The New Christianity was the Bible of the Saint-Simonian religion. Saint-Simon held that God had founded the Christian Church, and that we ought to honor the Fathers of the Church with the deepest reverence. Catholics and Protestants had, however, perverted the only true and valid Christian principle, and it was this he sought to restore. “In the New Christianity,” said he, “all morality will be derived immediately from this principle; men ought to regard each other as brothers. This principle, which belongs to primitive Christianity, will receive a glorification, and in its new form will read: Religion must aid society in its chief purpose, which is the most rapid improvement in the lot of the poor.” It is thus that the social question becomes the essence of religion. This was the starting-point of Saint-Simon’s disciples, and led to the formation of a Saint-Simonian sect with a priesthood. But let us devote a few moments to a description of the economic and social organization proposed by the Saint-Simonians, before discussing the religious society they founded to do honor to the memory of Saint-Simon, to assist in carrying our their socialistic schemes, and to satisfy the yearnings of hearts which refused to find satisfaction and contentment in the Christian Church. Saint-Simonism is the first example of pure socialism, by which I understand an economic system in which production is entirely carried on in common, and the fruits of labor distributed according to some ideal standard, which appears to the promoters of the scheme just. This standard will, of course, vary according to the subjective ideas of different socialists. Any plan, to be practicable, must necessarily be a compromise between various views and historical antecedents. Another writer defines “Socialism Proper”—by which he means about what I understand by Pure Socialism—as follows: “It is that system which recognizes inequality both in the capacity and requirements of individuals, and accordingly allows wages to be proportionate to work done, and admits of private income along with collective property.”[48] The Saint-Simonians were led to socialism by observing the ill-regulated distribution of economic goods under our present social _régime_. They found the idle surfeited in luxuries and the diligent without the comforts and often without even the necessaries of life, the former enjoying the right to live as parasites on the fruits of the toil of the busy, the latter enjoying the right to choose between hard and ill-paid labor and death by starvation. They were able to perceive no sufficient connection between merit and recompense. Consequently the world appeared in a state of disharmony and they proposed to restore harmony by a new economic system.