The Henson Journals

[80]

Saturday, January 6th, 1923.

The weather was very beautiful all day. This was the more fortunate as the party from Wynyard came to lunch and see the Castle. The Marquees and Lady Londonderry with Lady Massarene and Lord Castlereagh. They expressed a very proper admiration of the Chapel.

Mr or Mrs Dillon sent me a Christmas present – "The Life & Letters of Walter H. Page, by Burton J. Hendrick. I read a good part of the first volume, and found it uncommonly interesting & suggestive.

(The parish church of Sedgefield is dedicated to S t Edmund Rich, (1170?–1240) Archbishop of Canterbury from 1233 to 1240. Can I make any effective use of this fact when I preach there next Sunday in connexion with Sykes's institution? There's a pretty legend that in his early years S. Edmund 'on one of his lonely walks' had a vision of Christ who "appeared to him in the likeness of a little child, and expressed his surprise at not being recognised. It was seemingly in memory of this vision that, as Bertrand tells us, he was wont to write 'Jesus of Nazareth' on his forehead every night before going to sleep – a practice which he recommended to his biographers" (v. Dict. Of N.B.) "He did not ape the usual pride of bishops in those days. 'The primate of all England', says his biographer, 'did not blush to take off his own shoes or to bear the cross from chapel to study with his own hands" (Ibid.))

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