"The name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman of good understanding and of a beautiful countenance."—1Samuel 25:3.
"The name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman of good understanding and of a beautiful countenance."—1Samuel 25:3.
The ground in Carmel is white, not with fallen snow, but the wool from the backs of three thousand sheep, for they are being sheared. And I hear the grinding of the iron blades together, and the bleating of the flocks, held between the knees of the shearers, while the clipping goes on, and the rustic laughter of the workmen. Nabal and his wife Abigail preside over this homestead. David, the warrior, sends a delegation to apply for aid at this prosperous time of sheep-shearing, and Nabal peremptorily declines his request. Revenge is the cry. Yonder over the rocks come David and four hundred angry men with one stroke to demolish Nabal and his sheepfolds and vineyards. The regiment marches in double quick, and the stones of the mountain loosen and roll down, as the soldiers strike them with their swift feet, and the cry of the commander is "Forward! Forward!"
Abigail, to save her husband and his property, hastens to the foot of the hill. Sheis armed, not with sword or spear, but with her own beauty and self-sacrifice, and when David sees her kneeling at the base of the craig, he cries: "Halt! Halt!" and the caverns echo it: "Halt! Halt!" Abigail is the conqueress! One woman in the right mightier than four hundred men in the wrong! A hurricane stopped at the sight of a water-lily! A dewdrop dashed back Niagara! By her prowess and tact she has saved her husband, and saved her home, and put before all ages an illustrious specimen of what a wife can do if she be godly, and prudent, and self-sacrificing, and vigilant, and devoted to the interests of her husband, and attractive.
As, Sabbath before last, I took the responsibility of telling husbands how they ought to treat their wives—and, though I noticed that some of the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well—I now take the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their husbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that while married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you did not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies that more than overbalanced them. I suppose that if I could look into the heart of a hundred wives here present and ask them where is the kindest and best man they know of, and they dared speak out, ninety-nine out of ahundred of them would say: "At the other end of this pew."
I hope, my sister, you have married a man as Christian and as well balanced as that. But even if you were worsted in conjugal bargain, you cannot be worse off than this Abigail in my text. Her husband was cross and ungrateful, an inebriate, for on the very evening after her heroic achievement at the foot of the hill, where she captured a whole regiment with her genial and strategic behaviour, she returned home and found her husband so drunk that she could not tell him the story, but had to postpone it until the next day. So, my sister, I do not want you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: "That is the way to treat a perfect husband;" for you are to remember that no wife was ever worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of her table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she could do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely and splendid man with whom you are to walk the path of life?
First, I counsel the wife to remember in what a severe and terrific battle of life her husband is engaged. Whether in professional, or commercial, or artistic, or mechanical life, your husband from morning to nightis in a Solferino, if not a Sedan. It is a wonder that your husband has any nerves or patience or suavity left. To get a living in this next to the last decade of the nineteenth century is a struggle. If he come home and sit down preoccupied, you ought to excuse him. If he do not feel like going out that night for a walk or entertainment, remember he has been out all day. You say he ought to leave at his place of business his annoyances and come home cheery. But if a man has been betrayed by a business partner, or a customer has cheated him out of a large bill of goods, or a protested note has been flung on his desk, or somebody has called him a liar, and everything has gone wrong from morning till night, he must have great genius and forgetfulness if he do not bring some of the perplexity home with him. When you tell me he ought to leave it all at the store or bank or shop, you might as well tell a storm on the Atlantic to stay out there and not touch the coast or ripple the harbor.
Remember, he is not overworking so much for himself as he is overworking for you and the children. It is the effect of his success or defeat on the homestead that causes him the agitation. The most of men after forty-five years of age live not for themselves, but for their families. They begin to askthemselves anxiously the question: "How if I should give out, what would become of the folks at home? Would my children ever get their education? Would my wife have to go out into the world to earn bread for herself and our little ones? My eyesight troubles me; how if my eyes should fail? My head gets dizzy; how if I should drop under apoplexy?" The high pressure of business life and mechanical life and agricultural life is home pressure.
Some time ago a large London firm decided that if any of their clerks married on a salary less than £150—that is, $750 a year—he should be discharged, the supposition being that the temptation might be too great for misappropriation. The large majority of families in America live by utmost dint of economy, and to be honest and yet meet one's family expenses is the appalling question that turns the life of tens of thousands of men into martyrdom. Let the wife of the overborne and exhausted husband remember this, and do not nag him about that, and say you might as well have no husband when the fact is he is dying by inches that the home may be kept up.
I charge also the wife to keep herself as attractive after marriage as she was before marriage. The reason that so often a manceases to love his wife is because the wife ceases to be lovable. In many cases what elaboration of toilet before marriage, and what recklessness of appearance after! The most disgusting thing on earth is a slatternly woman—I mean a woman who never combs her hair until she goes out, or looks like a fright until somebody calls. That a man married to one of these creatures stays at home as little as possible is no wonder. It is a wonder that such a man does not go on a whaling voyage of three years, and in a leaky ship. Costly wardrobe is not required; but, O woman! if you are not willing, by all that ingenuity of refinement can effect, to make yourself attractive to your husband, you ought not to complain if he seek in other society those pleasant surroundings which you deny him.
Again, I charge you never talk to others about the frailties of your husband.[1]Some people have a way, in banter, of elaborately describing to others the shortcomings or unhappy eccentricities of a husband or wife. Ah, the world will find out soon enough all the defects of your companion! No need of your advertising them! Better imitate those women who, having made mistake in affiance,always have a veil to hide imperfections and alleviations of conduct to mention. We must admit that there are rare cases where a wife cannot live longer with her husband, and his cruelties and outrages are the precursor of divorcement or separation. But until that day comes, keep the awful secret to yourself—keep it from every being in the universe except the God to whom you do well to tell your trouble. Trouble only a few years at most, and then you can go up on the other side of the grave, and say: "O Lord, I kept the marital secret! Thou knowest how well I kept it, and I thank Thee that the release has come at last. Give me some place where I can sit down and rest awhile from the horrors of an embruted earthly alliance, before I begin the full raptures of heaven." And orders will be sent out to the usher angels, saying: "Take this Abigail right up to the softest seat in the best room of the palace, and let twenty of the brightest angels wait on her for the next thousand years."
Further, I charge you, let there be no outside interference with the conjugal relation. Neither neighbor nor confidential friend, nor brother, nor sister, nor father, nor mother, have a right to come in here. The married gossip will come around, and by thehour tell you how she manages her husband. You tell her plainly that if she will attend to the affairs of her household you will attend to yours. What damage some people do with their tongues! Nature indicates that the tongue is a dangerous thing, by the fact that it is shut in, first by a barricade of teeth, and then by the door of the lips. One insidious talker can keep a whole neighborhood badly stirred up. The Apostle Peter excoriated these busybodies in other people's matters, and St. Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians and to Timothy, gives them a sharp dig, and the good housewife will be on the lookout for them, and never return their calls, and treat them with coldest frigidity. For this reason, better keep house as soon as possible. Some people are opposed to them, but I thank God for what are called flats in these cities. They put a separate home within the means of nearly all the population. In your married relations you do not need any advice. If you and your husband have not skill enough to get along well alone, with all the advice you can import you will get along worse. What you want for your craft on this voyage is plenty of sea-room.
I charge you, also, make yourself the intelligent companion of your husband. What with these floods of newspapers and booksthere is no excuse for the wife's ignorance either about the present or the past. If you have no more than a half-hour every day to yourself you may fill your mind with entertaining and useful knowledge. Let the merchant's wife read up on all mercantile questions, and the mechanic's wife on all that pertains to his style of work, and the professional man's wife on all the legal, or medical, or theological, or political discussions of the day. It is very stupid for a man, after having been amid active minds all day, to find his wife without information or opinions on anything. If the wife knows nothing about what is going on in the world, after the tea-hour has passed, and the husband has read the newspaper, he will have an engagement and must "go and see a man." In nine cases out of ten when a man does not stay at home in the evening, unless positive duty calls him away, it is because there is nothing to stay for. He would rather talk with his wife than anyone else if she could talk as well.
I charge you, my sister, in every way to make your home attractive. I have not enough of practical knowledge about house adornment to know just what makes the difference, but here is an opulent house, containing all wealth ofbric-a-brac, and of musical instrument, and of painting, and ofupholstery, and yet there is in it a chill like Nova Zembla. Another home, with one-twentieth part of the outlay, and small supply of art, and cheapest piano purchasable, and yet, as you enter it, there comes upon body, mind, and soul a glow of welcome and satisfied and happy domesticity. The holy art of making the most comfort and brightness out of the means afforded, every wife should study.
At the siege of Argus, Pyrrhus was killed by the tile of a roof thrown by a woman, and Abimelech was slain by a stone that a woman threw from the tower of Thebes, and Earl Montfort was destroyed by a rock discharged at him by a woman from the walls of Toulouse. But without any weapon save that of her cold, cheerless household arrangement, any wife may slay all the attractions of a home circle. A wife and mother in prosperous circumstances and greatly admired was giving her chief time to social life. The husband spent his evenings away. The son, fifteen years of age, got the same habit, and there was a prospect that the other children, as they got old enough, would take the same turn. One day the wife aroused to the consideration that she had better save her husband and her boy. Interesting and stirring games were introduced into the house. The mother studied up interesting things to tell her children. One morning the son said:
"Father, you ought to have been home last night. We had a grand time. Such jolly games and such interesting stories!" This went on from night to night, and after a while the husband stayed in to see what was going on, and he finally got attracted, and added something of his own to the evening entertainments; and the result was that the wife and mother saved her husband and saved her boy and saved herself. Was not that an enterprise worth the attention of the greatest woman that ever lived since Abigail at the foot of the rock arrested the four hundred armed warriors?
Do not, my sister, be dizzied and disturbed by the talk of those who think the home circle too insignificant for a woman's career, and who want to get you out on platforms and in conspicuous enterprises. There are women who have a special outside mission, and do not dare to interpret me as derisive of their important mission. But my opinion is that the woman who can reinforce her husband in the work of life and rear her children for positions of usefulness is doing more for God and the race and her own happiness than if she spoke on every great platform and headed a hundred great enterprises. My mother never made a missionary speech in her life, and at a missionarymeeting I doubt whether she could have got enough courage to vote aye or no, but she raised her son John, who has been preaching the Gospel and translating religious literature in Amoy, China, for about forty years. Was not that a better thing to do?
Compare such an one with one of these dieaway, attitudinizing, frivolous, married coquettes of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an opera box on the night of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable," the ten commandments an inconvenience, taking arsenic to improve the complexion, and her appearance a confused result of belladonna, bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to discuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line.
What the world wants now is about fifty thousand old-fashioned mothers, women who shall realize that the highest, grandest, mightiest institution on earth is the home. It is not necessary that they should have the same old-time manners of the country farm-house, or wear the old-fashioned cap and spectacles and apron that her glorified ancestry wore; but I mean the old spirit which began with the Hannahs and the Mother Lois and the Abigails of Scripturedays, and was demonstrated on the homestead where some of us were reared, though the old house long ago was pulled down and its occupants scattered, never to meet until in the higher home that awaits the families of the righteous. While there are more good and faithful wives and mothers now than there ever were, society has got a wrong twist on this subject, and there are influences abroad that would make women believe their chief sphere is outside instead of inside the home.
Hence in many households, children instead of a blessing are a nuisance. It is card caseversuschild's primer, carriageversuscradle, social popularityversusdomestic felicity. Hence infanticide and antenatal murder so common that all the physicians, allopathic, hydropathic, homœopathic, and eclectic are crying out in horror, and it is time that the pulpits joined with the medical profession in echoing and re-echoing the thunder of Mount Sinai, which says: "Thou shalt not kill," and the book of Revelation, which says: "All murderers shall have their place in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." And the man or the woman who takes life a minute old will as certainly go straight to hell as the man or woman who destroys life forty years old. And the wildest, loudest shriekof Judgment Day will be given at the overthrow of those who moved in the high and respected circles of earthly society, yet decreed by their own act, as far as they could privately effect it, the extermination of the advancing generations, abetted in the horrid crime by a lot of infernal quacks with which modern medicine is infested. When, on the Last Day, the crier of the Court shall with resounding "Oyez," "Oyez!" declare the "Oyer and Terminer" of the Universe opened, and the Judge, with gavel of thunderbolt, shall smite the nations into silence, and the trial of all the fratricides, and parricides, and matricides, and patricides, and uxoricides, and regicides, and deicides, and infanticides of the earth shall proceed, none of my hearers or readers can say that they knew not what they were doing. Mighty God! arrest the evil that is overshadowing this century.
I charge you, my sister, that you take your husband along with you to heaven. Of course this implies that you yourself are a Christian. I must take that for granted. It cannot be possible that after what Christianity has done for woman, and after taking the infinitely responsible position you have assumed as the head of the household, that you should be in a position antagonistic toChrist. It was not a slip of the tongue when I spoke of you as being at the head of the household. We men rather pride ourselves as being at the head of the household, but it is only a pleasant delusion. To whom do the children go when they have trouble? When there is a sore finger to be bound up or one of the first teeth that needs to be removed to make way for one that is crowding it out, to whom does the child go? For whom do children cry out in the night when they get frightened at a bad dream? Aye, to whom does the husband go when he has a business trouble too great or too delicate for outside ears? We, the men, are heads of the household in name, but you, O wives! are the heads of the household in fact, and it is your business to take your husband with you into the kingdom of God, and see that house prepared for heaven.
You can do it! Of course God's almighty grace alone can convert him, but you are to be the instrument. Some wives keep their husbands out of heaven, and others garner them for it. If your religion, O wife! is simply the joke of the household, if you would rather go to the theatre than the prayer-meeting, if you can beat all the neighborhood in progressive euchre, if your husband never sees you kneel at the bedside in prayer before retiring, if the only thing that reminds the family of your church relationsis that on communion-day you get home late to dinner, you will not be able to take your husband to heaven, for the simple reason that you will not get there yourself. But I suppose that your religion is genuine, and that the husband realizes that there is in your soul a divine principle, and that, though you may be naturally quicker tempered than he is and have many imperfections that distress you more than they can any one else, still you are destined for the skies when the brief scenes of this life are over. How will you take him with you? There are two oars to that boat—prayer and holy example.
But you say he belongs to a worldly club, or he does not believe a word of the Bible, or he is an inebriate and very loose in his habits? What you tell me shows that you don't understand that while you are at the one end of a prayer, the omnipotent God is at the other end, and it is simply a question whether Almightiness is strong enough and keeps His word. I have no doubt there will be great conventions in heaven, called for celebrative purposes, and when in some Celestial assemblage the saints shall be telling what brought them to God, I believe that ten thousand times ten thousand will say: "My wife."
I put beside each other two testimonies of men concerning their wives, and let you seethe contrast. An aged man was asked the reason of his salvation. With tearful emotion he said: "My wife was brought to God some years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her religion. She, however, returned nothing but kindness, constantly maintaining an anxiety to promote my comfort and happiness; and it was her amiable conduct when suffering ill-treatment from me that first sent the arrows of conviction to my soul." The other testimony was from a dying man: "Harriet, I am a lost man. You opposed our family worship and my secret prayer. You drew me away into temptation and to neglect every religious duty. I believe my fate is sealed. Harriet, you are the cause of my everlasting ruin." How many glorious married couples in heaven—Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Lapidoth and Deborah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, and many whom we have known as good as the most of them!
As once you stood in the village or city church or in your father's house, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up, husband and wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Redeemer, while I proclaim the banns of an eternal marriage. Join your right hands. I pronounce you one forever. The circle is an emblem of eternity, and that is the shape of the Wedding Ring.
[1]As Abigail did (1 Sam. 25:25).
[1]As Abigail did (1 Sam. 25:25).
"Moreover the Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils,"—Isaiah 3:16, 18-23.[2]
"Moreover the Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils,"—Isaiah 3:16, 18-23.[2]
This is a Jerusalem fashion plate. It puts us two thousand six hundred years back, and sets us down in an ancient city. The procession of men and women is moving up and down the gay streets. It is the height of the fashionable season. The sensible menand women move with so much modesty that they do not attract our attention. But here come the haughty daughters of Jerusalem! They lean forward; they lean very much forward—so far forward as to be unnatural—teetering, wobbling, wriggling, flirting, or, as my text describes it, they "walk with stretched-forth necks, walking and mincing as they go."
See! That is a princess. Look! That is a Damascus sword-maker. Look! That is a Syrian merchant. The jingling of the chains, and the lashing of the headbands, and the exhibitions of universal swagger attract the attention of the Prophet Isaiah, and he brings his camera to bear upon the scene, and takes a picture for all the ages. But where is that scene? Vanished. Where are those gay streets? Vermin-covered population pass through them. Where are the hands, and the necks, and the foreheads, and the shoulders, and the feet that sported all that magnificence? Ashes! Ashes!
That we should all be clad is proved by the opening of
in Paradise, with its apparel of dark green. That we should all as far as our means allow us be beautifully and gracefully apparelled is proved by the fact that God never made a wave but He gilded it with goldensunbeams, or a tree but He garlanded it with blossoms, or a sky but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a furnace to ascend but He columned, and turreted, and doled, and scrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see the apple orchards of the spring and the pageantry of the autumnal forests, I come to the conclusion that if nature ever does join the Church, while she may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship, she never will be a Quaker in the style of her dress. Why the notches of a fern leaf or the stamen of a water lily? Why, when the day departs, does it let the folding doors of heaven stay open so long, when it might go in so quickly? One summer morning I saw an army of a million spears, each one adorned with a diamond of the first water—I mean the grass with the dew on it.
When the prodigal came home his father not only put a coat on his back, but jewelry on his hand. Christ wore a beard, Paul, the bachelor apostle, not afflicted with any sentimentality, admired the arrangement of a woman's hair, when he said in his epistle: "If a woman have long hair, it is a glory unto her." There will be fashion in heaven as on earth, but it will be a different kind of fashion. It will decide the color of the dress; and the population of that country, by a beautiful law, will wear white.
I say these things as a background to my sermon, to show you that I have no prim, precise, prudish, or cast-iron theories on the subject of human apparel; but the goddess of fashion has set up her throne in this country and at the sound of the timbrels we are all expected to fall down and worship. Her altars smoke with the sacrifice of the bodies and souls of ten thousand victims.
When I come to count the victims of fashion I find as many masculine as feminine. Men make an easy tirade against woman, as though she were the chief worshipper at this idolatrous shrine, and no doubt some men in the more conspicuous part of the pew have already cast glances at the more retired part of the pew, their look a prophecy of a generous distribution. My sermon shall be as appropriate for one end of the pew as for the other.
Men are as much the idolaters of fashion as women, but they sacrifice on a different part of the altar. With men the fashion goes to cigars, and club-rooms, and yachting parties, and wine suppers. In the United States the men chew up and smoke one hundred millions of dollars' worth of tobaccoevery year. That is their fashion. In London not long ago a man died who started in life with $750,000; but he ate it all up in gluttonies, sending his agents to all parts of the earth for some rare delicacy for the palate, sometimes one plate of food costing him three or four hundred dollars. He ate up his whole fortune, and had only one guinea left. With that he bought a woodcock, and had it dressed in the very best style, ate it, gave two hours for digestion, then walked out on Westminster Bridge and threw himself into the Thames and died, doing on a large scale what you and I have often seen done on a small scale.
But men do not abstain from millinery and elaboration of skirt through any superiority of simplicity. It is only because such appendages would be a blockade to business. What would sashes and trains three and a half yards long do in a stock market? And yet men are the disciples of custom just as much as women. Some of them wear boots so tight that they can hardly walk in the paths of righteousness, and there are men who buy expensive suits of clothes and never pay for them, and who go through the streets in great stripes of color, like animated checkerboards. I say these things because I want to show you that I am impartial in my discourse, and that both sexes,in the language of the surrogate's office, "share and share alike."
As God may help me I am going to set forth the evil effects of improper dress or an excessive discipleship of costume. It is a simple truth that you all know, although the pulpit has not yet uttered it, that much of the womanly costume of our time is the cause of the temporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a shamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for vehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can come to the verge of indecency without falling over. The tide of masculine profligacy will never turn back until there is a decided reformation in womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with the officer of the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, went up to a so-called lady, and because of her sparse and incompetent apparel, ordered her either to leave the house or habilitate herself immediately. It is high time that our good and sensible women make vehement protest against fashionable indecency, and if the women of the household do not realize the deplorable extremes of much of the female costume, that husbands implead their wives on this subject, and that fathers prohibit theirdaughters. The evil is terrific and overshadowing.
I suppose that the American stage is responsible for much of this. I do not go to the theatres, so I must take the evidence of the actors and managers of theatres, such as Mr. John Gilbert, Mr. A.M. Palmer, and Mr. Daniel E. Bandmann. They have recently told us that the crime of undress is blasting the theatre, which by many is considered a school of morals, and indeed superior to the Church, and a forerunner of the millennium. Mr. Palmer says: "The bulk of the performances on the stage are degrading and pernicious. The managers strive to come just as near the line as possible without flagrantly breaking the law. There never have been costumes worn on a stage of this city, either in a theatre, hall, or 'dive,' so improper as those that clothe some of the chorus in recent comic opera productions." He says in regard to the female performers: "It is not a question whether they can sing, but just how little they will consent to wear." Mr. Bandmann, who has been twenty-nine years on the stage, and before almost all nationalities, says: "I unhesitatingly state that the taste of the present theatre-going people of America, as a body, is of a coarse and vulgarnature. The Hindoo would turn with disgust at such exhibitions, which are sought after and applauded on the stage of this country. Our shop windows are full of and the walls covered with show cards and posters which should be a disgrace to an enlightened country and an insult to the eye of a cultured community." Mr. Gilbert says: "Such exhibition is a disastrous one to the morals of the community. Are these proper pictures to put out for the public to look at, to say nothing of the propriety of females appearing in public dressed like that? It is shameful!"
I must take the testimony of the friends of the theatre and the confirmation which I see on the board fences and in the show windows containing the pictures of the way actresses dress. I suppose that those representations of play-house costume are true, for if they are not true, then those highly moral and religious theatres are swindling the public by inducing the people to the theatre by promises of spectacular nudity which they do not fulfill. Now, all this familiarizes the public with such improprieties of costume and depresses the public conscience as to what is allowable and right.
The parlor and drawing-room are now running a race with the theatre and operabouffe. They are now nearly neck and neck in the race, the latter a little ahead; but the parlor and the drawing-room are gaining on the others, and the probability is they will soon be even and pass the stand so nearly at the same time that one half of Pandemonium will clap its hands because opera bouffe has beaten, and the other half because the drawing-room has beaten. Let printing-press, and platform, and pulpit hurl red-hot anathema at the boldness of much of womanly attire. I charge Christian women, neither by style of dress nor adjustment of apparel, to become administrative of evil. Show me the fashion plates of any age between this and the time of Louis XVI., of France, and Henry VIII., of England, and I will tell you the type of morals or immorals of that age or that year. No exception to it. Modest apparel means a righteous people. Immodest apparel always means a contaminated and depraved society.
It is not only such boldness that is to be reprehended, but extravagance of costume. This latter is the cause of fraud unlimitable and ghastly. Do you know that Arnold of the Revolution proposed to sell his country in order to get money to support his home wardrobe? I declare here before God andthis people that the effort to keep up expensive establishments in this country is sending more business men to temporal perdition than all other causes combined. It was this that sent prominent business men to the watering of stocks, and life insurance presidents to perjured statements about their assets, and some of them to the penitentiary, and has completely upset our American finances.
But why should I go to these famous defaultings, to show what men will do in order to keep up great home style and expensive wardrobe, when you and I know scores of men who are put to their wit's end and are lashed from January to December in the attempt? Our Washington politicians may theorize until the expiration of their terms of office as to the best way of improving our monetary condition in this country. It will be of no use, and things will be no better until we learn to put on our heads and backs and feet and hands no more than we can pay for.
There are clerks in stores and banks on limited salaries who in the vain attempt to keep the wardrobe of their family as showy as other folk's wardrobes are dying of muffs, and diamonds, and camel's-hair shawls, and high hats, and they have nothing left exceptwhat they give to cigars and wine suppers, and they die before their time, and they will expect us ministers to preach about them as though they were the victims of early piety; and after a high-class funeral, with silver handles at the side of their coffin of extraordinary brightness, it will be found out that the undertaker is cheated out of his legitimate expenses! Do not send to me to preach the funeral sermon of a man who dies like that. I would blurt out the whole truth, and tell that he was strangled to death by his wife's ribbons! The country is dressed to death.
You are not surprised to find that the putting up of one public building in New York cost millions of dollars more than it ought to have cost, when you find that the man who gave out the contracts paid more than five thousand dollars for his daughter's wedding dress. Cashmeres of a thousand dollars each are not rare on Broadway. It is estimated that there are eight thousand women in these two cities who have expended on their personal array two thousand dollars a year.
What are the men to do in order to keep up such home wardrobes? Steal—that is the only respectable thing they can do! During the last fifteen years there have been innumerable fine business men shipwrecked on the wardrobe. The temptation comesin this way: a man thinks more of his family than all the world outside, and if they spend the evening in describing to him the superior wardrobe of the family across the street that they cannot bear the sight of, the man is thrown on his gallantry and his pride of family, and without translating his feelings into plain language, he goes into extortion and issuing of false stock and skillful penmanship in writing somebody else's name at the foot of a promissory note; and they all go down together—the husband to the prison, the wife to the sewing machine, the children to be taken care of by those who were called poor relations. Oh, for some new Shakespeare to arise and write
Act the first of the tragedy: A plain but beautiful home. Enter the newly married pair. Enter simplicity of manner and behavior. Enter as much happiness as is ever found in one home.
Act the second: Discontent with the humble home. Enter envy. Enter jealousy. Enter desire to display.
Act the third: Enlargement of expenses. Enter all the queenly dressmakers. Enter the French milliners.
Act the fourth: The tip-top of society. Enter princes and princesses of New York life. Enter magnificent plate and equipage. Enter everything splendid.
Act the fifth and last, winding up the scene: Enter the assignee. Enter the sheriff. Enter the creditors. Enter humiliation. Enter the wrath of God. Enter the contempt of society. Enter death. Now, let the silk curtain drop on the stage. The farce is ended, and the lights are out.
Will you forgive me if I say in tersest shape possible, that some of the men in this country have to forge, and to perjure, and to swindle to pay for their wives' dresses? I will say it whether you forgive me or not.
Again, extravagant costume is the foe of all Christian alms-giving. Men and women put so much in personal display that they often have nothing for God and the cause of suffering humanity—a Christian man cracking his Palais Royal gloves across the back by shutting up his hand to hide the one cent he puts into the poor box! a Christian woman at the story of the Hottentots crying copious tears into a twenty-five dollar handkerchief, and then giving a two-cent piece to the collection, thrusting it down under the bills, so people will not know but it was a ten-dollar gold piece! One hundred dollars for incense to fashion—two cents for God! God gives us ninety cents out of every dollar. The other ten cents, by command of His Bible, belong to Him. Is notGod liberal according to this tithing system laid down in the Old Testament—is not God liberal in giving us ninety cents out of a dollar when he takes but ten? We do not like that. We want to have ninety-nine cents for ourselves and one for God.
Now, I would a great deal rather steal ten cents from you than God. I think one reason why a great many people do not get along in worldly accumulation faster is because they do not observe this Divine rule. God says: "Well, if that man is not satisfied with ninety cents out of a dollar, then I will take the whole dollar, and I will give it to the man or woman who is honest with me." The greatest obstacle to charity in the Christian church to-day is the fact that men expend so much on their table, and women so much on their dress, they have got nothing left for the work of God and the world's betterment.
Again, extravagant costume is distraction to a public worship. You know very well there are a good many people who go to church just as they go to the races, to see who will come out first. Men and women with souls to be saved passing the hour in wondering where that man got his cravat, or what store that woman patronizes. In many of our churches the preliminaryexercises are taken up with the discussion of wardrobes. It is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does not strike the meeting-houses with lightning? What distraction of public worship! Dying men and women, whose bodies are soon to be turned into dust, yet before three worlds strutting like peacocks. People sitting down in a pew or taking up a hymn book, all absorbed at the same time in personal array, to sing:
"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,Thy better portion trace;Rise from transitory thingsToward heaven, thy native place!"
"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,Thy better portion trace;Rise from transitory thingsToward heaven, thy native place!"
I adopt the Episcopalian prayer, and say: "Good Lord, deliver us!"
Extravagant costume belittles the intellect. Our minds are enlarged or they dwindle just in proportion to the importance of the subject on which we constantly dwell. Can you imagine anything more dwarfing to the human intellect than the study of dress? I see men on the street who, judging from their elaboration, I think must have taken two hours to arrange their apparel. After a few years of that kind of absorption, which one of McAllister's magnifying glasses will be powerful enough to make the man's character visible? What will be left of a woman's intellect after giving years andyears to the discussion of such questions? They all land in idiocy. I have seen men at the summer watering-places through fashion the mere wreck of what they once were. Sallow of cheek. Meagre of limb. Hollow at the chest. Showing no animation save in rushing across a room to pick up a lady's fan. Simpering along the corridors the same compliments they simpered twenty years ago.
Yet, my friends, I have given you only the milder phase of this evil. It shuts a great multitude out of heaven. The first peal of thunder that shook Sinai declared: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and you will have to choose between the goddess of fashion and the Christian God. There are a great many seats in heaven, and they are all easy seats, but not one seat for the devotee of costume. Heaven is for meek and quiet spirits. Heaven is for those who think more of their souls than of their bodies.
Give up this idolatry of fashion or give up heaven. What would you do standing beside the Countess of Huntingdon, whose joy it was to build chapels for the poor; or with that Christian woman of Boston, who fed fifteen hundred children of the street, at Fanueil Hall, one New Year's Day, givingout as a sort of doxology at the end of the meeting a pair of shoes to each one of them; or those Dorcases of modern society who have consecrated their needles to the Lord, and who will get eternal reward for every stitch they take?
Oh, men and women, give up the idolatry of costume! The rivalries and the competitions of such a life are a stupendous wretchedness. You will always find some one with brighter array, and with more palatial residence, and with lavender kid gloves that make a tighter fit. And if you buy this thing and wear it you will wish you had bought something else and worn it. And the frets of such a life will bring the crow's feet to your temples before they are due, and when you come to die you will have a miserable time.
I have seen men and women of excessive costume die, and I never saw one of them die well. The trappings off, there they lay on the tumbled pillow, and there were just two things that bothered them—a wasted life and a coming eternity. I could not pacify them, for their body, mind, and soul had been exhausted in the worship of costume, and they could not appreciate the Gospel. When I knelt by their bedside they were mumbling out their regrets, and saying:"O God! O God!" Their garments hung up in the wardrobe never again to be seen by them. Without any exception, so far as my memory serves me, they died without hope, and went into eternity unprepared. The two most ghastly death-beds on earth are the one where a man dies of delirium tremens, and the other where a woman dies after having sacrificed all her faculties of body, mind and soul in the worship of costume.
My friends, we must appear in judgment to answer for what we have worn on our bodies as well as for what repentances we have exercised with our souls. On that day I see coming in Beau Brummell of the last century without his cloak; Aaron Burr, without the letters that to old age he showed in pride, to prove his early wicked gallantries; and Absalom without his hair; and Marchioness Pompadour without her titles; and Mrs. Arnold, the belle of Wall Street, when that was the centre of fashion, without her fripperies of vesture.
And in great haggardness they shall go away into eternal expatriation, while among the queens of heavenly society will be found Vashti, who wore the modest veil before the palatial bacchanalians; and Hannah, who annually made a little coat for Samuel at thetemple; and Grandmother Lois, the ancestress of Timothy, who imitated her virtue; and Mary, who gave Jesus Christ to the world; and many of you, the wives, and mothers, and sisters, and daughters of the present Christian church who, through great tribulation, are entering into the kingdom of God. Christ announced who would make up the royal family of heaven when He said: "Whosoever doeth the will of God, the same is my brother, my sister, my mother."