It is, like human nature itself, a mingled thing.

Instead of exaggerating the evils, the wiser course would surely be to inquire how far they are capable of remedy, and then cautiously--for the daily bread of these many millions of British folk depends on the normal working of our industrial system--to attempt reforms.

Reckless denunciation is not only wrong in itself, but it creates a listless, disaffected temper, the farthest removed possible from the spirit of good citizenship and honest labour.
In these quotations you may see something of the Bishop's acuteness of intellect, something of his courage, and something of his wholesome good sense.

But, also, I venture to think, one may see in them something of his spiritual limitations.
For, after all, is not the Christian challenged with an identical criticism by the champions of materialism?
Why can't he leave people alone?
Who asks him to interfere with the lives of other people--other people who are perfectly contented to go their own way?
Look at the rascal! Having created or stimulated spiritual discontent by rhetorical exaggeration, he points to the discontent as itself sufficient proof of the dissatisfaction of materialism! Out upon him, for a paid agitator, a kill-joy, and a humbug.

Let him hold his peace, or, with Nietzsche, consign these masses of the people "to the Devil and the Statistician." Might it not be argued that the Bishop's attitude towards the social reformer bears at least a slight family resemblance to the attitude of the Pharisees towards Christ, and of the Roman Power to the earliest Christian communities?
May it not be said, too, that nothing is so disagreeable to a conservative mind as the fermentation induced by the leaven of a new idea?
Never does dissatisfaction with the present condition of things appear in the Bishop's eyes as a creation of the Christian spirit, an extension of that liberalising, enfranchising, and enriching spirit which has already destroyed so many of the works of feudalism.