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Some Principles of Healthful Dressing
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soul. And we are to be workers together with Him for the health of
both soul and body. Both are promoted by healthful dress. It should
have the grace, the beauty, the appropriateness, of natural simplicity.
Christ has warned us against the pride of life, but not against its
grace and natural beauty. He pointed to the flowers of the field, to
the lily unfolding in its purity, and said, “Even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Matthew 6:29
. Thus by
the things of nature, Christ illustrates the beauty that heaven values,
the modest grace, the simplicity, the purity, the appropriateness, that
would make our attire pleasing to Him. The most beautiful dress He
bids us wear upon the soul. No outward adorning can compare in
value or loveliness with that “meek and quiet spirit” which in His
sight is “of great price.”
1 Peter 3:4
....
Physical Effects of Improper Dress
It was the adversary of all good who instigated the invention
of the ever-changing fashions. He desires nothing so much as to
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bring grief and dishonor to God by working the misery and ruin
of human beings. One of the means by which he most effectually
accomplishes this is the devices of fashion, that weaken the body as
well as enfeeble the mind and belittle the soul.
Women are subject to serious maladies, and their sufferings are
greatly increased by their manner of dressing. Instead of preserving
their health for the trying emergencies that are sure to come, they
by their wrong habits too often sacrifice not only health but life,
and leave to their children a legacy of woe in a ruined constitution,
perverted habits, and false ideas of life.
One of fashion’s wasteful and mischievous devices is the skirt
that sweeps the ground. Uncleanly, uncomfortable, inconvenient,
unhealthful—all this and more is true of the trailing skirt. It is
extravagant, both because of the superfluous material required, and
because of the needless wear on account of its length. And whoever
has seen a woman in a trailing skirt, with hands filled with parcels,
attempt to go up or down stairs, to enter a streetcar, to walk through
a crowd, to walk in the rain or on a muddy road, needs no other
proof of its inconvenience and discomfort.