The Henson Journals

[184]

Friday, October 20th, 1922.

Twenty years ago Ella and I were married in Westminster Abbey. We are now growing old, and for childless people, age brings a deepening loneliness. Her increasing deafness if isolating us even from one another. I have lived to see the Marriage of the Clergy openly denounced by a considerable body of English Clergymen, without moving the resentment of any large part of the religious public. The world changes greatly, and the Church of England is the most unstable factor in the society of which it ought to be the stabilizing principle.

Caröe employed himself in pulling down more plaister in the Chapel in order to find out the significance of the 13th century work which had been uncovered by the dilapidations. His activity will no doubt express itself fully in the Bill! Meanwhile we indulge ourselves in antiquarian speculations.

William and I motored to Selby, a distance of 77 miles in 2 3/4 miles. I preached in the Abbey church to a large congregation on the anniversary of the Fire (1906) and of the Re–opening of the restored Nave (1907) and Chancel (1909). The great church looked truly magnificent, and the service was not unworthy of it. We returned to Auckland the same night, leaving the Rectory at 9.15 p.m. and reaching the Castle at 12.35 a.m.: but we were delayed for at least 20 minutes by shunting trains at the level crossing outside of Northallerton.

[185] [symbol]

October 20th, 1922.

My dear Bishop

I have to thank you for sending me your Lecture on the proposals for revising the Prayer Book: & it needs no saying that I have read it with close attention and a very large agreement. The passage on p.7 seems to me to be an admirable statement of the crux of the whole problem no confronting us. Slowly and with infinite reluctance I am being driven to the conclusion that disruption is not only inevitable but also that it may become morally requisite. The practical question is how to create a situation in which the issue will be so justly and clearly presented that the line of fissure will really follow convictions a not mere unanalysed preferences. It is this consideration which has led me to think that it would be a mistake to oppose Prayer Book Revision, or even to take up an attitude of hostility to the Report. Let us rather cut away the ground of plausibility, if not of reason, on which the Innovators have been hitherto able to stand, by removing from the Prayer Book whatever justifications there may be in the statement that its rubricks are obsolete, or semi–obsolete, and that its rigidity reflects excessively the temper of a hard and distant age which was rent by controversies. Let us, if we can, get clearly to the issue whether the Church of England is to remain a Reformed [186] Church, or whether, after an interval of 350 years, the Religion expressed in her doctrine and discipline is to be again that of the Medieval Church, modernized in some sense by Rome, and effectively summed up in "The Mass and the Confessional".

The practical difficulty, which confronts a Bishop daily, is the fact that, whatever may be the rights of the case, the clergy are increasingly shaped and governed by the so–called "Catholic" conception of the Church, which you describe so acutely and so justly on p.7. Every ruler is in bondage to his subjects: and every workman to his material. How can you man a Reformed Church with medievalist clergy & hope to maintain its Reformed Character? But, speaking broadly, there will soon be no other clergy available. The Tractarians early turned their attention to the training of the clergy, & their astuteness is now reaping its reward.

I cannot say too strongly how distressed I am at the attitude towards the 'Anglo–Catholic' movement generally adopted by the Bishops, even by those who do not at all approve of its main principle and avowed objective. They appear to think that by themselves heading these Congresses & Missions they will take away their essential character, & transform them into loyal & beneficent activities. In Butler's phrase they "desire to be deceived", and assuredly [187] deceived they are. Meanwhile the total indifference of the country paralyzes those who would bring Church & Nation to face the grave issue at stake. The rapidity with which the whole aspect of the Church is changing is almost dazing. It wd hardly be excessive to say that the Northern Province is now, in sympathy and tendency "Anglo–Catholic": and the Southern has not ceased to be so.

You will have seen that I have called attention to the "Use of Monmouth": the Bishop's letter seems to me totally irrelevant. I prophesy that we shall not have long to wait before the new Use is adopted in some English dioceses: and I am beginning to reflect what might be required of a self–respecting Bishop who did still hold to the doctrine and discipline of the Church in which he was ordained 35 years ago.

But I must not weary you more. It had only been in my mind to thank you for your important & valuable lecture.

Believe me, my dear Bishop,

Yours very sincerely,

Herbert Dunelm

The Right Revd Bishop E. A. Knox DD

18 Bickenham Grove,

Shortlands, Kent

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