Simplicity in Dress
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in favor of truth, let them live out their profession and thus imitate the
humble Pattern.
Pride, ignorance, and folly are constant companions. The Lord is
displeased with the pride manifested among His professed people. He
is dishonored by their conformity to the unhealthful, immodest, and
expensive fashions of this degenerate age....
Dress Reform
To protect the people of God from the corrupting influence of
the world, as well as to promote physical and moral health, the dress
reform was introduced among us. It was not intended to be a yoke
of bondage, but a blessing, not to increase labor, but to save labor,
not to add to the expense of dress, but to save expense. It would
distinguish God’s people from the world and thus serve as a barrier
against its fashions and follies. He who knows the end from the begin-
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ning, who understands our nature and our needs,—our compassionate
Redeemer,—saw our dangers and difficulties, and condescended to
give us timely warning and instruction concerning our habits of life,
even in the proper selection of food and clothing.
Satan is constantly devising some new style of dress that shall
prove an injury to physical and moral health; and he exults when he
sees professed Christians eagerly accepting the fashions that he has
invented. The amount of physical suffering created by unnatural and
unhealthful dress cannot be estimated. Many have become lifelong
invalids through their compliance with the demands of fashion....
Among these pernicious fashions were the large hoops, which
frequently caused indecent exposure of the person. In contrast with
this was presented a neat, modest, becoming dress, which would
dispense with the hoops and the trailing skirts, and provide for the
proper clothing of the limbs. But dress reform comprised more than
shortening the dress and clothing the limbs. It included every article of
dress upon the person. It lifted the weights from the hips by suspending
the skirts from the shoulders. It removed the tight corsets, which
compress the lungs, the stomach, and other internal organs, and induce
curvature of the spine and an almost countless train of diseases. Dress
reform proper provided for the protection and development of every