“The Clergy Are Afraid”

Hugh Price Hughes, an English Methodist clergyman, once told the following: “I am very much struck by one remark which Mr. Gladstone made to Mr. Stead. He had one grievance with the Anglican clergy whom he has so faithfully served. ‘I have one thing,’ he said, ‘against the clergy; I think they are not severe enough on their congregations. They do not sufficiently lay upon the . . . consciences of their hearers their moral obligations, and probe their hearts and bring their whole lives and actions to the bar of conscience. The clergy are afraid of dealing faithfully with their hearers.’”—Treasury of the Christian World.