Attired in khaki he has recently been preaching in the open air to the
people of London upon Tower Hill, Piccadilly, and other conspicuous
places. Obsessed as I am by the humanities, and impressed as I have
always been by the inferiority of material to moral facts, I would
willingly have exchanged the sight of two burning Zeppelins for this
spectacle of ecclesiastical fervour. But as it is, I am obliged to trust
to newspaper reports and the descriptions of hearers and eye-witnesses.
They leave to me but little doubt of the regrettable superficiality of
the bishop's utterances.
We have a multitude of people chastened by losses, ennobled by a common
effort, needing support in that effort, perplexed by the reality of evil
and cruelty, questioning and seeking after God. What does the National
Mission offer? On Tower Hill the bishop seems to have been chiefly busy
with a wrangling demonstration that ten thousand a year is none too
big a salary for a man subject to such demands and expenses as his
see involves. So far from making anything out of his see he was, he
declared, two thousand a year to the bad. Some day, when the church
has studied efficiency, I suppose that bishops will have the leisure
to learn something about the general state of opinion and education in
their dioceses. The Bishop of London was evidently unaware of the almost
automatic response of the sharp socialists among his hearers.
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