ABSTRACT
J.H. Morgan A striking quotation by the Dean of Canterbury from one of the last of Mr Hardy’s published utterances, in the form of ‘a tribute to the Church of England’, is put forward in The Times, very properly, by the Dean as a proof – if, indeed, proof were needed – of the felicity which has distinguished the choice of Westminster Abbey as the last resting-place of him whom we so greatly loved.1 But what Mr Hardy wrote in the apologia to his Late Lyrics and Earlier was merely the ultimate expression of an attitude of mind to which he had been moving for many years. On a memorable Sunday, to wit, October 21, 1922, Mr Hardy took a walk with me, his guest, to Stinsford Churchyard and discoursed by the way through the meadows of the eternal riddles of human destiny, Chance, Free Will, immortality, whence we arrived at the subject of Religion and the Church of England. Thereupon, he said:–
‘I believe in going to church. It is a moral drill, and people must have something. If there is no church in a country village, there is nothing. ... I believe in reformation coming from within the church. The clergy are growing more rationalist, and that is the best way of changing’.
