The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-05-29
OUR RELIGIOUS COLUMN
Dressing for Church.


The best bred people of every Christian coun-
try but our own avoid all personal display when
engaged in worship and prayer. Our churches,
on the contrary, are made places for the exhibi-
ton of finehpparel, and other costly and tlaunt-
ing cOmpliances with fashion, by those who
boast of superior wealth and manners.
We shall leave our gewgawed devotees to re-
concile humiliation in worship with vanity of
dress That is problem which we confess we
have neither the right nor the capacity to solve.
1t must be left to the conscience of the be-
dizened worshipper, aided by the skilful
casustry of her theological director. How far
fine clothes may affect the personal piety of the
devotee we do not pretend even to conjecture
but we have q very decided opinion in regard to
their influences upon the religion of Others
The fact is that our churches are so huttering
with birds of fine feathers that no sorry fowl
will venture in. 1t is impossible for poverty in
rags and patches, or even in decent but humble
costume, to take its seat, if it should be SO
fortunate as to find place, by the side of wealth
in brocade and broadcloth. The poor are so
awed by the pretension of superior dress and
''the proud mans contumely," that they natur-
rally avoid too close proximity to them.
} The church being the only place on this side
of the grave designed for the rich and the poor
God, it certainly should always be kept free for
this common humiliation and brotherhood. 1t
is SO in most of the churches of Europe where
the beggar in rags and wretchedness and the
wealthiest and most eminent, whose appropriate
sobriety of dress leaves them without mark of
external distinction kneel down together
equalized by a common humiliation before the
only Superior Being. The adoption of a more
simple attire for church on the part of the rich
in this country would have the effect certainly
not of diminishing their own personal piety, but
probably of increasing the disposition for reli-
gious observance on the part of the poor. Want
of fine dress would no longer, as it is now, be
the common motive for staying away from the
houses of worship, and these would become the
common places of assemblage, as on the conti-
nent of Europe, for the poor and the rich. The
result would not only be favorable to general
piety but to social harmony, since the union of
all classes on one day of the week. at least,
would tend to level all artificial barriers of
separation.
1.-THE distinctions of civil life," says Paley, in
one of his most admired passages "are almost
always insisted upon too much and urged too
far. Whatever, therefore, conduces to restore
the level, by qualifying the dispositions which
grow out of great elevation or depression of
rank, improves the character on both sides.
Now things are made to appear little by being
placed beside what is great. In which manner
superiorties that occupy the whole field of the
Imagination will vanish or shrink to their proper
diminutiveness, when compared with the dis
tance by which even the highest of men are
removed from the Supreme Being, and this COM
parison is naturally introduced by all acts of
joint worship. If ever the poor man holds up
his head, it is at church; if ever the rich man
views him with respect, it is there; and both will
be the BETTER and the public profted, the oftener
they meet in a situation in which the conscious
ness of dignity in the one is tempered and miti-
gated and the spirit of the other erected and
confirmed" ."-HdrperS Bazaar.