The Henson Journals

[27]

Tuesday, October 23rd, 1923.

Mental work one must have, if one is to keep one's self in moral health in Africa: hence the man of culture, though it may seem a strange thing to say, can stand life in the forest better than the uneducated man, because he has a means of recreation of which the other knows nothing……

Newspapers one can hardly bear to look at. The printed string of words, written with a view to the single, quickly–passing day, seems here, where time is, so to say, standing still, positively grotesque. Whether we will or no, all of us here live under the influence of the daily repeated experience that nature is everything & man is nothing. This brings into our general view of life – & this even in the case of the less educated – something which makes us conscious of the feverishness & vanity of the life of Europe: it seems almost something abnormal that over a portion of the earth's surface nature should be nothing, and man everything!

Albert Schweitzer, "On the edge of the Primeval Forest" p.149, 150

[28]

Shaddick came to see me in response to my summons, and I had the happiness of assuring him that my confidence in him had been completely restored. In order to indicate the fact publicly I offered to nominate him as one of my honorary chaplains, to which he gladly assented. So ends one of the strangest episodes that I have ever happened to know.

The Rev. W. C. Chapman, Vicar of Holmside, came to see me. He desires permission to exchange livings with the Rev. J. Townsend a clergyman beneficed in the diocese of Manchester.

The Vicar of Witton Park brought a young man named Jonathan Hall to see me. The latter is designing to be Ordained.

After lunch the Bishop of Carlisle & Mrs Williams left the Castle in the niece–driven car.

Sir John and Lady Barran arrived on a short visit.

I finished reading Schweitzer's little book "On the edge of the Primeval Forest". In spite of its small size, it is a great book, worth tons of missionary reports. There surely can be no question as to the nobility of the motives which carried such a man to such a task, and, after he had learned by experience its terrible character, sent him back to it again. His deliberate judgement, based on actual observation, that missionary work is valuable, nay even indispensable, for the natives of Africa cannot be set aside by any reasonable & considering man.

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