During his reign at Lambeth there has
been a sensible movement towards reunion; but the nation is
uninterested. If the Romanists have been less rebellious, the
Evangelicals have lost almost all their zeal. If the Church still
witnesses to the truth of Christianity, it is with all her ancient
inequalities thick upon her, turning her idealism to ridicule, and in
the midst of a nation which has become steadily more and more
indifferent to the Church, more and more cynical towards religion.
If there is peace in the Church, there is little of that moral
earnestness in the life of the nation which in past times laid the
foundations both of English character and of English greatness. We are
becoming swiftly, I think, a light and flippant people, the only
seriousness in our midst the economic seriousness of our depressed
classes. It is not to any other class in the community that the zealot
can address himself with an evangel of any kind. Only where a sense of
bitterness exists, a sense of anger and rebellion, can the idealist in
these dangerous times hope for attention.
The Bishop of Manchester preached some few weeks ago a sermon to the
unemployed of that city. He was asked at the end of his sermon if the
workers could get justice without the use of force. He replied, "It all
depends what you mean by force." And at that the congregation shouted,
"Murder.
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