The Henson Journals
Sat 20 July 1929
Volume 48, Pages 214 to 215
Saturday, July 20th, 1929.
[214]
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Keble's criticism of Gladstone's book "The State in its Relations with the Church" (British Critic October 1839) seems to contain much that is curiously relevant to the present situation. e.g.
"however fearful the view which may be taken of a world anti–christianized by the downfall of Establishments, might not a sadder picture be drawn, and one at least as likely to be realized, of a church turned antichristian by corrupt Establishments? A State succession of heretical pastors, creeds omitted or corrupted, holy prayers and Sacraments profaned, or modified, or as by at the popular will, and all amid the din of self–praise, and high pretensions to evangelical truth, and every corner of the land ringing with gratulations to England on its containing, beyond question, "the most moral and religious people on the face of the earth".
[v. Quoted in Correspondence on Church & Religion of W.E. Gladstone, selected by D.C. Lathbury i. 17]
[215]
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Brooke's father, W. Arthur Westcott & his wife called, & stayed to lunch. They had with them their son, Philip, now an undergraduate at Magdalen, Oxford, a nice–looking, well–grown lad of 20. His mother told me that he was meditating the career of a clergyman, so I got into talk with him, & suggested that he should come to this diocese, a suggestion which he seemed to welcome.
The heat was so great that I stayed indoors during the afternoon, &, among other things, wrote to Brooke, urging him to confirm his brother's good progress.
The Times has a leader on 'the Bishops' stating their difficult position very fairly, and justifying their present policy. It ends with a reference to Disestablishment, to advocate which is represented as indicating a defective sense of proportion. I think this would not be an unreasonable view, if there were any future for Establishment, or any adequate alternative way of escape out of the existing impasse. But I can see none. The present system is in idea dead, and in working impossible.