experiment in State-Socialism, based on the average level of human character as it exists at present, would be doomed to disastrous failure.’ (Bishop Creighton said the same thing more epigrammatically.  ’Socialism will only be possible when we are all perfect, and then it will not be needed.’) But what we have is no Socialistic State, but a great body of aspiration, based on a great demand for justice in human life.  The indictment of our present social organisation is indeed overwhelming, and with this indictment Christianity ought to have the profoundest sympathy, for it is substantially the indictment of the Old Testament prophets.  The prophets were on the side of the poor; and so was our Lord.  Where is the prophetic spirit in the Church to-day?  We need ’a tremendous act of penitence.’  Our charities have been mere ambulance-work; but ’the Christian Church was not created to be an ambulance-corps.’  We have followed the old school of political economy instead of the prophets and Christ.  Broadly, we may contrast two ideals of society:  individualism, which means in the long run the right of the strong; and socialism, which means that the society is supreme over the individual.  ‘On the whole, Christianity is with Socialism.’

This ‘Pan-Anglican Paper’ is a fair representation of the views which are spreading rapidly among the High Church clergy.  The party is in fact making a determined effort to enlist the sympathies of the working man with the Church, by offering him in return its sympathy and countenance in his struggle against capitalism.  This is a phase of the movement which it is very difficult to judge fairly.  Dr. Gore’s sermon was calculated to give any Christian who heard it, whether Conservative or Liberal, ‘a troubled conscience;’ and his practical suggestions are as convincing as any suggestions that are not platitudes are likely to be.  But in weaker hands this sympathy with the cause of Labour is in great danger of becoming one of the most insidious temptations that can attack a religious body.  The Church of England has been freely accused of too great complaisance to the powers that be, when those powers were oligarchic.  Some of the clergy are now trying to repeat, rather than redress, this error, by an obsequious attitude to King Working-man.  But the Church ought to be equally proof against the vultus instantis tyranni and the civium ardor prava iubentium.  The position of a Church which should sell itself to the Labour party would be truly ignominious.  It would be used so long as the politicians of the party needed moral support and eloquent advocacy, and spurned as soon as its services were no longer necessary.  The taunt of Helen to Aphrodite in the third book of the ‘Iliad’ sounds very apposite when we read the speeches of some clerical ‘Christian Socialists,’ who find it more exciting to organise processions of the unemployed than to attend to their professional duties.