if I am a laboring man, in the technical sense of the word that is
commonly used to-day, I have a right to organize a society devoted to
the furtherance of the eight- hour movement, or any other specific end
or aim which seems to me necessary to the welfare of society as
organized in the modern world.

All this we concede at the outset. People have a perfect right to
organize on the basis of their particular beliefs, and to keep out of
their organization those persons who do not happen to agree with them.
But, and here is a most important consideration, if these beliefs seem
to us who are outside to be vital; if they appear to concern us, to
touch our well-being, our future hopes, then we certainly have a right
to study those beliefs, to criticise them, to put them to the test to
see whether they are well founded, whether they have any adequate basis
of support.

And, still further, if the people holding a certain set of beliefs tell
us that they are inspired of God, that they are spokesmen for God, that
they have had committed to them a certain definite deposit of faith for
the benefit of the world; if they tell us that, unless we agree with
them, unless we accept the conditions and come into their organization,
then we are opposed to God, are endangering our own souls, and are
enemies of the human race, then it becomes not merely our right to look
into these matters: does it not become our most solemn duty? Are we not
under the highest of all obligations to decide for ourselves one way or
the other as to whether these claims are valid? For, if they are, then
there is nothing so important for us as that we should accept them and
live in accordance with them, join the societies that are organized on
them as a basis, do our utmost to extend their acceptance throughout
the world.

If they are not valid, then we ought to do our very best to prove this
also, and help those who are in bondage to these false ideas to attain
their liberty, in order that they may join with us in finding out that
which is true, in order that together we may work for the discovery of
the will of God, and that we may co-operate in helping the world to
find and obey that will.

You would suppose from the ordinary assumption of those who hold the
old creeds, and who have organized their churches on these creeds, as
foundation stones, that there had been at the outset a clear, a
definite revelation of truth, that it had been unquestioned, that it