I have heard him say, with an air of deep conviction, when
the question of the unemployed is raised, "After all, we must remember
that the only possible solution of these sad difficulties is a
spiritual one."
The pity of it all is that he is so entirely complacent, so absolutely
unaware that there is anything amiss. He does not see that people have
to be tenderly and simply wooed to religion, and that they have to be
led to take an interest in their own characters and lives. His idea is
that the Church is there, a holy and venerable institution, with
undeniable claims on the allegiance and loyalty of all. Worship is to
him a man's first duty and privilege; and if he finds that one of his
parishioners thinks the services tedious, tiresome, or unintelligible,
he looks upon him as a child of wrath, perverse and ungodly. The one
chance a clergyman has to gain the confidence of the men of his
congregation is when he prepares the boys for confirmation; but the
vicar sees them, each alone, week after week, and initiates them into
the theory of the Visible Church and the advisability of regular
confession. I confess sadly that it does not seem to me to resemble
Christianity at all; in the place of the shrewd, simple, tender, and
wise teaching of Christ about daily life and effort, the duties of
kindness, purity, unselfishness, he gives an elaborate picture of rites
and ceremonies, of mystical and spiritual agencies, which play little
part in the life of a day-labourer's son.
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