"When have your churches helped man to improve his condition? They are gorgeous palaces, where once a week the women assemble to display their millinery and the men to maintain their business prestige." [Laughter and applause.] "What great reform have they not opposed? What new discoveries in science have they not resisted?" [Applause.] "Man has only become great when he has escaped out of their clutches." [Cheers.] "They have preached heaven and helped turn earth into a hell." [Great cheers.] "They stood by, without a murmur, and beheld mankind brought down to this awful condition; and now, in the midst of our unbearable calamities, they tell us it is well for us to starve; that starvation is the especial gate of heaven; and that Dives deserved hell because he had plenty to eat while on earth." [Great cheering.] "And why do they do this? Because, if they can get possession of our consciences and persuade us to starve to death patiently, and not resist, they will make it so much the easier for the oppressors to govern us; and the rich, in return, will maintain the churches." [Sensation.] "They are throttling us in the name of God!" [Tremendous applause.] "Our sons march in endless procession to the prison and the scaffold; our daughters take their places in the long line of the bedizened cortege of the brothel; and every fiber of our poor frames and brains shrieks out its protest against insufficient nourishment; and this man comes to us and talks about his Old-World, worn-out creeds, which began in the brains of half-naked barbarians, and are a jumble of the myths of a hundred-----" Here the speaker grew wild and hoarse with passion, and the audience, who had been growing more and more excited and turbulent as he proceeded, burst into a tremendous uproar that drowned every other sound. A crowd of the more desperate--dark-faced, savage-looking workingmen--made a rush for the platform to seize the clergyman; and they would soon have had possession of him. But in this extremity I sprang to the front of the platform, between him and the oncoming mob, and by my mere presence, and the respect they have for me as their friend, I stilled the tempest and restored order.