Religion is concerned with, and is inseparable from, the fundamentals of human life. It is a voice which speaks of origins and destinies; and insists that the extent to which obligations growing out of the first are fulfilled, must determine the place of the last. There is nothing relating to the life of the individual, to the life of the primary social unit, and family, nor to society at large, in its national, international, and world relations, that does not philosophically, rest upon a religious basis. There can be no true concept of morality in any sphere of life from which a recognition of God is excluded; and without a sense of such moral responsibilities as such recognition involves there can be no right human relations anywhere.

This philosophy of human origins and destinies, and their intermediate obligations and responsibilities, is especially true of the Christian religion. Biblical Christianity relates a man in truth and righteousness to God above him, and to all his neighbours about him, in every sphere and relationship of life. The duty to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, grows out of our obligation to render unto God the things that are God's.

Christianity was described in New Testament times as a way of life. When Saul of Tarsus was on his way to Damascus, he went armed with authority to "bring them bound unto Jerusalem… if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women." No Christian therefore can afford to be indifferent to the constitution of the state under which he lives; and he must ever be on the watch lest the original formulation or later modification of its written principles of life should be of such a character as to render the requirements of Caesar incompatible with his duty to God.

I insist therefore that any theory of statehood which would ignore, or compromise, or impede, or imperil, the full and free and unfettered discharge of one's conscientious religious duty by subordination of religious to economic considerations, must be opposed. We of the British commonwealth of Nations are now engaged in a gigantic struggle for the preservation of the liberty in the broadest sense of the individual, such liberty as Canadians now proudly and gratefully enjoy. While the state is divine institution, and its ideal fundamental laws are clearly revealed, and democratic state which means a state of human things, will have its imperfections, and will face always the necessity of devising constitutional improvements for its way of life.