A Sermon on “Dress."

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 6, 15 December 1869, Page 2

A Sermon on “Dress."

You wish to dress your wife better than your circumstances will allow. She wants to have you. She is a woman of spirit, as | it is said, and she does not mean to be a drudge. “ Why should our neighbours,” J she says to her husband, “ dress any better ; than we-I They are made of the same flesh and blood that we are. See how they come out. I don’t think a man of any spirit would let his wife and children go to church dressed as vou let ns go. Look at these children. You would think that they had just come out of some s’op-house! If I had married as I might have married, wo should have had different times—l and I my children !” How many men are stung | to the quick by such remarks from their wives ! Oftentimes their moral sense revolts, at first, and they feel indignation ; but “ continual dropping wears a stone and by-and-bye the man is dressed a little better than be can afford ; and somebody must pay for the extravagance. Ido not say Unit they are tempted to steal ; but I do say that they grind. They seem somehow to get it out of the milliner, out of the dressmaker, or out of the merchant. They intend to make one hand wash the other somehow, and they go into petty meannesses to bring it about. And this desire to dress better than they can afford is taking off the very enamel of virtue, and taking out the very stamina of their religious life. Unimportant as it seems, ostentatious vanity in dress has ruined many a family, and damned many n soul ! Henry Ward Beecher.