I was fascinated by this Westcott problem; I thought maybe if I kept on the good Bishop’s trail, I might in the end find something a plain man could understand; so I got the beautiful two-volume “Life of Brooke Westcott, by his Son”—­and there I found an exposition of the social purposes of bishops!  In the year 1892 there was a strike in Durham, which is in the coal country; the employers tried to make a cut in wages, and some ten thousand men walked out, and there was a long and bitter struggle, which wrung the episcopal heart.  There was much consultation and correspondence on episcopal stationery, and at last the masters and men were got together, with the Bishop as arbitrator, and the dispute was triumphantly settled—­how do you suppose?  On the basis of a ten per cent reduction in wages!

I know nothing quainter in the history of English graft than the naivete with which the Bishop’s biographer and son tells the story of this episcopal venture into reality.  The prelate came out from the conference “all smiles, and well satisfied with the result of his day’s work.”  As for his followers, they were in ecstacies; they “seized and waltzed one another around on the carriage drive as madly as ever we danced at a flower show ball.  Hats and caps are thrown into the air, and we cheer ourselves hoarse.”  The Bishop proceeds to his palace, and sends one more communication on episcopal stationery—­an order to all his clergy to “offer their humble and hearty thanks to God for our happy deliverance from the strife by which the diocese has been long afflicted.”  Strange to say, there were a few varlets in Durham who did not appreciate the services of the bold Bishop, and one of them wrote and circulated some abusive verses, in which he made reference to the Bishop’s comfortable way of life.  The biographer then explains that the Bishop was so tender-hearted that he suffered for the horses who drew his episcopal coach, and so ascetic that he would have lived on tea and toast if he had been permitted to.  A curious condition in English society, where the Bishop would have lived on tea and toast, but was not permitted to; while the working people, who didn’t want to live on tea and toast, were compelled to!

#Dead Cats#

For more than a hundred years the Anglican clergy have been fighting with every resource at their command the liberal and enlightened men of England who wished to educate the masses of the people.  In 1807 the first measure for a national school-system was denounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury as “derogatory to the authority of the Church.”  As a counter-measure, his supporters established the “National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Doctrines of the Established Church”; and the founder of the organization, a clergyman, advocated a barn as a good structure for a school, and insisted that the children of the workers “should not be taught beyond their station.”  In 1840 a Committee