Pride and Dress by Clarence Santee

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 18, 1916

Pride and Dress

By Clarence Santee

CLARENCE SANTEE

“What will ye do in the end thereof?” Jer. 5:31, last part. This question, gravely considered, would lead many to make changes in their plans, which without consideration they are anxious to carry into effect.

Seventh-day Adventists cannot lay plans as other people. They must all the time reckon with the changes that they know will shortly come to this present world. The values that the world places upon the things that surround them, are far different from those placed upon the same by the Christian. The world must love its own (John 15:19); it has nothing else to love. It must place all its treasure here; it has no other place to bestow it. But the child of God, knowing that these things are about to be destroyed, and that to set the heart upon them, brings only “enmity with God,” places less and still less value upon them, as he sees the end drawing near. He obeys the command of Christ, “According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it.” Lev. 25:16.

This was the instruction of the Lord concerning the time to the jubilee, which was a type of the final return of God’s people to the home the Lord has prepared for them. Truly the value of this world will sink out of sight as the day of translation draws near.

Through John the Saviour said, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” 1 John 2:15, 16. “The pride of life” is one of the stumbling-blocks in the way of the child of God. Many have fallen here, and their places are forever vacant.

“Fashion has been the goddess who has ruled the outside world, and she often insinuates herself into the church. . . . The Holy One of Israel has spoken through his apostle: ‘Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible.’ . . . When a church has been raised up and left uninstructed on these points, the minister has neglected his duty, and will have to give an account to God for the impressions he allowed to prevail.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. V, pp. 499, 500.

Fashion and the love of the world have been active foes to the advancement of God’s people all through their history. John Wesley said, when speaking of the use of money, “Do not waste any part of so precious a talent, merely in gratifying the desire of the eye, by superfluous and expensive apparel, or by needless ornaments. . . . Lay out nothing to gratify the pride of life, to gain the admiration or praise of men.”

Adoniram Judson, that grand man in the sight of God, who, with his faithful wife, gave all that life held dear, laying it freely on the altar for the enlightenment of the darkened children of Burma, in a letter addressed to “the Christian women of America,” said:—

“DEAR SISTERS: In raising up a church of Christ in this heathen land, and in laboring to elevate the minds of the heathen women to the standard of the gospel, we have always found one chief obstacle in that principle of vanity, that love of dress and display—I beg you will bear with me—which has in every age, in all countries, been the ruling passion of the fair sex, as the love of riches, power, and fame has characterized the other.

“That obstacle lately became more formidable through the admission of two or three fashionable females into the church, and the arrival of several missionary sisters, dressed and adorned in that manner which is too prevalent in our beloved native land. On my meeting the church after a year’s absence, I beheld an appalling profusion of ornaments, and saw that the demon vanity was laying waste the female department. . . .

“In the meantime, I was called to visit the Karens, a wild people, several days’ journey to the north of Moulmein. Little did I expect to encounter the same enemy, in those ‘wilds, horrid and dark with overshadowing trees.’ But I found that he had been there, and reigned with a peculiar sway, from time immemorial. On one Karen lady, I counted between twelve and fifteen necklaces of many colors, sizes, and materials. Three was the average. Brass belts above the ankles; neat braids of black hair tied below the knees; rings of all sorts on the fingers; bracelets on the wrists and arms; long instruments of some metal, perforating the lower part of the ear, by an immense aperture, and reaching nearly to the shoulders. . . .

“The dress of the professed converts was not essentially different from that of their countrywomen. I saw that I was brought into a situation that precluded retreat—that I must earnestly ‘contend for the faith,’ or die. For a few nights I spent some sleepless hours, distressed by this and other subjects which will always press upon the heart of a missionary in a new place. I considered the spirit of the religion of Jesus Christ. I opened to 1 Tim. 2:8, 9, and read these words of the inspired apostle: ‘I will . . . also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.’ I asked myself, Can I baptize a Karen woman in her present attire?—No. Can I administer the Lord’s Supper to one of the baptized in that attire?—No. Can I refrain from enforcing the prohibition of God’s Word?—No, not without betraying the trust I have received from him.

“Again I considered that the question concerned not the Karens only, but the whole Christian world; that its decision would involve a train of unknown consequences; that a single step would lead me into a long and perilous way. I considered Moulmein and the other stations;

I considered the state of the public mind at home. But, ‘What is that to thee? follow thou me’ (John 21:22), was the continual response, and weighed more than all. . . .

“Soon after I came to this resolution, a Karen woman offered herself for baptism. After the usual examination, I inquired whether she could give up her ornaments for Christ? It was an unexpected blow. I explained the spirit of the gospel. I appealed to her own consciousness of vanity. I read her the apostle’s prohibition. She looked again and again at her handsome necklace,—she wore but one,—and then, with an air of modest decision that would adorn, beyond all outward ornaments, any of my sisters whom I have the honor of addressing, she quietly took it off, saying, ‘I love Christ more than this.’ . . .

“At length the evil that I most dreaded came upon me. Some of the Karen men had been to Moulmein, and seen what I wished they had not; and one day, when we were discussing the subject of ornaments, one of the Christians came forward, and declared that at Moulmein he had actually seen one of the great female teachers wearing a string of gold beads around her neck. Lay down this paper, dear reader, and sympathize a moment with your heart-stricken missionary. Was it not a hard case? . . .

“On arriving at Moulmein, and partially recovering from a fever which I had contracted in the Karen woods, the first thing I did was to crawl out to the house of the patroness of the gold necklace. To her I related my adventures and described my grief. With what ease, and truth too, could that sister reply, ‘Notwithstanding this necklace, I dress plainer than most ministers’ wives and professors of religion in our native land. This necklace is the only ornament I wear; it was given to me when only a child, by a dear mother whom I expect never to see again [another hard case], and she begged me never to part with it as long as I lived, but to wear it as a memorial of her.’

“O ye Christian mothers, what a lesson you have before you! Can you, dare you, give injunctions to your daughters directly contrary to apostolic commands?”

This teacher laid off her necklace of beads, and did all she could to bring a reform among the sisters there. But Mr. Judson tells us that they were continually perplexed with the added helpers that were sent to them from the homeland, as the natives saw them with these ornaments. He says:—

“And when they see the gold and jewels pendent from their ears, the beads and chains encircling their necks, the finger ring set with diamonds and rubies, the rich variety of ornamental headdress, . . . they will cast a triumphant, reproachful glance at their old teachers, and spring with fresh avidity to repurchase and resume their long-neglected heathen elegance; the dreaded news will fly up the Dah-gyne, the Laingbwai, and the Salwin; the Karenesses will reload their necks and ears and arms and ankles; and when, after another year’s absence, I return and take my seat before the Burmese or the Karen church, I shall behold the demon of vanity enthroned in the center of the assembly more firmly than ever, grinning defiance to the prohibitions of the apostles, and the exhortations of us who humbly follow their inspired teaching. . . .

“Beware of another suggestion made by weak and erring souls, who will tell you that there is more danger of being proud of plain dress and other modes of self-denial than of fashionable attire and self-indulgence. Be not ensnared by this last, most finished, most insidious device of the enemy. Rather believe that he who enables you to make a sacrifice, is able to keep you from being proud of it. . . . The Lord Jesus Christ expects every woman to do her duty. . . . The eye of Christ is upon you. Death is hastening to strip you of your ornaments and to turn your fair forms into corruption and dust. Many of those for whom this letter is designed will be laid in their graves before it can reach their eyes. ‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.’ . . . And as you will then wish you had done, do now.”

Dear sisters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, shall the example of the many professing to follow Christ, yet in act denying him, be followed by those whom God has chosen to lead in preparing a people for the coming of the Saviour, to the eternal loss of ourselves, and the ruin of the true spirit in both the near and the far-distant mission stations of earth?

The final decision is about to be made,—is being made,—as Judson said. “As you will then wish you had done, do now.”