Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/183

 most fully and completely realised. I have explained that while our moral code is built upon the foundation of the New Testament, it is rather a healthy and consistent development than a mechanical replica of the gospel system of morals. For example, we do not keep the best seats in our churches for beggars, persons in ragged or shabby clothing, or costermongers in their working dress. Our ministry, we conceive, is to the comparatively well-to-do sheep of the house of England, and my little boy in his touching picture of the future life imaged forth, accurately enough, the kind of congregation that we like to see about us. I dare say you will have observed that Christian Churches are not very plentiful in the really poor neighbourhoods, whose degraded inhabitants we leave to the more degraded—because superstitious—ministrations of parson and priest. Take again the question of celibacy. I daresay several texts will occur to you: there is the "made themselves eunuchs for the