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Testimonies for the Church Volume 1
and in all cases at least three inches shorter than the dress. If anything
is worn to distend the skirt, let it be small and at least one quarter or
one half a yard from the bottom of the dress or outside skirt. If a cord,
or anything answering the place of cords, is placed directly around the
bottom of the skirt, it distends the dress merely at the bottom, making
it appear very unbecoming when the wearer is sitting or stooping.
None need fear that I shall make dress reform one of my principal
subjects as we travel from place to place. Those who have heard me
upon this matter will have to act upon the light that has already been
given. I have done my duty; I have borne my testimony, and those
who have heard me and read that which I have written must now bear
the responsibility of receiving or rejecting the light given. If they
choose to venture to be forgetful hearers, and not doers of the work,
they run their own risk and will be accountable to God for the course
they pursue. I am clear. I shall urge none and condemn none. This is
not the work assigned me. God knows His humble, willing, obedient
children and will reward them according to their faithful performance
of His will. To many the dress reform is too simple and humbling to
be adopted. They cannot lift the cross. God works by simple means to
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separate and distinguish His children from the world; but some have
so departed from the simplicity of the work and ways of God that they
are above the work, not in it.
I was referred to
Numbers 15:38-41
: “Speak unto the children of
Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of
their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the
fringe of the borders a ribband of blue: and it shall be unto you for a
fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments
of the Lord, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart
and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring: that ye may
remember, and do all My commandments, and be holy unto your God.
I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt,
to be your God: I am the Lord your God.” Here God expressly com-
manded a very simple arrangement of dress for the children of Israel
for the purpose of distinguishing them from the idolatrous nations
around them. As they looked upon their peculiarity of dress, they were
to remember that they were God’s commandment-keeping people,
and that He had wrought in a miraculous manner to bring them from
Egyptian bondage to serve Him, to be a holy people unto Him. They