The Henson Journals

[191]

Thursday, August 20th, 1925.

In a pregnant paragraph F. W. H. Myers tells us that when he was walking one night with George Elliot in the Fellows' Garden, Trinity College, Cambridge, "she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet–calls of men – the words, God, Immortality, Duty – pronounced with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, & yet how peremptory and absolute the third".

v. Murray. Erasmus & Luther. p.282.

I received a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury. His Grace seeks to justify his reply to the E. C. U. address: but not, I think, successfully. Anyway, I wrote to him indicating my dissent from his view.

Duncan came to ask questions, and to accept Dawdon. He says that he will lose about ££30.00 per annum by the change. The finances of the clergy are an insoluble problem. Ella, Fearne, & Mrs Underwood went to Whorlton to lunch with the Bishop of Gloucester. I pleaded my lumbago as a reason to stay at home.

[192]

The dreams of Erasmus are noble, but they were those of a vanishing world. The dreams of Luther were less noble, but they were those of the modern world.

Murray. p.381

I finished reading Murray's 'Erasmus & Luther: their attitude to Toleration'. It is certainly a considerable work, & provokes thought. Luther is a most repulsive creature, I fear. Murray's compares him with Bismark; and Erasmus with Burke. Certainly, if I had been living then, I should have been against these Reformers: & yet could I have stood with the Monks?

I wrote a long letter to Anson Phelps Stokes, of which the gist was that, if he wanted to make his cathedral serviceable to reunion with Protestants, he would get no guidance from England! We are obsessed with the notion of Catholicism, & draw ever farther away from the Nonconformists.

I wrote to William, and George. The latter speaks of coming home to get married early next year. Will he take his wife out to Java? What kind of society will the poor lady find there?

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