Many years ago, when I was at Oxford, on a cold winter’s day, a young maid (one of those we keep at school) called on me.  I said, “You seem half starved.  Have you nothing to cover you but that thin gown?” She said, “Sir, this is all I have.”  I put my hand in my pocket, but found no money left, having just paid away all that I had.  It struck me, “Will thy Master say, ’Well done, good and faithful steward.  Thou hast adorned thy wall with the money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold’?  O justice!  O mercy!  Are not these pictures the blood of the poor maid?  See thy expensive apparel in the same light; thy gown, hat, head-dress!”

Everything about thee which costs more than Christian duty required thee to lay on, is the blood of the poor!  Oh, be wise for the time to come!  Be more merciful; more faithful to God and man; more abundantly clad (like men and women professing godliness) with good works.

It is stark, staring nonsense to say, “Oh, I can afford this or that!” If you have regard to common sense, let that silly word never come into your mouth.  No man living can afford to throw away any part of that food or raiment into the sea which was lodged with him on purpose to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.  And it is far worse than waste to spend any part of it in gay and costly apparel.  For this is no less than to turn wholesome food into deadly poison.  It is giving so much money to poison both yourself and others as far as your example spreads, with pride, vanity, anger, lust, love of the world, and a thousand “foolish and hurtful desires” which tend to “pierce them through with many sorrows.”  O God, arise and maintain thy own cause!  Let not men and devils any longer put out our eyes and lead as blindfolded into the pit of destruction.

God demands of his people that they dress modestly as becomes people who profess holiness.  The putting on of apparel for adornment and the wearing of jewelry are not consistent with Christian modesty.  The nude and lewd art of dressing which is becoming so prevalent among professors of Christ is an abomination in the sight of God, and a practise which no virtuous man or woman can countenance.  If professors would stop and consider the character of women who invent popular fashions of the age they might well blush with shame at their eager attempts to follow the modern styles of dress invented by the wicked leaders of fashion in London and Paris, whence the latest styles of this country generally emanate.  It is indeed sad to behold the young of to-day making themselves unfit to fulfil the sacred functions of wife and mother by the use of the modern corset, as well as laying a foundation for years of misery, dragged out in this life by diseases brought upon them by catering to the creed of millions who worship at the shrine of Fashion.  The pride of their hearts, pampered and fed by the foolish practises of the age, blinds them to their obligations to God as a Creator and Savior; and amid the whirl of earthly vanity they hasten to the awful doom that awaits all who fail to obey the gospel of Christ.