The Henson Journals

[8]

Thursday, March 29th, 1917.

969th day

The wind has veered round, & now blows strongly from the West. Beeching & I went out before breakfast, & bought newspapers. There is nothing unusually startling in them, save that the loss of ships from mines laid by submarines seems to increase, which is a very grave matter. We walked again for 2 hours before lunched [sic], & on returning to the Hotel I wrote to Ernest. A bundle of copies of the "Christian Commonwealth" arrived, containing a verbatim report of my Sunday morning sermon in the "City Temple". The afternoon post brought me a friendly letter from the editor of the "Guardian". Ella and I walked the whole length of the parade eastwards. After dinner we had much talk of ghost stories, communications with the departed, & such–like alluring but rather unwholesome subjects. Mine host expresses more confidence in Sir O. Lodge than I can myself feel, but he cannot bring himself to accept the machinery for posthumous communications set forward in "Raymond". Not the least argument against all this theorising is the trivial & worthless character of the messages which are alleged to come from 'the other world'. These would disgrace the authors, had they been still living in the flesh: it is difficult to suppose that the conditions of the post–mortem life are more unfavourable to intelligence than those of the life present.

---