This question of the unemployed and the social well-being of the people is strictly a religious one: When I first entered into public life some of my closest friends with whom I had been in Christian society for several years were astounded when on one occasion I preached a sermon on the Labour movement on the Sunday, and I was severely taken to task for so doing. Some months before, yielding to the wishes of the labourers to champion their cause, I seriously thought the question over, as I felt that I could not on any account engage in anything that in any way clashed with my Christian principles, and it was because I was convinced that the great disparity existing in the social condition of the people and the gross inequality in the distribution of wealth were contrary to the Divine wish, and that the benevolent intentions of God were not being carried out, that I gave way to the wishes of the labouring men to advocate the cause of the honest toilers. I consider that every time I attend a Labour meeting I attend a religious service in the strictest sense of the word. What movement can be more sacred than the one that has for its object the uplifting of man, the beautifying of human nature, and the restoring of that likeness and image of God which man has so long lost? Poverty is the cause of so much evil and degradation. Poverty is the prolific mother of vice, disease, and all that is vile and ungodlike. Poverty, then, is what we are trying to abolish. What we claim is this, then, that the question of the poverty of the people, brought about by the selfishness of man and the undue haste of the few to get rich at the expense of the many, is a religious question, and it will not be until we get pure homes, sanitary houses, good living, good work, and sufficient to keep every man employed with a good and fair living wage that we shall ever hope to have a healthy and purified state of society; never until all classes truly realize the iniquity of our present social system, and the morality of Christ's Gospel finds a lodgment in our hearts, can we hope to make men think and act as men; never until the religion of humanity enables us to claim succour for the little ones, manhood for ourselves, and justice for the oppressed shall we ever have a happy and pure nation.