The Henson Journals

[131]

Thursday, August 22nd, 1918.

1479th day

After a very hot night (hostile to sleep) another hot & brilliant day followed. I wrote to Streeter thanking him for his volume of essays and pointing out that in my judgement the writers had given too great importance to the tendencies & emotions created by the War, and that they had not realized sufficiently the difference between the physical and the spiritual spheres. For my part I preferred the frankly agnostic position with respect to those high themes rather than speculations which owed their authority to their congruity with emotions and aspiration which perhaps needed discipline rather than indulgence."The Times" contains two letters on "Reunion" both on my side, the one from the Dean of Worcester, the other from a Methodist minister named Harlow. T. A. Lacey has been appointed Canon of Worcester in succession to Knox Little. He is a member of the Council of the E.C.U., and can hardly be acceptable to the Dean and Canons. He has a vein of eccentricity in his character which tends to mitigate the rigidity of his orthodoxy, & latterly

he has professed a mighty affection for the Nonconformists.

[132]

Ella and Harold went to Canterbury in the motor omnibus. I sate in the garden & wrote letter to Archdeacon Winnington Ingram, Canon James, and Fleming. I worked after tea at the Warden's Journal. He records a story told at a dinner of "the Club" of a Quaker at a teetotal meeting who said he agreed with all the speakers, but would ask them to explain why he so liked his glass of beer!

A letter from Lady Carson asking us to tea this afternoon arrived about 7 o'clock. Ella wrote a note explaining the situation, and we walked round with it under the fullest & yellowest moon ever seen!

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