The Church will not pretend that he is, or
endeavour to make its own Faith acceptable to him by diluting the
distinctive ethical attributes of Christianity till they become
inoffensive, at the cost of becoming trivial.
. . . so tepid and self-regarding a creed is not a religion.
Christianity cannot allow its sphere to be determined by the
convenience of politicians or by the conventional ethics of the
world of business. The whole world of human interests was assigned
to it as its province (_The Acquisitive Society_).
It must not be supposed that the Bishop has no answer to this criticism
of his attitude. He would say, "Produce your socialistic scheme, and I
will examine it, and if it will work and if it is just I will support
it; but until you have found this scheme, what moral right do you
possess which entitles you to unsettle men's minds, to fill their hearts
with the bitterness of discontent, and to turn the attention of their
souls away from the things that are more excellent?"
On this ground, the ground of economics, his position seems to me
unassailable; but it is a position which suggests the posture of a
lecturer in front of his black-board rather than that of a shepherd
seeking the lost sheep of his flock. If the socialist must think again,
at least we may ask that the Bishop should sometimes raise his crook to
defend the sheep against the attack of the robber and the wolf.
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