DRY-GOODS RELIGION.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 157, 1 July 1878, Page 4

DRY-GOODS RELIGION.

BY THE BEV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D. {Concluded.) Again, inordinate fashion is the foe of all Christian almß-giviner. Men and women put bo much in personal display that they often have nothing for Go<3 and suffering humanity. A Christian man cracking his Palais Royal glove ncroes the back by shutting up hia hand to hide the one cent he pats into the poor-box ! A Christian woman, at the story of the Hottentots, crying copious tears into a twenty-6ve dollar handkerchief, and then eivinir a two-cent pie«e to the collection, thrusting it down under tbe bills so people would not know but it was a ten-Jollargold piece! One hundred dollars for incense to fashion. Two cents for God. God gives us ninety cents out of every dollar. The other ten cents by comnmnd of His Bible belong to Him. la not God liberal according to this tithing system laid down in the Old Testament —is not God liberal in giving us ninety cents out of a dollar, when He tak*s but ten ? We do not like that. We want to hfcve NIKE?r-NINE CENTS FOR OURSELVES AND ONE FOR GOD. Now, I would a great deal rather steai ten cents from you than God. I think one reason why a great many people do not get aloog in worldly accumulation faster is rmeauae they do not observe this divine rulp. Go<l eays: "Well, if that mnn is not eatUfi d with ninety cenfs out ot a dollar, then I will Jake the whole dollar, T will give ! it to the man or woman who is honest with me." The greatest obstacle to charity i n the Christhn church to-day is the fact that meu expand ao much money on their table, and women so much on their dress, that they have, got nothing left for the work of God and the world's betterment. In my first settlement at Belleville, New Jersey, the came of missions was bein^ presented one Sabbath, and a plea for tbe charity of the people was beio-i made, when an old Christian man in the audience lost hiß balance, and eaid right out in the midst of ihe sermon : "Mr Talmage, how are we to give liberally to these grand «nd glorious causes when our families dress as they do ?" I did not answer that question, It waa the only time in my life when I had nothing to Bay I Again, inordinste fashion is distraction to public worship. You know very well jhere are a pood many people who come to church as they would go the races, to see who will come out flret. What a flutter it makes in church when some woman with an extraordinary display of faabion comes in. fi What a love of a bonnet ! " says some one. "What a perfect fright!" say five hundred. For the merciless critics in tbe world, are fashion critics. Men and. women, with souls to be saved, pas- I Bin? the hours in wondering where that ! man got bis cravat, or what store that woman patronises. In many of our churches tbe preliminary exercises are taken up with the diseussion of wardrobes. It is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does not etrikfl the meeting-house with lightning f What distraction of public worship ! Dying men and women, whose bodies are eoon to be turned inlo dust, yet before three woills strutting like peacocks, the awful question of the soul's deatiny submerged by the questions of Creedmoor polonaise and Davy blue velvet and long fan train skirt, long enough to drag up the church aisle the husband's store, office, Bhop, factory, fortuoe, ami tbe admiration of half tiie people in the building. Men and women COME LATE TO CHURCH TO SHOW THEIR CLOTHES. People sitting down in a pew, or taking up a hyraubook, all absorbed at the Same lime in personal array, to sing : — " Hise my soul and etietch thy wings, Thy better portion trace ; Rise from transitory things, Toward Heaven, thy native place ! " I adopt the EpiscopaiUn prayer, and Bay : — ''Good Lord deliver as. Insatiate fashion also belittles the intellect. Our minus are enlarged or they dwindle, juet in proportion to tbe importance of the subject on which we constantly dwell. Can you imagine anything more dwarfing to tbe human intellect than the stmly of fashion ? I see men on the street, who, judging from their elaboration, I think musl have taken two hours to arrange their apparel. After a few years of that kind of absorption, one of McAllister's magnifying glasses will be powerful enough to moke tbe man's character visible. What will be left of women's intellectual power after giving up years and years to the discussion of such questions ds the comparison between knife-pleats and box-pleats, and the borderings of grey fox fur or of black martin, or the comparative excellence of circulars of repped Antwerp silk lin^d with blue fox fur, or with Hudson Bay sable ? They all land in idiocy. I bavn seen men at the summer watering places, through fashion, the mere wrecks of what they once were. Sallow of cheek. Meagre of limb. Hollow at the cheat. Shewing no animation save in rushing across the room to pick up a lady's fan. Simpering along the corridors tbe same compliments they simpered twenty years before. A New York lawyer, last summer at the Uaitej States Hotel, Saratoga, within our hearing, raehed eccross a room to say to a sensible woman " You are as sweet as peaches ! w The fools of fashion are myriad. Fasbioa not only destroys the body, bat it nukes idiotic tbe fotellect.

Yet, «ay friends, I have given yon only the milder phasa of this evil. It shuts a great multitude out of heaven. The Brat peal of thunder that shook Sinia declared : " Thou ahalt have no other God before me.*' and will h-ive to choose between tbe goddess of fashion and tho Christian God. There are a great many seats in heaven, and they are all easy seats, but not one seat for the devotee of fashion. Heaven is for meek and quiet spirits. Heaven is for those who think more of their souls then of their bodies. Heavea is for iboae who have more joy in Christian charity than in dry-goods religion. Why, if you with your idolatry of fashion Bhould somehow get into Heaven, you would be for putting a French roof on the " house of many mansions," sad making plaits and Hamburg embroidery and flounces in tbe robee> and you would be for introducing the patterns of Butterick's Quarterly Delineator, GIVE UP THfS IDOLATRY OP FASHION, OR GIVE UP HEAVEN. What wou'd you do standing beside the Countess of Huntington, whose joy it was to build chapels for the poor, or with that Christian woman of Boston wbo fed fifteen hundred children of the street at Paneuil Hull, on New Year's Day, giving out as a sort oi doxology at the end of the meeting a pair of shoes to each one of them ; or those Djrcasts of modern society, who have consecrated their needles to the Lord and who will get eierual reward for every stiich they take. 0 I men and women, give up the idolatry of fashion. The rivalries and ihe competitions of such a life are a stupendous wretchedness. You will alwaya find someone with brighter array, and with more a palatial reaiiieuce, or with lavender kid gloves that make a tighter fit. And if you buy this thing and wear it you will wish you had brought something eke and worn ' it. And the frets of such a life will bring the crows' feet to yoqr temples before they are due, and when you come to die you will have a miserable time. I have seen men and women of fashion die, and I never saw one of them dee will. 'Ihe trappingsjoff, there they lay on tbe tumbled pillow and there were just two things that bothered them — a wasted life and a coming eternity, I could not pacify them, for their body, mind, and soul bad been exhausted in the worship of fashion, and they could not appreciata the gospel. When I knelt by their beilside they were mumbling out their regrets, and sayiug, " 0 God! 0 God 1" Thia garments hung up ;n the wardrobe, never again to ba seen by tbera. Without sny exception, so far as my memory serves me, they died without hope, and went into eternity unprepared. The two moat ghastly deathsbeds on earth are, the one where a man | dies of delirium tremens, and the other where a woman dies after having sacrificed all her facahies of body, mind, and boul in the worship of fashion. My friends, we must appear in judgment to answer for what we have worn on our bodies aa well as for what repentances we have exercised with our souls.