am really very much bound to you for your very generous defence of me, which I value the more as, for reasons which need no stating, I cannot for the present defend myself. The method of the attack now being engineered by the English Church Union is extremely unfair and injurious. Sentences are torn from my books without regard to occasion, context, argument, or purpose, woven into an invidious whole, and published broadcast in an envelope of malignant innuendo. I am openly threatened with insult & boycott within the diocese, &, indeed, referred to in terms wh. might suggest that I was a convicted felon! This, however, is normal in the circumstances. It is the case, & your advocacy makes it plain to the world, that the issue at stake is not merely personal, but public. New Testament criticism with its inevitable bearings on the Creeds stands now where Old Testament Criticism stood a generation ago. To permit Liberal Churchmen to hold the inferior positions, and to proscribe them from the superior, is really to offer them an insulting toleration instead of their birth–right of full recognition in the National Church. I owe you so much, & I revere you so much, that I find a real joy in being counted with you in this difficult but honourable conflict.

Sincerely & gratefully,

H. Hensley Henson

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