The Henson Journals

[112]

Monday, August 16th, 1926.

Dear Sir

In answer to your letter of August 10th, I beg to inform you that the issue of marriage licences is in the hands of the Diocesan Chancellor (the Worshipful & Revd P. V. Smith Lld, Edge House, Stroud, Glos.) with whose discretion in the matter I have neither the will nor the power to interfere.

I think it is on many grounds undesirable that the marriage of a man with his deceased brother's widow should be celebrated in any church in my diocese.

Believe me,

Yours faithfully,

Herbert Dunelm:

Hugh Laing Esq.

Northern Counties Club

Newcastle–upon–Tyne

[113]

My dear Morris Young

I have considered very carefully the question which you submit to me for answer, and I can have no hesitation on two points:

(1) Regular Communicants of good life in other organized and orthodox branches of Christ's Church ought not to be debarred from occasional communion in the Church of England. I can well imagine occasions on which sincere Nonconformists, without any intention or desire of forsaking their own Church, would wish to communicate in the parish church in order to affirm their unity with all Christians in the place.

(2) Nonconformists who (to adopt your own words) 'make our Church the place of their regular devotions and instructions, and this with marked regularity', ought certainly to be confirmed, and ought not to be admitted to Holy Communion until they have been confirmed, for plainly their conduct shows that they have ceased to be practising members of their own denomination, and, until they are confirmed, they are neglecting a cardinal requirement of the [114] Church to which their conduct shows they desire to belong.

We are the guardians of Christian discipline, and we should not be faithful to our trust if we allowed our people to think that we thought lightly of the Apostolic Ordinance of Confirmation, or belittled the gravity of neglecting the rule which requires its acceptance by Communicants.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Herbert Dunelm:

The Reverend

E. Morris Young

The Vicarage,

Stillington

via Ferryhill.

[115]

There are some criticisms of my letter in the Times, but none, I think, which require any answer from me. Sir Henry Slesson's is the most interesting, but more for the light it casts on him, than for the damage it inflicts on me. I should not wonder to hear any day that he had become a Papist.

A correspondent, evidently a Papist, criticises an article of mine in the Evening Standard. It is about time I meditated another. In these ill days I cannot do without the money.

I wrote to the Bishop of Jarrow referring to him the letter of that woeful man, Watts, and also the papers of Llewelyn, an Ordination candidate.

Also, I wrote to Ernest, answering a long letter from him, and taking occasion to give him some counsels as to himself, now that he is about to take up work as my chaplain.

The great heat and sultriness of the day disinclined me for exertion. I loafed about all day, and I read through a novel by E. F. Benson, Mezzanine. Its theme is the folly of young men marrying old wives, but it winds up with showing a measure of success in the experiment, a dénouement which the story did not properly suggest.

A company of ladies came to tea. Among them was the vivacious little Spanish lady, Mrs Webster, and the late rector's aging but still vigorous wife, Mrs Boyce, a lady of much courage and character.

---