The Henson Journals

[245]

Friday, August 9th, 1929.

"Proverbs are not always good, but if ever there be a case in which 'least said is soonest mended', it is one in which men's feelings are necessarily susceptible in a degree out if all proportion to the regulating power of knowledge & in which they think they are, after all, acting on the defensive, as they came second & not first into the field."

[Gladstone to Bishop [Forbea?] Dec. 14, 1859. v. Letters on Church & Religion i. 416]

Overcast and cool, but without rain.

I frittered away the morning on Gladstone's and Church's Letters, hoping that I might find in them material for the discourse that I am pledged to deliver in Edinburgh on October 30th, when St Mary's Cathedral celebrates its Jubilee.

There came to lunch Sybil, Lady Eden, Miss Headlam, & Mrs Cradock, who were concerned with G. F. S., & Miss Wingfield, who is a niece of Headlam, and went with him to Serbia. Later, a formidable host of the Petticoated (with limited liability) came to play lawn–tennis.

[246]

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Dean Church's opinion of Erasmus.

"I have been reading about Erasmus and with great interest. He is a man whom it is impossible to admire, and yet, in such a time of turmoil, violence and breaking up of foundations, one cannot but have sympathy for his perplexities, and wonder for his bright and keen intellect, his indefatigable laboriousness, and his singular good sense. But he was selfish, insincere, and mean–spirited."

v. Life Letters of Dean Church, p. 277.

Dean church's power of analysing & judging characters and books was very remarkable. The volume of "Life & Letters" edited by his daughter contains some excellent illustrations of Lord Beaconsfield p. 291; Dean Stanley p. 293; Lord Bacon p. 308 & 313; R. H. Froude p. 315; Browning p. 342. On the whole, I find more wisdom and guidance in Dean Church's writings than in those of any other Anglican ecclesiastic of modern times.

[247]

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"The difficulty is beginning to be more visible every day, of reconciling a Church with great privileges with the general set of modern policy; of combining a National Church with a church having the raison d'être of a religious society, believing in a definite religion, and teaching it …… So one of these days, I expect that we shall find ourselves put into the position of having to choose between making the Church co–extensive with what can be called the religion of the whole nation or giving up our present position."

[Dean Church. 4thFebruary. 1870. Life and Letters 186/7.]

His letter to the Times dated 16th December 1880 is a very emphatic assertion of the spiritual character of the Church, and a very clear repudiation of the claim of partliament to control it in spiritualibus (Ibid. p. 284) I do not think there can be any doubt that he would have approved the position which it has seemed to me unavoidable that I must now take up on Disestablishment.

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