CHURCH AND SOCIAL WRONGS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 53, 30 August 1913, Page 12

CHURCH AND SOCIAL WRONGS

"I cannot see that it is open to question that a Christian situated as Christians are in England to-day must find himself profoundly distressed by the social and industrial basis of our national life as it exists at present, and must immediately occupy himself in understanding what is amiss, and in qualifying himself by adequate knowledge to see the directions in which we ought to move if wo are to reform what is amiss, and to claim for Christian principles their Tight to rule the social practice of a society which, in some sense, calls itself Christian." So says the Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Gore, in a statement of the objects of the inter-denominational summer school, held at Swanick for the study of social questions. "That we are divided into different 'Churches' is a miserable fact. But whatever it is of distinctive truth as we see it which justifies to our consciences out existence in separate communities, it is this, and nothing less than this, that is to make us resolute to combat sweating and insist upon better housing. It is from the heart of religious communion that we are to draw the motive and impetus for social action."

At Sleaford, one of the largest hiring fairs in England, not one girl in a hundred seeking a farmhouse situation would undertake the duties of milking. The milkmaid may now be «nid to have en«