Note 164 — LIFE AND LETTERS. (continued 4)

“Unquestionably our aristocratical manners and habits have made us and the poor two distinct and unsympathising bodies; and, from want of sympathy, I fear the transition to enmity is but too easy when distress embitters the feelings, and the sight of others in luxury makes that distress still more intolerable. This is the plague-spot to my mind in our whole state of society, which must be removed, or the whole must perish. And under God it is for the clergy to come forward boldly, and begin to combat it. If you read Isaiah iii., v., and xxxii.; Jeremiah v., xxii., and xxx.; Amos iv.; Habakkuk ii.; and the Epistle of St. James, written to the same people a little before the second destruction of Jerusalem, you will be struck, I think, with the close resemblance of our own state to that of the Jews.”—Dr. Arnold’s Letters, vol. i. p. 286.