RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 869, 16 July 1910, Page 9

RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. . "THE GREATEST REFORM MUST COME FROM WITHIN." The "Church Times" states: —Wo have been reading in " Fellowship," the monthly journal of the Robert Browning Settlement, an account of-the proceedings of tho Labour Week that has just passed. Wo gather from it that tho Labour Movement has entered upon a now phase, or, if that is not. tho right way of putting it, has enunciated principles which it may have secretly cherished but which it had not openly confessed. At all events, that section which is enrolling itself in what is called the Fellowship of Followers requires of each enrolled member tho declaration that he takes for his motto these words of -the Divine Masterl "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross, and follow Me:" This is to place the cultivation of tho Christian temper before economic ideas. As Mr. Harvey, the M.P. .for ■ N.E. Derbyshire, says :— "Men must be taught that tho greatest 'reform of all'must come from within. This accepted with all it means, the retlrcss of social evils will come- more speedily to tho advantage of all." Or, as Mr. Seddon, M.P., states it,-"What-ever may be our economics, unless we have tho ethics and Spirit of Christ, effort will bo useless." We may take it from such utterances that Mr. Keir Hardio is right when he says: "There is not, and cannot be, any antagonism between Christianity and" the Labour movement." • What, then, about the relations between the Labour Movement and the Church? This is a question which it behoves us to ask ourselves. It has to be confessed with sorrow that the Church has largely lost its hold on tho working class, but if tho Labour Movement should generally cultivate the Christian temper, itshould not be impossible for-the Church to receive again into its , bosom those who have held aloof. But this desired end will not.be attained until wo have unlearned tlic lessons handed down to us through a bad tradition, and not a moment should ho lost beforo wo set to work to discover wherein wo have been in error.