Reform Dress
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were not to serve their own desires, or to imitate the idolatrous nations
around them, but to remain a distinct, separate people, that all who
looked upon them might say: These are they whom God brought out
of the land of Egypt, who keep the law of Ten Commandments. An
Israelite was known to be such as soon as seen, for God through simple
means distinguished him as His.
The order given by God to the children of Israel to place a ribbon of
blue in their garments was to have no direct influence on their health,
only as God would bless them by obedience, and the ribbon would keep
in their memory the high claims of Jehovah and prevent them from
mingling with other nations, uniting in their drunken feasts, and eating
swine’s flesh and luxurious food detrimental to health. God would now
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have His people adopt the reform dress, not only to distinguish them
from the world as His “peculiar people,” but because a reform in dress
is essential to physical and mental health. God’s people have, to a great
extent, lost their peculiarity, and have been gradually patterning after
the world, and mingling with them, until they have in many respects
become like them. This is displeasing to God. He directs them, as He
directed the children of Israel anciently, to come out from the world
and forsake their idolatrous practices, not following their own hearts
(for their hearts are unsanctified) or their own eyes, which have led
them to depart from God and to unite with the world.
Something must arise to lessen the hold of God’s people upon the
world. The reform dress is simple and healthful, yet there is a cross
in it. I thank God for the cross and cheerfully bow to lift it. We have
been so united with the world that we have lost sight of the cross and
do not suffer for Christ’s sake.
We should not wish to invent something to make a cross; but if God
presents to us a cross, we should cheerfully bear it. In the acceptance
of the cross we are distinguished from the world, who love us not and
ridicule our peculiarity. Christ was hated by the world because He was
not of the world. Can His followers expect to fare better than their
Master? If we pass along without receiving censure or frowns from the
world we may be alarmed, for it is our conformity to the world which
makes us so much like them that there is nothing to arouse their envy
or malice; there is no collision of spirits. The world despises the cross.
“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but
unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”
1 Corinthians 1:18
.