The Henson Journals
Sat 6 September 1930
Volume 51, Pages 12 to 13
[12]
Saturday, September 6th, 1930.
A wet day save for a brief hypocritical interval at noon. I stayed indoors, & wrote some more of that deplorable article, & brought it to some kind of a conclusion: but it is not what I intended. After lunch I walked in the rain for an hour with Major Lake. He told me an extraordinary story of his having contracted smallpox in India through shooting a crocodile, in which he found a recently swallowed woman, who, it was ascertained, had died of the disease, & been cast into the river! I was interested in his opinions about the Army; to which he seems to be devoted. We got very wet, &, when I changed my shoes and gaiters, I learned to my chagrin that no second pair of shoes had been packed with my clothes!
[symbol] I received a pathetic letter from the Duchess of Northumberland in acknowledgement of my letter of condolence. The poor lady has been called to sustain one of the major calamities of human life.
Also, Baily of St Ignatius, Sunderland, writes to inform me that he intends to accept a benefice in the diocese of Carlisle.
[13]
[symbol]
I find it extraordinarily difficult to state the case for Disestablishment as I myself see it. For the most part the advocates of Disestablishment are "Voluntaryists", who regard the connexion with the State as intrinsically wrong, or thorough–going Secularists who look upon the Church as a baleful factor in the nation, or 'high–flying' clericalists who perpetuate in the XXth century the ideas and ideals of the XIIth. With none of these have I any real agreement. I should heartily support 'Establishment', wherever it seemed to me to be the rightful expression of Christian principles, nay not merely the rightful, but the inevitable expression. I dislike 'voluntaryism' as giving dominance to the power of the purse within the Church, and always tending to foster an exclusive Pharisaic spirit among church–people. I loathe Secularism as treason to the nature of man & perdition to ordered society. Nor have I any sympathy with this poor little foolish ghost of medievalism, which dominates our clericalists. It seems to me empty, silly, and practically mischievous. Yet I cannot think that such a situation as now exists in England is anywise defensible or other than spiritually paralyzing.