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Chapter 22—Dress
The Bible teaches modesty in dress. “In like manner also, that
women adorn themselves in modest apparel.”
1 Timothy 2:9
. This
forbids display in dress, gaudy colors, profuse ornamentation. Any
device designed to attract attention to the wearer or to excite ad-
miration, is excluded from the modest apparel which God’s word
enjoins.
Our dress is to be inexpensive—not with “gold, or pearls, or
costly array.”
Verse 9
.
Money is a trust from God. It is not ours to expend for the
gratification of pride or ambition. In the hands of God’s children it
is food for the hungry, and clothing for the naked. It is a defense to
the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, a means of preaching
the gospel to the poor. You could bring happiness to many hearts
by using wisely the means that is now spent for show. Consider the
life of Christ. Study His character, and be partakers with Him in His
self-denial.
In the professed Christian world enough is expended for jewels
and needlessly expensive dress to feed all the hungry and to clothe
the naked. Fashion and display absorb the means that might comfort
the poor and the suffering. They rob the world of the gospel of the
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Saviour’s love. Missions languish. Multitudes perish for want of
Christian teaching. Beside our own doors and in foreign lands the
heathen are untaught and unsaved. While God has laden the earth
with His bounties and filled its storehouses with the comforts of
life, while He has so freely given to us a saving knowledge of His
truth, what excuse can we offer for permitting the cries of the widow
and the fatherless, the sick and the suffering, the untaught and the
unsaved, to ascend to heaven? In the day of God, when brought
face to face with Him who gave His life for these needy ones, what
excuse will those offer who are spending their time and money upon
indulgences that God has forbidden? To such will not Christ say,
“I was an hungered, and ye gave Me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye
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