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Selected Messages Book 2
and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
but (which becometh women professing Godliness) with good works.”
The mass of professed Christians utterly disregard the teachings of the
Apostles, and wear gold, pearls and costly array.
God’s loyal people are the light of the world, and the salt of the
earth. And they should ever remember that their influence is of value.
Were they to exchange the extreme long, for the extreme short dress,
they would, to a great extent, destroy their influence. Unbelievers,
whom it is their duty to benefit, and seek to bring to the Lamb of God,
would be disgusted. Many improvements can be made in the dress of
females in reference to health, without making so great a change as to
disgust the beholder.
The female form should not be compressed in the least with corsets
and whale bones. The dress should be perfectly easy that the lungs
and heart may have healthy action. The dress should reach somewhat
below the top of the boot; but should be short enough to clear the
filth of the sidewalk and street, without being raised by the hand. A
still shorter dress than this would be proper, convenient, and healthful
for females, when doing their housework, and especially, for those
women who are obliged to perform more or less out-of-door labor.
With this style of dress, one light skirt, or, at most two, are all that is
necessary, and these should be buttoned on to a waist, or suspended
with straps. The hips were not formed to bear heavy weights. The
heavy skirts worn by females, their weight dragging down upon the
hips, have been the cause of various diseases, which are not easily
cured, because the sufferers seem to be ignorant of the cause which
has produced them, and they continue to violate the laws of their
being by girding the waists and wearing heavy skirts, until they are
made life-long invalids. Many will immediately exclaim, “Why such
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a style of dress would be old-fashioned!” What if it is? I wish we
could be old-fashioned in many respects. If we could have the old-
fashioned strength that characterized the old-fashioned women of past
generations it would be very desirable. I do not speak unadvisedly
when I say that the way in which women clothe themselves, together
with their indulgence of appetite, is the greatest causes of their present
feeble diseased condition. There is but one woman in a thousand who
clothes her limbs as she should. Whatever may be the length of the
dress, females should clothe their limbs as thoroughly as the males.