The Henson Journals

[215]

Monday, May 26th, 1919.

I started to read Sorley's Gifford Lectures on "Moral Values & the Idea of God". Lord Haldane spoke highly of them, & they have been much praised by the reviewers. Moreover the thesis of a philosophy which is reached 'through morality' is inviting. I wrote to Arthur inviting him & his wife to visit us here. Beattie brought two Australians to see the roof of the Palace. They seemed to be intelligent young men. I wrote at some length to Sir Edward Clarke on the subject of amendments to the Enabling Bill. After lunch the Archdeacon of Hereford and Wynne–Willson conferred with me for an hour about the arrangements for the annual Meeting of Archdeacons and Rural Deans, on July 16, 17: and the Diocesan Conference on October 29, 30. Two young ladies, members of the Cousinhood, arrived on a visit. Then I wrote at some length to Lord Haldane about the Enabling Bill, keeping a copy of the letter. A typist from the city, Mrs Townsend, brought her machine to the Palace, and started to make two copies of so much of the Anson Memoir as has been written. The weather was so mild that we had tea out of doors, and walked in the garden after dinner. It is pleasant enough, but the ground is becoming very dry, and the farmers are beginning to clamour for rain. Motoring is more than ever handicapped by dust.

[216] [symbol]

May 26th 1919.

Dear Mr Thomas,

I am greatly obliged to you for your letter, and for the copy of the "Free Catholic" which I have read with much interest & sympathy. In the circumstances of the present very difficult time, I think that the maintenance of the English Establishment might best serve the cause of Reunion because it at least provides a frame–work into which the best & greatest part of English Christianity might be brought. If the Church of England be disestablished & disendowed, it will be thrown back on its purely denominational character: it will perforce emphasize its purely denominational characteristics: & these will foster the narrow & narrowing pseudo–Catholicism which the Non–jurors bequeathed to the Tractarians, & the Tractarians to Bishop Gore & his followers. Of course there is no promise of permanence in this sectarian–Catholicism: the law of gravity will operate, & the central mass of the Roman Church will attract its kindred fragments.

If the Church of England were sympathetically administered with the object of recovering the religious unity of the nation, I think much is even now possible. Interchange of pulpits, united services, intercommunion, and[217] [symbol]common theological colleges are all steps in the right direction: & I am for taking them. But the "self–government" agitation is vitiated by its medievalism, & promises, not "Life & Liberty", but rather the contrary.

I should like to know more of the Free Catholic Movement, & of the men who support it.

Believe me,

Yours v. faithfully,

H. H. Hereford

The Revd J. M. Lloyd Thomas.

The above was written in reply to a letter from Mr Thomas, with which was enclosed a copy of "The Free Catholic, the monthly organ of the Free Catholic Movement", of which he is the editor. In this letter he says, "your letters in the Times have, I confess, somewhat shaken me on questions of wider ecclesiastical statesmanship, though I cling to the dream of an international Catholicism as the highest hope of the League of Nations". The afternoon post brought from America an account of an experiment in reunion agreed upon by Episcopalians and Congregationalists. Among the latter were Newman Smythe, and Williston Walker: & among the former was Bishop Rheinlander and Zabriskie. These are straws showing the set of the wind.

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