Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/383

Letter 31] of it; remembering always that, as the ideal Working Man was subject to law, so must they be subject to law, and as He bore suffering for the good of others, so must they be prepared to suffer as well as to work. This is true socialism and this is true Christianity. Do you deny it, and say, "This is not the Christianity that has been current for eighteen centuries"? I reply, Perhaps not; and, if it is not, we can call it by some other name. You remember the saying of Lessing, that after eighteen centuries of Christianity, it was high time to try Christ. Let us then amend our phrase and say that true socialism will not be "the Christian religion" but something better. It will be the Christian Spirit.

We are taught by our Scriptures that it has been sometimes God's method to teach the wise in this world by means of those whom the world calls foolish, and the strong and the rich in this world by those whom the world calls weak and poor. If history is thus to repeat itself, it may be reserved for the semi-Christian or non-Christian working man, for the heretic or agnostic socialist, to guide orthodox and religious England into a higher and purer and more spiritual form of Christianity. Yet on the other hand, since intellectual movements come often from above, though moral movements come from below, I cannot give up the hope that it may be reserved for the clergy of the Church of England to do something towards the removal of those merely intellectual difficulties which are at present keeping multitudes of the workers, and not a few of the thinkers, in our country, from recognizing their true Deliverer.