The Henson Journals

[73]

Saturday, June 29th, 1918.

1426th day

I finished "Eminent Victorians". It appears that Gordon was addicted to brandy–soaking, as well as to mysticism. Is there ever the faintest allusion to this squalid vice in the voluminous self–revelations which he has left behind him? Saints (e.g. S. Augustine) will dilate on sins which they have renounced, but they cannot bring themselves to speak of those which they fail to conquer. Was S. Paul's mention of the "thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan", against which he prayed in vain, an exception to this rule?

After breakfasting in the Club, I went through with care the sermons I propose to preach tomorrow, wrote to Ella, and packed my bag. I came away in very good time, & caught the 2 p.m. express at Paddington. Archdeacon Arbuthnot was on the platform with his wife. They had been in the Albert Hall at the meeting on May 31st. Canon Willink met me at the station in Birmingham. He said that this city has become the centre from which the American mail is distributed. With a million soldiers on this side of the Atlantic the mass of letters must be gigantic. I was much interested by the photographs, both plain and coloured, which had been taken by Lieut: Willink, who has been invalided home from Salonika. He was a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge, and has many photographs of the chapel. Photography is, however, for the present almost entirely suspended save for military purposes: for the materials, thanks to the War, are no longer to be purchased.

---