The Henson Journals

[91]

Tuesday, June 16th, 1925.

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I went on in reading that fine book, Bishop Butler's "Analogy". But I doubt it is too hard for most of those for whom it is chiefly intended. Freethinkers, so called, are seldom close thinkers. They will not be at the pains of reading such a book as this. One that would profit them must dilute his sense, or they will neither swallow nor digest it.

Wesley's Journal. May 18th, 1768

I wasted the morning in letter writing. After lunch I walked I the Park, and picked up two young men, of whom one, Thomas Stobart, was a grocer's assistant, and one, Thomas Blease, was a fitter employed in a mine. He was unemployed. I took them round the Bowling Green, & found them interested and intelligent.

The Rev. S. G. Key, assistant–curate of Dawdon, came to inquire what was his prospect of preferment, & went away with his appetite unsatisfied. I will not be drawn into raising hopes which may be presently dashed. My sainted predecessor was but too ready to use a kind of flatterous language which bred in the hearers' minds mighty expectations, and led them to hold themselves to have been in some sense deceived when the inevitable disappointment emerged.

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