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.

5. Finally and chiefly the young men and women who are to be called to
the leadership of the church will feel that their main business is the
work of church extension. But they will give to this phrase a little
different meaning from that which it has generally carried. The church
extension to which the boards and societies in the church have been
devoted is the work of building new churches in promising fields. It is
properly denominational extension. Something of this kind will remain to
be done in the new day now before us, and our new leaders will doubtless
have some part in it. But the church extension which is most loudly
called for just now is the extension of the life of the church into
every department of human life. It is more analogous to what we call
university extension work. The business of university extension is not
the planting of new universities; it is the projection of the university
into the community; it is the attempt to carry the light and the
knowledge and the truth and the beauty for which the university stands
down among the people; to popula