The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1894-08-17
'TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Fashion Claims az Many Masculine
as Feminine Victims.
Baleful Influences of tHordinate L6ve 81
Dress-The Incentive to Fraud, tho
Distraction of Public worship
and the Ruin OF the SOuE

Rev. Il. Dewitt Talmage, who Is at
present sOjourning in Australia, makes
! the following selection of a sermon for
his reading congregation this week.
The subject is: ''The Tragedy of Dress, :"
being based ON the text:
Whose adjoining let IL not be that outward
adorning 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 iii, 81
That we Should ali 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
4 fact that God never made a wave but
He gilded it with golden sunbeams, or
n 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-
tumnal forests, I come to the con-
clusion that if nature ever does
| join the church, while she may be a
|
| ship, she will never be a Quaker in
the style of her dress. Why the
notches of fern leaf, or the stamen of
a 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 1 saw an army of one million
| spears, each adorned with a 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
a 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 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
| Heaven as on earth, but 1t will be a
different kind of fashion. 1t will de-
i eide the color of the dress; and the pop
ulation of that country, by beautiful
law, will wear white. L say these
things as a background to my sermon,
to show you that have no prim, pre-
else, prudish or cast-iron theories on
II
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 a 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 numbered
our batteries against the idOlatry.
| When / come to count the victims of
fashion, l 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 a 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 sacraice
on 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 tc
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
woodcock, 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
pendages would be a blockade to bust
ness. What would sasher and
trains three and a half yards
long do in a 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 OK
pensive suits of clothes and never pay
for them, and who go through the
streets in great stripes of color like
animated checl1er-boards. l say these
things because 1 want to show you
that 1 am impartial in my discourse,
and that both sexes, in the language
of the surrogate's Office, shall share
and share alike" As God may help
me, shall show you what are the de-
stroying and deathful influences of in
ordinate fashion.
TIE first baleful influence notice is
in fraud, illignitable and CHASTITY. Do
you know that Arnold of the revolu-
ton proposed to sell his country in
order to get money to support
his wife's wardrobe? I declare be-
fore God and this people that the eff
fort to keep up expensive establish
ments in this country is sending more
business men to temporal perditiOn
than all other causes combined. What
was it that sent Gilman to the peni-
tertiary, and Philadelphia Morton to