STATEMENT BY THE BISHOP OF LONDON.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 955, 24 October 1910, Page 8

STATEMENT BY THE BISHOP OF LONDON.

"SOMETHING WRONG." By Telegraph—Press Association-Copyright. London, October 21. The Anglican Bishop of London (Dr. Ingram), speaking at Fulham, said thoro was something wrong when Labour mombers of Parliament' included no churchman. Tho Church must bo more sympathetic towards the aspirations of Labour. Few people know more about tho working classes than tho Bishop of London. Though not a socialist, ho is an ardent social reformer. As head of Oxford House, BethnaU Green, and as Bishop of Stepney, he spent a great deal of his timo iu the poorest parts of London. On many a Sunday afternoon ho used to hold discussions with Secularists in Victoria Park, and only recently he made a midnight march with the Church Army through tho slums of Westminster. The estrangement of a very large proportion of the working classes from the Church has for some tinio past being receiving the serious consideration of some of the most thoughtful minds in the Anglican and other churches. Tho Bishop of Birmingham (Dr. Gore) stated recently that Christ gave the'prerogative position in the Church to those accustimed to live hardly and to depend for sustenance upon 'their daily labour, and "in ■ the everlasting opposition of rich and poor the primitive Church ranked •among and spoke, for tho poor." But to-day the Church is not in' touch with the mass of the labouring people, because it is the Church of the rich rather, than the poor. The great question now is, says Dr. Gore, "how we are -to return to a condition of. things nearer to the intention of Christ—if it may be, without violence or revolution, but, if not, then anyhow to! return. 1 '