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Leaving the issue of this painful controversy with Him, whose cause it is,
The Rev. C. F. Money, St John's Parsonage.
To which Mr. Money replied,—
St. John's Parsonage, Upper Lewisham Road, S.E.
Dear Sir,
My letter of 31st ultimo was not written to justify the publication of Mr. M'Caul's letter in the “Standard,” nor can such a construction be fairly put upon it. I wrote to show that you were not justified in breaking off from the proposed Conference, on the ground of Mr. M'Caul's published letter, when one of your own side had already published a statement—my letter refers to this fact in order to dispose of your excuse, and I stated that Mr. M'Caul's letter was published without the cognisance of his colleagues. It was, in fact, unknown to us when we sent you our Resolution; and two of our friends were absent, the Bishop of Rochester on the Continent, and Lord Claud Hamilton attending his re-election in Ireland. But in any case, if you had really desired to pursue the inquiry into the Rosenthal matter, you would not have made the individual act of the Bishop's Chaplain an excuse for refusing to continue the Conference according to the conditions agreed upon. In Lord Shaftesbury's Statement or Pamphlet, reference was made to the charges advanced against Dr. Macgowan and his Lordship's opinion of his innocence; you must therefore acknowledge that your letter of 3d inst. is, to say the least, inaccurate, when you state that we repudiate Mr. M'Caul's letter and also proceed to justify it.
I observe that you now for the first time acknowledge that Lord Shaftesbury's Statement had nothing to do with the questions we were met to consider in Conference, and I regret that you did not express this conviction sooner, and assist us in our endeavour to prevent the introduction of that which was entirely irrelevant and backed by personal allusions. I will ask you to lay this letter before your Committee, and remain,
From the above correspondence it will be seen that Capt. Layard, by instructions of the Committee, under date August 3d, wrote to the effect that “no evidence whatever was produced at the Conference on the opposite side in defence of the Jerusalem Mission or of the late Dr. Macgowan.” To this we have to reply, that the President of the Society stated in an emphatic manner, “We cannot meet this evidence, it is not to be expected that we should,” with other words to that effect; and subsequently he expressed his feelings, both orally and in writing, that with regard to “the indictment against Dr. Macgowan, it would be better, with a view to peace, to consign the whole to oblivion.”[1]
We are further thankful, “for the sake of peace,” for the confession that Lord Shaftesbury “all along declared” his statements “to be a personal
- ↑ Extract from Lord Shaftesbury's Letter of June 2.
