The Henson Journals

[126]

Saturday, August 17th, 1918.

1475th day

My letter on "Reunion" appeared in "The Times". It takes the place of the religious article, with which the Saturday issue of that journal is now generally adorned. The post brought a letter from Fawkes from which I gather that the "Liberal" clergy are alarmed at the prospect of being called upon to justify their orthodoxy on appointment to ecclesiastical office. They incline to interpret the Archbishop's treatment of me as an attempt on his Grace's part to secure an extra–legal profession of faith. This may be a natural, but is none the less an inaccurate, interpretation of the events.

I wrote at some length to Fawkes, printing out that Gore's formal protest placed the Abp in a position of some difficulty, from which he emerged perhaps as well as anyone had any right to expect.

[127]

A layman from Kendal sends me his pamphlet on "the Virgin Birth". He examines the Scriptural evidence with considerable acuteness, and decided on that basis against the dogma. He ignores altogether the question of ecclesiastical authority which is, however, the determining factor with our "Catholicks". Also the fanatick, Abbey, sends his demented letters to the Archbishop on the subject of unfermented wine in the Holy Communion. There is no such fanaticism as this half–educated fanaticism which argues pertinaciously and perversely, ignoring all the broad certainties, & building elaborate structures of inference from the trivial dubieties! The disquieting circumstance is the new energy which these Tee–total maniacs are drawing from the advent of America in force on this side of the Atlantic. Prohibitionism is coming over with the transports, and we have prepared it a warm welcome by enfranchising 8,000,000 women. I can have no doubts that my own inability to repeat the Tee–total shibboleth is a very formidable obstacle in the way of my efforts to bring the Nonconformists into line with the Church. The "Nonconformist conscience" is most sensitive and the same time most perverse on this point. It appeals most strongly to the illiterate rank and file, who have no moderating knowledge, and whose experience lies precisely in those regions of society in which drunkenness seems to be the all–embracing enemy. The low intellectual plane on which Nonconformists live and think is of all my difficulties the most perplexing and the most considerable.

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