The Henson Journals

[119]

Quinquagesima. February 10th, 1929.

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I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. We were 6 communicants including John, who attains the age of 17 today. I gave him "The White Company" as a present. It is one of the best "boy's books" that I know.

I read through again David's article with a view to answering it, but it hardly seems worth answering. He says that Disestablishment will make the C. of E. "what is commonly called a sect, standing among & on equal terms with other sects". He then proceeds to define a sect. It is "a body of people who were brought together by their belief that some particular aspect of Christian truth was being neglected or denied". If that definition be sound, it would apply to the Church before as fully as after Disestablishment. He emphasizes the special danger of sects to become exclusive. "A sect tends to build & maintain a wall of partition around itself." But how can the Establishment, as it now exists, prevent this tendency from operating? In so far as the autonomous action of the church is prohibited, that tendency could not find corporate expression, but the Enabling Act (of which the Bp. of Liverpool was one of the chief promotors) was passed to make autonomous action possible. His account of the Reformation has small relation to the facts, & the inference he builds on it is as doubtful as the premisses. He wd have "some of the Free Churches" share with us "the responsibilities, duties, & privileges of our present position!!!

[120]

I motored to Bellasis, and preached at Evensong in the wooden shanty, which calls itself S. Hilda's Church. It was the first Sunday on which Shore officiated as Minister of the Conventional District, and I come to "introduce" him to the people. The weather was most unpropitious, yet in spite of it, the building was fairly filled. I thought the singing of the choir better than would have been reasonably expected. They even adventured an Anthem. After the service I returned to Auckland, where Kathleen & a friend had arrived.

Marriage is the most sensitive point in the contact of the Church and the World. It appears to be the assumption of Marriage Law Reformers that Christianity has no place in the discussion of Marriage. The Rev. Geikie–Cobb D.D. Chairman of the Council of the Marriage Law Reform League, sends me papers about that Association. It begins by postulating that "we have inherited from a barbarous age a false conception of marriage", & declares that our marriage law "falls far behind the marriage laws of: the Colonies &c. !!!

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