We have received a correct, or at least an accepted,
report of the sermon by the Bishop of Salisbury on which we recently commented. It is at least as strong in its effect as the con- densed report, and the words we quoted were uttered almost verbatim. The Bishop did say :—",Even what might be called the innocent luxury of the wealthy was a sore and terrible trial to the starving and often uncomplaining masses of the poor.
Why should there be this measureless contrast, this unequal distribution of good things ?' That was a question which they asked and asked again, and if no sufficient reply were made, there would gradually be gathered up in many hearts such a flood of bitter resentment as would sweep away in a revolution all that we called society and civilisation. To that question there was only one answer that could be made with any approach to reasonableness. God had made the lots of life unequal that the rich might help the poor." Dr. Wordsworth even believed that the angels appeared to the shepherds at Bethlehem because these were the chosen representatives of the poor. Does he also think that the wise men of the East were the chosen representa- tives of the rich ? To make of poverty, qua: poverty, a moral claim to the love of God, seems to us as unwarrantable as to make one of ugliness. The soul surely must be independent of those accidents. Christ died for mankind, not for the poor, or the rich, or even the middle-class.
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