The Lord Mayor on Wednesday gave a dinner to the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops at the Mansion House, and the Archbishop, in replying to the toast of the health of the Archbishops and Bishops, declared that one of the first duties of the Church is to bring home to the employers their enormous responsibilities to the employed, and to the owners of houses their responsibility for the sanitary state of their houses. It is very true that it is one of the first duties of the Church to bring all neglected duties home to the consciences of those who neglect them ; but is it not the tendency of the present day to dwell even too much on the social and philanthropic, and too little on the directly religious duties of Christians? The Bishop of London may have hinted this when he insisted that no class could be raised to a higher level without enlisting their own energies and enthusiasm in the work, and that to do the artisans good you must touch their own hearts. But so far as the reports go, he does not seem to have said how this is to be achieved,— whether by inviting them into reforming associations, or by filling their minds with spiritual aims and hopes. We trust he meant the latter. In our opinion, religion has shown too much tendency lately to exhaust itself in mere though true moral disinterestedness, or, as it is so often called, "altruism." All true religion is altruistic, but all true altruism is not religion.
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