Bitter words were those spoken at a recent meeting of the Congregational Union in England by one of the greatest of English preachers.[30] "The common life of the home," he said, "is often a mere vulgar exhibition of the means of living. We try to persuade ourselves that showy living is essential life. In tens of thousands of English homes the mere show of things is the goal of a restless and feverish ambition. Everywhere we seem to be loitering and pottering about in the implement yard. Even in our universities we must have showy buildings, though we starve the chairs. All this peril becomes the more insidious when we pass into the realm of the church of God. Why, the 'means of grace' are often misinterpreted as grace itself. We are obtruding our badges and ribbons, our soldier's dress without the soldier's spirit, our music, our ministers even,--how they look, what they wear, what they do--they are all part of the wretched vulgarity of the modern spirit." The two things are rightly put together. The ostentation of the home, the tawdry luxury and profusion of fashionable society, creep into the church and set up their standards there, and the religion of Christ puts on a costume in which its Founder would never recognize it. We are dealing here with the very heart of the trouble in our national life, and the problem is one which must be solved by the present generation of our young men and women. The social conditions which are depicted for us by close students of the life of our luxurious classes are ominous in the extreme. The cynical dishonesties and the brutal spoliations which have come to light in the realm of high finance and big business are the natural fruit of such a manner of life as many of our recent novelists have vividly portrayed. And the wanton extravagance of the House of Mirth would not exist if the majority of the people did not admire it. The outcry against it is oftener the voice of envy than of moral revulsion. The cure for this evil, as of most others, is found in public opinion; and the church must educate public opinion to reprove it, and the leadership of the church will be in the hands of the young men and women of this generation. It will be evident to them that the place to begin is in the church itself. The heartless luxury of the world will not be chastened into simplicity by a church that surrounds itself with splendor and spends money lavishly upon its pleasures. They will know that a church which wishes to reprove the vanity and ostentation of the outside world must order its own life in such a way that its word shall be with power.