of Lincoln. I suppose he selected Lincoln as a scene endeared to him by
childish memories.

He divided the day up for prayer, meditation, and solitary walks, and
often went in to service in the cathedral. He says that he was in a
state of tense excitement, and the solitude and introspection had an
alarmingly depressing effect upon him. He says that the result of this
was an appalling mental agony: "It seemed to me after a day or two that
there was no truth in religion, that Jesus Christ was not God, that the
whole of life was an empty sham, and that I was, if not the chiefest of
sinners, at any rate the most monumental of fools." He went to the
Advent services feeling, he says, like a soul in hell. But matters
mended after that, and the ordination itself seemed to him a true
consecration. He read the Gospel, and he remembered gratefully the
sermon of Canon Mason, my father's beloved friend and chaplain.




VIII

THE ETON MISSION


There were many reasons why Hugh should begin his clerical work at
Hackney Wick, though I suspect it was mainly my father's choice. It was
a large, uniformly poor district, which had been adopted by Eton in
about 1880 as the scene of its Mission. There were certain disadvantages
attending the choice of that particular district. The real _raison
d'Ítre_ of a School Mission is educative rather than philanthropic, in