The Canton times. (Canton, Miss.) 1893-1906, 1894-08-24
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Fashion Claims as Many Masculine
as Feminine Victims.
Baleful Influences of Inorllnste Love Of
Dress-The Incentive to Fraud, tho
Distraction of Public Worship
and the Ruin of the Soul.

Rev. L. Dewitt Ialmage, who Is a
present sojourning in Australia, make.
the following selection of sermon fol
his reading congregation this week
The subject is: THE Tragedy of Dress,
baing based on the text:
Whose adjoining let it not be that outward
adjoining Of plating his hair, and of wearing
OF gold, or of putting on Of apparel: but let il
be the hidden man of the heart-Peter ill.,, 3-4
That we should all be clad, is proved
by the opening of the first wardrobe
in Paradise, with its apparel of dark
green. That we should all, as far as
our means allow us, be beautifully and
gracefully appareled is proved by the
fact that God never made wave but
He gilded it with golden sunbeams or
a tree but He garlanded it with bios
SONS, or sky but He studded it with
stars, or allowed even the smoke of a
furnace to ascend but He columned and
turreted and domed and scrolled it into
outlines of indescribable gracefulness.
When see the apple orchards of the
spring and the pageantry of the au-
clusion that if nature ever does
join the church. while she may be a
Quaker in the silence of her wor-
ship, she will never be Quaker in
the style of her dress. Why the
notches of fern leaf, or the stamen of
water lily? Why, when the day de-
parts, does it let the folding doors of
Heaven stay open SO long when it
might go in so quickly? One summer
morning I saw an army of one million
spears, each adorned with diamond
of the first water-I mean the grass
with the dew on it. When the prodi-
gal came home his father not only put
coat on his back, but jewelry on his
hand. Christ wore beard. Paul. the
bachelor apostle, not afflicted with any
sentimentality, admired the arrange
ment of a woman's hair when he said,
in his epistle, eff a woman have
long hair it is glory unto
her" There will be a fashion in
different kind of fashion. 1t will de-
eide the color of the dress; and the pop
ulation OF that country, by beautiful
law, will wear white. 1 say these
things ass background to my sermon,
to show you that have no prim, pre-
else, prudish or cast-iron theories on
the subject of human apparel. But the
goddess of fashion has set up her
throne in this world, and at the sound
of the timbr els we are expected to fall
down and worship. The Old and New
Testament of her Bible are the fashion |
plates. Her affairs smoke with the sac
rifice of the bodies, minds and souls of |
ten thousand victims In her temple |
four people stand in the organ
loft, and from them there comes
down cold drizzle of music, |
freezing on the ears of her worshipers. |
This goddess of fashion has become a |
rival of the Lord of Heaven and earth, |
and it is high time that we unlimbered |
our batteries against the idolatry. |
When l come to count the victims of |
fashion, find as many masculine as
feminine. Men make an easy TRADE |
against woman, as though she were
the chief worshiper at this idolatrous |
shrine, and no doubt some men in the |
most conspicuous part of the pew have |
already cast chances at the more re-
tired part of the pew, their look a
prophecy of generous distribution. |
My sermon shall be as appropriate for
one end of the pew as for the other.
Men are as much the idolators of
fashion as women, but they sacrafice
on a different part of the altar. With
men the fashion goes to cigars and
club rooms and yachting parties and
wine suppers. In the United States
the men chew up and smoke one hun
dred million dollars worth of tobacco
every year. That is their fashion. In
London, not long ago, a man died who
started in life with seven hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, but he ate it all
up in gluttonies, sending his agents to
all parts of the earth for some rare
delicacy for the palate, sometimes one
plate of food costing him three hun
dred or four hundred dollars. He ate
up his whole fortune and had only one
guinea left; with that he bought a
and had it dressed in the very
best style, ate it, gave two hours for
digestion, then walked out on West
minister bridge and threw himself into
the Thames, and died, doing on large
scale what you and 1 have often seen
done on a small scale. But men do not
abstain from millinery and elaboration
of skirt through any superiority Of hui
mility. 1t is only because such APP
would be a blockade to bust
ness. What would sasher and
trains three and half yards
long do in stock? And yet men
are the deciples of fashion just
as much as women. Some of
them wear boots so tight they can
hardly walk in the paths of righteous
ness. And there are men who buy ex-