had misused your name and used what
you did not say. I ought to have known, by this time, that they are
quite capable of it; and I entirely agree that the correction you
make in the report makes all the difference in the world. I do not
think I ever meant or said that you were an arrogant fool or anything
like it; but most certainly it is one thing to say that religion will
die in a century (as the report stated) and quite another to say that
the Church of England will experience a certain rate of decline,
whether the prediction be true or no. I shall certainly take some
opportunity to correct my statement prominently in the _Illustrated
London News_; I hope I should do so in any case; but in this case it
supports my main actual contention; that there is in the press a very
vulgar and unscrupulous attack on the historic Christian Church.

The four points you raise are so interesting that I feel I ought to
touch on them; though you will forgive me if I do so rather rapidly.
With the first I have already dealt; and in that matter I can only
apologise, both for myself and my unfortunate profession; and
touching the second I do not suppose we should greatly disagree; I
merely used it as one example of the futility of fatalistic
prophecies such as the one attributed by the newspapers to you. But a
thorough debate between us, if there were time for it, touching the
third and fourth points, might possibly remove our differences, but
would certainly reveal them.

In the third paragraph you say something that has been said many
times, and doubtless means something; but I can say quite honestly
that I have never been quite certain of what it means. Naturally I
hold no brief for the Church of England as such; indeed I am inclined
to congratulate you on having found any one positive set of "ideas,"
obsolete or not, which that Church is solidly agreed in "presenting."
But I have been a member of that Church myself, and in justice to it,
I must say that neither then nor now did I see clearly what are these
things "about the nature of the physical universe, which science has
shown to be untrue." I was not required as an Anglican, any more than
as a Catholic, to believe that God had two hands and ten fingers to
mould Adam from clay; but even if I had been, it would be rather
difficult to define the scientific discovery that makes it