oreover,
it is not to be thought for a moment that the Bishop is not deeply
concerned with all moral questions, that he is in the least degree
indifferent to the high importance of conduct. But for myself these
excursions, earnest and well-intentioned as they are, proclaim rather
the social energy of the good citizen than the fervent zeal of an
apostle on fire with his Master's message. The evangelicalism of the
Bishop has taken, as it were, the cast of politics, and he enters the
pulpit of Christ to proclaim the reasonableness of the moral law with
the alacrity of the lecturer.

This is what makes him so interesting a study for those curious about
the workings of religious psychology. Here is a thoroughly good man, as
fearless and upright as any man in the kingdom, a figure among scholars,
a power among organisers, a very able, sincere, and trenchant
personality, who has thrown the whole weight of all he has to give on
the side of Christianity, but who, for some reason, in despite of all
his hard work and unquestionable earnestness, does not convey any idea
of the attraction of Christ.

It makes one doubt, not that the Bishop has reserved his feelings for
another affection, but whether he has any feelings to bestow. One thinks
that he has drawn up and concentrated so effectually all the forces of
his personality into the intellect that it is now impossible for him to
see religion except as an intellectual problem. One thinks, too, that he
has never dreamed of converting other people to his views, but only of
arguing them out of theirs. Yet, after all, there are more ways of
converting the world than beating a drum.

I am certain, however, that he could easier convince a socialistic
collier or a communistic iron-moulder of the absurdity of his economics
than persuade either the one or the other of the spiritual satisfaction
of his own religion. Perhaps religion presents itself to the Bishop, as
it does to a great number of other people, as a consecration of moral
law, and clearly moral law is something to be established by reason, not
commended by appeals to the sentiments; not for one moment, all the
same, would he countenance the famous cynicism of Gibbon--"The various
modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all
considered by the people as equally true; by the philosophers as equally
false; and by the magistrate as equally useful"--for no man sees more
clearly the permanent need of religion in th