RELIGIOUS REFLECTIONS.

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 1797, 18 May 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS REFLECTIONS.

By Thh Pilgrim,

'Slave to no sect, who take* no private road."

A PRACTICAL PRELATE

Some sixty-five years ago England was threatened with a revolution. Labour called itself the People; and, believing that its hardships were the outcome of bad political methods, essayed to force upon Parliament its Charter of "six points" of constitutional reform. Winter riots had taken place in the manufacturing districts of the north. Ten years of agitation-.had been preparing for a climax,. for which the supreme moment seemed at. last to have come. One hundred thousand men were to assemble on Kennington Common for an aive-inspiring march on Westminster. London was barricaded and garrisoned, with . the old "Iron Duke" in command. But such military defence was not called into action. The expected host, ill led, dwindled to a foolish rabble, and vanished before the torrents of rain that fell. The day that was to see tho revolution . closed with' laughter. When this happened, long ago and far away, there was toddling about in his father's home in 'Liverpool the only son of Charles Stubbs. The riots of that Labour uprising" were nowhere worse than in that city, and their clamour smote the ears of the child. Years were to pass before he

knew their meaning and could help to make that meaning, which was in part true and terrible enough, vocal to thinking Englishmen "of other, .classes. From the Royal Institution School in Liverpool he went to Cambridge, and on graduation took in succession a curacy in Sheffield and vicarships in Bucks, and Devon and Liverpool. Leaving his native place once more, he became Dean of Ely, the Cambridgeshire city hoary with traditions, royal and ecclesiastic, from Canute's days down. In 1906 he was consecrated Bishop of the ancient Cornish. see of Truro; and 1 last week, in years and honour, he laid down his charge at the bidding of death.

Ere that call came Charles William; Stubbs, Broad Churchman, had given full'proof of his rignt to-be heard on the social and economic questions that so long have exercised the minds of thoughtful Englishmen. Not that he thrust his views upon his fellow Churchmen, least of all upon the leaders of the hostile hosts of capital and labour; nor that he looked upon Christianity as giving detailed rules for tho guidance of industry. He did not regard outstanding efforts a* industrial conciliation, like those of Bishop Westcott in the settlement of the Northern coal strike, and those of Cardinal Manning.in the crisis of the London dock strike, as a model for every clergyman's action. But he held that ignorance of social problems was culpable in a clergyman and regarded indifference to industrial struggles as a mark of unworthiness for pastoral office. For his own part he set himself to diligent and exact study. His books on such themes, consisting chiefly of published sermons and ' addresses, close with x " lists of recommended books" that are fairly complete bibliographies of the themes. His sermons were full of references to contemporary happenings, to which he strove to apply the great principles of the Sermon on the Mount. Critical sometimes of Unionism, he nevertheless had_ real sympathy with Labour. That sympathy was not unpractical; we cannot easily forget how when a vicar he cut up his glebe land into acre sections for the use of the needy.

He told a Church Congress at Hull how he had learned some things. "I learnt my first lesson in the ethics of Unionism," he said, "in this diocese twenty-two years ago. Ten days after my ordination as curate of St. Mary's, Sheffield, a parish at that time of twenty thousand, people, mostly knife-grinders, file-teutters, and so forth, I was taking a nightschool class of young men. I had heard that somo of the members of my class had taken pant in a trade outrage, only a night or two before. The driving-strap of a grinding wheel, belonging to a man who refused to join' the Union, had been found cut. I somehow got to talk to the young fellows about it. I have no doubt I used the usual arguments about the sacredness of individual liberty, and the right of every Englishman to make, if he. so pleases, his own separate, bargain for his own labour, and so on. I am afraid I did not make much impression, for I remember I turned from argument to sentiment and exclaimed indignantly against the unmanliness of cutting a fellow-workman's strap, and thus robbing him, to say the least, of the profit of several hours' work. Whereupon one young Yorkshireman burst out: 'Unmonly! What dost a' mean ? We wants to make 'im a mon.' ;■",-■',.

But he was not misled into imagining that a changed environment would accomplish all for men. Let the following extract from a striking sermon declare his faith in the matter: "No.re-arrangement of society, no social transformation is possible, has ever been possible, or ever will be, except as the application of' a religious principle—of • a moral development—of a strong and active common faith. What I mean is this. I do., not think people who talk of the necessity, -or the possibility, *bf changes .in our social system sufficiently realise that no change of institutions is ever worth which is not the result of change of character; Men; may easily re-make institutions, but they do not so easily, re-make themselves: The law of social forms, of national institutions, is in fact this, that they shall be expressive of national character; they come into existence bearing its impress, and they live only so long as it supplies them with vitality. To change institutions for the better-, therefore, we. need to change men for the better. And to do this we need and shall ever need religious motive. We might; be all safely Socialists to-morrow, if we were only. . really Christians to-day."

He was a welcome speaker to those whom Canon' Scott Holland habitually calls "us of the Christian Social Union," the organisation of English Churchmen for the study and discussion of social problems. He was in the succession of men like Maurice and Kingsley, Lightfoot and Westcott, in his care for such questions; and the ,Union will doubtless foster the development of many another of like usefulness. He may be ( quickly forgotten, for (as he says of Kingsley) "he wrote essentially of the present and for the present;", but the influence of his benevolent life will gd on, -in multiplied force, through the younger men he has helped to train.