enship and honest labour.

In these quotations you may see something of the Bishop's acuteness of
intellect, something of his courage, and something of his wholesome good
sense. But, also, I venture to think, one may see in them something of
his spiritual limitations.

For, after all, is not the Christian challenged with an identical
criticism by the champions of materialism?

Why can't he leave people alone? Who asks him to interfere with the
lives of other people--other people who are perfectly contented to go
their own way? Look at the rascal! Having created or stimulated
spiritual discontent by rhetorical exaggeration, he points to the
discontent as itself sufficient proof of the dissatisfaction of
materialism! Out upon him, for a paid agitator, a kill-joy, and a
humbug. Let him hold his peace, or, with Nietzsche, consign these
masses of the people "to the Devil and the Statistician."

Might it not be argued that the Bishop's attitude towards the social
reformer bears at least a slight family resemblance to the attitude of
the Pharisees towards Christ, and of the Roman Power to the earliest
Christian communities? May it not be said, too, that nothing is so
disagreeable to a conservative mind as the fermentation induced by the
leaven of a new idea?

Never does dissatisfaction with the present condition of things appear
in the Bishop's eyes as a creation of the Christian spirit, an extension
of that liberalising, enfranchising, and enriching spirit which has
already destroyed so many of the works of feudalism. But he faces the
question of the part which the Church must play in the world; he faces
it with honesty and answers it with shrewdness--

What then is the role of the Church in such a world as this? Surely
it is still what it was before--to be the soul of society, "the
salt of the earth." If we, Christ's people, are carrying on, year
in and year out, a quiet, persistent witness by word and life to
"the things that are more excellent," the unseen things which are
eternal, we too shall be "holding the world together," and opening
before society the vista of a genuine progress. This is the supreme
and incommunicable task of the Church; this is the priceless
service which we can render to the nation.

The position is defensible, for it is one that has been held by the
saints, and dangerous indeed is the spirit of materialism in the region
of social reform. But doe