There has been nothing in the history of man like the present situation. The decadence of the ancient mythologies is very far from affording a parallel. The connection of those mythologies with morality was comparatively slight. Dull and half-animal minds would hardly be conscious of the change which was partly veiled from them by the continuance of ritual and state creeds; while in the minds of Plato and Marcus Aurelius it made place for the development of a moral religion. The Reformation was a tremendous earthquake: it shook down the fabric of mediaeval religion, and as a consequence of the disturbance in the religious sphere filled the world with revolutions and wars. But it left the authority of the Bible unshaken, and men might feel that the destructive process had its limit, and that adamant was still beneath their feet. But a world which is intellectual and keenly alive to the significance of these questions, reading all that is written about them with almost passionate avidity, finds itself brought to a crisis the character of which any one may realize by distinctly presenting to himself the idea of existence without a God. THE LABOUR MOVEMENT _(This Lecture was delivered before the Mechanics' Institute of Montreal, and the Literary Society of Sherbrooke, and published in the CANADIAN MONTHLY, December, 1872. The allusions to facts and events must be read with reference to the date.)_ We are in the midst of an industrial war which is extending over Europe and the United States, and has not left Canada untouched. It is not wonderful that great alarm should prevail, or that, in panic-stricken minds, it should assume extravagant forms. London deprived of bread by a bakers' strike, or of fuel by a colliers' strike, is a serious prospect; so is the sudden stoppage of any one of the wheels in the vast and complicated machine of modern industry. People may be pardoned for thinking that they have fallen on evil times, and that they have a dark future before them. Yet, those who have studied industrial history know that the present disturbance is mild compared with the annals of even a not very remote past. The study of history shows us where we are, and whither things are tending. Though it does not diminish the difficulties of the present hour, it teaches us to estimate them justly, to deal with them calmly and not to call for cavalry and grapeshot because one morning we are left without hot bread.