"Stir Up" Sunday

I always thought of "Stir-Up Sunday" as the reminder that it was time to bake fruitcake, but will now probably think of this passage:

The Church Reformer (London) says: "On Sunday next before Advent the priest before every altar in England prayed for a divine excitement - 'Stir up, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the wills of thy faithful people.' Men are beginning to see what is at the bottom of our misery. Henry George's enormous vote in New York has compelled attention to the fact that whether or no relief works and eight-hour bills and free dinners are to come, nothing can do any good permanently while land, the mother, is divorced from labor, the father of all wealth. If then God's servants who did the church's work on that Sunday in Trafalgar Square, in creating a divine excitement, in asking the question how the hungry are to be fed, and in protesting against the oppression of the poorest laborer, are to continue their work to completion, they must go boldly for nothing less than the full restoration to the people of the whole of the value they give to the land; they may nationalize machinery, capital, what they like, but until they have nationalized the land the poverty of the workers will remain."

-- from The Standard, January 8, 1887