The Henson Journals

[76]

Monday, June 8th, 1925.

I read Mr Crantz's "Account of the Mission into Greenland". Although I make much allowance for the liberty which I know the Brethren take, in their accounts of one another, yet I do not see any reason to doubt that some of the Heathens have been converted. But what pity that so affecting an account should be disgraced with those vile doggerel verses: just calculated to make the whole performance stink in the nostrils of all sensible men! In the evening the multitude that flocked together obliged me to preach abroad. I saw but three or four that seemed unaffected: and those, I suppose, were footmen; a race of men who are commonly lost to all sense of shame, as well as of good and evil.

John Wesley. Journal. Aug. 25th 1767.

The quondam Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, cannot be altogether and always submerged by the unwearying mission–preacher. He must have suffered much from his exstatick and unlettered disciples, whose taste for "doggerel verses" was insatiable & indiscriminating.

[77] [symbol]

I slept intermittently in the sleeper, and about 7.30 a.m. went to the Railway Hotel, had a bath and breakfast, & then was carried by Mr Spicer & his wife to the business–house in the City, hard by Blackfriars Bridge. There was a gathering of the Spicer clan, headed by the old Privy Councillor, now 80 years old. The service was held in a large room at the top of the building. A large company (perhaps about 300) of the employees of the firm formed the congregation. I preached for nearly 20 minutes, and then (with a cheque for £26.5.0. in my pocket, the preacher's fee which I destine for the Escombe Fund), I went to the Athenaeum. Later, I went to King's Cross, where I was joined by Donaldson, and we travelled together to Darlington. A parson from the Winchester diocese, who was in the carriage travelling with his wife to Middlesborough in order to attend the Anglo–Catholic Conference, introduced himself to me as having met me some years ago. His name was Richards, & he seemed a fairly intelligent man. On arriving at Auckland we walked in the Park before dinner. Donaldson was very appreciative of its beauty. After dinner I had much conversation with him on many subjects.

If any one had told Donaldson & me, when we were both young men living in Bethnal Green 38 years ago, that we should come together as bishops respectively of Durham & Salisbury, we should have been highly amused.

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