insincere expressions, the sometimes hideous
treachery. If society were purged from these, it would not be the dull
thing which some people imagine, just as if this insincerity and
frivolity and unreality constituted the brightness of it. No, it is
these things which constitute the dulness and the stupidity. If they
were done away with, then society would be a gathering of true men and
women, true to themselves, true to one another, and true to God, and
would be a society which God could bless.

Secondly, take _trade_ and _commerce_. Speaking in the very centre of
a city reared upon a basis of honourable commerce, it would be more
than wicked to refuse to acknowledge the splendid honour and trust on
which such commerce is based; but when we clergy, not once or twice,
but constantly, get letters from those employed in firms and in
business up and down the country, saying, "How can I live a Christian
life, when I am obliged by my employer to do dishonest things in
business, when I am told to tell lies, or I shall lose my place?" When
we have, even within the last few months, terrible instances of breach
of trust among those who have been entrusted with the most sacred
interests by the widow and the orphan, must we not acknowledge that a
second great monument which we might build to our Queen would be to
restore to the trade and commerce of the country those principles of
honour and integrity on which the great firms were built up, and to
make it true again from end to end of the world that an Englishman's
word is as good as his bond.

And so, again--would to God we had not to add it!--what a revolution
would be worked in _Christian work_ itself--Christian work that is
supposed to demand from everyone who undertakes it perfect
forgetfulness of self, and entire self-abnegation, to have as its
workers men and women conspicuous for humility, for thinking of others
before themselves, for being ready to bear the cross on the way to the
crown. And yet can we deny--would God we could!--that in Christian
work there is an amount of self-advertisement, of jealousy among
workers, and of insincerity which lowers our cause, and damages the
progress of Christianity? Think for a moment what it would be if all
Christians were really united as Christ meant them to be, if they
worked with one another, showing a common front to the world, one great
society, as Christ conceived it, without jealousy, without conceit,
without pride, bu