The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1869-05-14
DRESSING FOR CHURCH.

The best bred people of every Chris
tan country bat our own avoid all per
sonal display when engaged in worship
and prayer, Our churches, on the con
trary, are made places for the exhibition
of fine apparel and other costly anC
Haunting compliances with fashion, by
those who boast of superior wealth anC
manners.
We shall Leave our gewgawed devo.
tees to reconcile humiliation in worship
with vanity of dress. That is prob
lem which we confess we have neither
the right nor the capacity TO solve. II
must be left to the conscience of the be
dizened worship per, aided by the skillfu
casuistry of her theological director
How far fine clothes may effect the per.
sonai piety of the deyotec we do not
pretend even to conjecture but we
have very decided opinion in regard to
their influence upon the religion OF
others. The fact is that our churches
are SO f1uttering 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 seat, if he
I should be so fortunate as to lind one.
| by the side of wealth in broeade and
broadcloth. The poor are so awed by
the pretension of superior dress and
''the proud mans contumely," that they
naturally avoid too close a proximity
to them.
The church being the only place on
this side of the grave designed for the
rich and the poor to meet together in
equal prostration before God, it cer-
tainly should always be kept free for
this common humiliation and brother
hood. 1t is not so in most of the
! churches of Europe, where the beggar
in rags and wretchedness and the
weaithiest and most eminent, whose
appropriate sobriety of dress leaves
them without mark of external distinc-
ton, knecl down together, equalized
by common humiliation, before the
only Supreme Being. The adoption OF
more simple attire for church on the
part Of the rich in this country would
have the effect, certainly not of decreas-
ing their own personal piety, but prob
ably of increasing the disposition for
religious 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 be-
come the common places of assem- blage,
as on the continent 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.
''The distinctions of civil life," saws
Palay, in one of his most admired pas
sages, care almost always insisted upon
too much, and urged too far. What
ever, therefore, conduces to restore the
level, by qualifying the dispositions
which grow ont of great elevation or
depression of rank, Improves the char
acter on both sides. Now things are
made to appear little by being placed
beside what is great. In which man
ner superiOrities, that occupy the
whole field of the imagination, will
vanish, or shrink to their proper
diminutiveness, when compared with
the distance by which ovoI, tho highest
of men are removed from the Supreme
Being, and this comparison 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
protited, the oftener they meet in a
situation liz which the consciousness of
dignity IN the one is tempered and
mitigated, and the spirit of the other
erected and confirmed. ''-HaTpeT's Bd-
gar.