196 RT. EEV. BISHOP J. E. C. WELLDON, D.D., ON THE INFLUENCE 



will attend a number of services during the Mission, as they are 

 already in the habit of attending such services, and all gain a 

 certain spiritual exaltation ; but it is idle, or worse than idle, to 

 multiply religious services in churches for the sake of people 

 who do not yet attend such services at all. Nor is it possible 

 that the nation should be spiritually uplifted by the elevation of 

 the existing Church-life in the same measure as by the 

 evangelization of the masses who have hitherto lived outside the 

 range of the Church and of Christianity itself. The Methodist 

 Eevival in the eighteenth century shows historically what a 

 true National Mission may be, and how much it depends upon 

 the personality of its leaders. 



There is a danger, too, that the proposed National Mission may 

 dissipate itself in mere words. The working people of the 

 North, so far as I may claim to speak for them, are apt to be 

 impatient and intolerant of professions. If it is true, as the 

 Bishop of London said more than once when he was making his 

 pilgrimage in anticipation of the National Mission, that the 

 Labour Party never looks to the Church for guidance, the 

 reason, if I do not misconceive it, is, in part at least, that the 

 class, which somewhat unfairly arrogates to itself the name of 

 Labour, looks, and perhaps looks not unjustly, for a greater 

 accordance between principle and practice in the Church. They 

 do not, indeed, generally find fault with the ill-paid and hardly 

 worked parochial clergy. But they hold, rightly or wrongly, 

 that the highly-paid and highly-placed clergy might more 

 nearly imitate the example of their Divine Master. I do not 

 wish altogether to justify their point of view. It takes little 

 account of the sensitive generosity which suffers not the left 

 hand to know what th'e right hand does. But when the nation 

 is called to Eepentance, when it is summoned to a National 

 Mission, they ask, Are the authors of the Mission satisfied with 

 Quiet Days, Betreats and Conferences, or even with public 

 prayer and worship ? Have they made, or are they prepared 

 and resolved to make, a considerable surrender of their incomes 

 and comforts for the sake of inspiring the nation as a whole 

 with a sense of reality in the Mission ? The King has set an 

 example of self-sacrifice not only in abstinence from alcoholic 

 drinks, but in a large contribution of money to the public good. 

 Would it not be well that the Bishops and the other well-paid 

 clergy should inaugurate the National Mission by some 

 collective action after the King's example ? 



The Gospel of self-sacrifice without inconvenience, or of 

 words without works, does not commend itself to the English 



