THE RIGHT KIND OF SOCIALIST

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 129, 28 November 1923, Page 15

THE RIGHT KIND OF SOCIALIST

In ius hot-pv^.i. v*Ai m the Vivian Street Baptist • Church on Sunday, the Eev. F. B. Harry referred to the death last week of the venerable Baptist Minister, Dr. John Clifford, of London, in his 88th year. He referred to him as an all-round scholar, a graduate in arts, law, and science, but chiefly as a social reformer. For 65 years he was pastor of one great church, although in recent days he has had an active colleague, whilst be was always a great antagonist of social evils and a .champion of the poor and the down-trodden. He claimed to be a Christian Socialist, and the terms are not, as some assert, contradictory. To readjust the social order is always a difficult and dangerous task. Clifford tried to do it from within. He believed that ideas are more powerful than explosives. No one ever spoke more powerfully than he against the tyranny of wealth or the greed ofi the sweater. He believed that inequity is iniquity. In his sympathetic ears the wailing cry of want was ever ringing, and as he trod the streets of slumdom his heart ached over the squalor in which his brothers and sisters lived; and yet no one did more than he to prevent the jarring classes from becoming warring classes. It should be clearly underjstood,_ however, that if Socialism meant the right of the labourer to the whole produce of his toil, irrespective of capital and intelligence, he was not a Socialist._ He was first of all an Individualist,'believing that the regeneration of man must precede the reconstruction of society. That was where he differed from the ordinary Socialist. The pafch to reform rfas ever through the portal of grace