“Imagine the effect on character,” cries the Bishop, “of eight hours’ dishonesty every day, eight hours of a man’s second or third best, never his whole heart in his job!  And this is called idealism!”

If industrialism were swept away, and some form of Socialism were established, the success of the new order, as of the old, would have to turn on the willingness of the people honestly to work it.  It hardly lies in the mouths of men who are labouring incessantly to obstruct the working of the existing order, to build an argument against it on the measure of their success in making it fail.  There are confessedly many grave evils in our industrial system, but there are also very evident benefits.  It is, like human nature itself, a mingled thing.  Instead of exaggerating the evils, the wiser course would surely be to inquire how far they are capable of remedy, and then cautiously—­for the daily bread of these many millions of British folk depends on the normal working of our industrial system—­to attempt reforms.  Reckless denunciation is not only wrong in itself, but it creates a listless, disaffected temper, the farthest removed possible from the spirit of good citizenship 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—­