Motor-car missionaries
Posted: 02 Nov 2006 @ 00:00
January 12th, 1906.
THE Daily News, on Tuesday, exhibited a picture of a motor-car, just about
to start on a political tour through the country, bearing some devoted
missionaries with a cargo of convincing leaflets. In less exciting times, the
missionaries in question practise the profession of Dissenting preachers. In
present circumstances they have auto-mobilised their pulpits in order to preach
at large those doctrines of party politics which have become, to so great an
extent, the religion of Dissent. We do not adorn our humble narrative by means
of the pictorial art, but if we did, we should give our readers a view of the
Bishops taking their departure from the turmoil of a General Election to
quieter scenes in the country or on the Continent. The contrast between the
active political propaganda of the Dissenting hierarchy and the studious
avoidance of party utterances by all the Bishops, save the Bishop of Hereford,
is very striking. Of the leaflets to which we referred above, one, we believe,
contains the figment that it is the Bishops who have thrown the Passive
Resisters [of Balfour's Education Act 1902] into prison. By such methods the
reign of righteousness and truth is inaugurated. It strikes us, however, that
if the Bishops were the keen politicians they are represented to be, they would
not choose the present moment for taking their holidays, leaving their dioceses
free to the reverend Dissenting motorists to scorch through them on their
unholy mission of stirring up religious ill-will.