by which actions are judged, and to which, to our dismay, we perceive our actions insensibly conform. But the pressure of social influences about us is enormous, and no single arm can resist it. We must needs band together then, if we would achieve a higher life; we must create for ourselves a purer atmosphere, if any rarer virtues are to flourish in our midst; we must make our own public opinion, to buoy us up in every loftier aspiration. Unions we want that will hold, not religion as a duty, but duty as a religion; union to achieve a larger morality. Three things morality demands of us as interpreted in the light of our present social conditions: greater simplicity in manners, greater purity in the passions, greater charity. The habit of luxurious living is eating into the vitals of society, is defiling the family, and corrupting the state. Let me not be falsely understood. All that is luxury which political economists are wont to class as unproductive consumption. In this sense, books, music and pictures are luxuries, and who would be willing to forego them. It becomes us to the utmost of our powers to satisfy the thirst for knowledge, and to educate the sense of harmony: it is wise to expend generously upon every means of culture and refinement. But this we must bear in mind, that there should be a rank and a proper subordination among our tastes and desires. Now that is luxury in the evil, in the debasing sense of the term, that we subvert the natural order of our tastes, that we make the mere gratification of the animal passions, the mere pursuit of wealth, the mere adornment of our clay, main objects, while the graces of intellect perish, and the adornment of the soul is neglected. Say not, we will do the one, and not leave undone the other; for the inordinate degree to which the meaner passions are developed, dulls our sense of loftier needs. We cannot serve these two masters. Frivolous in prosperity, we become helpless in adversity and perish inwardly, our growth stunted, our nobler sympathies blunted, long before we are bedded in our graves. What single effort can achieve a change? Fellowship, friends are needed, and a public opinion on behalf of simplicity.