We live in the days of a great social upheaval. We hear on all sides of the great "Labour movement." What does it mean? What is at the bottom of it all? Only the desire of our labouring classes to seek for themselves some alleviation of their lot; some increased opportunity for leisure; some better remuneration for their labour; some surer provision against sickness and old age. They are seeking--not always by the best and wisest methods perhaps, but that is not their fault--how to make their lives better and broader, healthier and happier. With these desires every right-thinking man is in sympathy. The complete realization of their dream may be Utopian perhaps--I do not know. But even if it be, what is there to blame in this divine discontent? "Unless above himself he can Exalt himself, how mean a thing is man!" How are these longings to be gratified?--how are they to be even partially realized, while this unchecked flood of destitution and degradation pours in upon us from abroad? We hear much in these days of schemes for elevating and evangelizing the masses of the poor in our great cities. All honour to such schemes, whether they succeed or whether they fail, for the motive which animates them is good. But it cannot be too often insisted upon, that spiritual and intellectual necessities do not arise until some decency of physical conditions has been first attained. Among the "submerged tenth," as they have been called, decency of physical conditions will never come to pass until steps have first been taken to forbid the entrance of the unclean and unhealthy of other lands. So long as the bare struggle for existence absorbs all the energies of our very poor, they cannot be civilized. I do not underrate the greater worth of the moral life as compared with the purely physical life; but we must begin at the lowest rung of the ladder before we can ascend to the highest. As things are, the dregs of our slum population have neither the time, the energy, or the desire to be clean, thrifty, intelligent, or moral. In our haste we must not blame them. What they want first of all is better food, and more of it, warmer clothes, better shelter, higher wages, and more permanent employment. Unless we can first assist them to obtain these material desires, all our efforts to awaken the higher part of their natures will be in vain. Some perhaps will object that many of these poor creatures are so brutalized, so criminal, so degraded, that they have no higher nature left to awaken. I do not believe it--I will never believe it. However degraded a human being may be, however handicapped from his birth by the circumstances of his life, and even handicapped before his birth by the transmitted vices of his progenitors, there still is implanted in him, dormant and infinitesimal though it may be, that spark of the divine nature which alone separates man from the beast.