News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 29, 1872

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

Facts for the Times.

The following from the Advocate of Christian Holiness on wearing earrings is certainly appropriate at this time, when there seems to be so many disregarding the instructions of Paul: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.” 1 Tim. 2: 9. C. H. Bliss.

EARRINGS.

“It has been a custom in all ages for stock-growers to put the mark of their ownership on the ears of their animals; and the Beast, Satan, very early in the history of the world, soon after Eve was driven out of Eden, managed to put his mark on the ears of woman.

“We read that when Jacob went up with his household to Bethel, to build an altar unto God, that, at his command, ‘they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hands, and all the earrings which were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.’

“The controversy thus successfully inaugurated by Jacob, 616 years after the flood, against this Satanic and barbarous custom, has been kept up till the present day. But Satan still holds women by the ears; and the more degraded and besotted a nation or a tribe, the heavier the badges of his power in the ears of their women.

“This relic of barbarism has come down to us, and many of our women bear the marks of the beast, and display the badges of his ownership; and their ears, the perfect and beautiful creation of the divine hand, are pierced, and mangled, and dragged out of shape, and despoiled of their beauty.

“‘But,’ say some, ‘I have weak eyes, and my physician advised me to have my ears pierced.’

“Looking around us, we might suppose that we had a nation of weak-eyed women; for most of the ladies we have spoken to on the subject claim to have weak eyes. Better get a box of eye-salve; for this remedy is a humbug, unless the ears are kept sore and discharging; and we observe that most ladies heal them as soon as possible; and, indeed, it would be a pitiable sight to see one-half or two-thirds of our women going about with sore ears.

“‘But the fact is, young girls want to look womanly, and old women want to look girlish; and women with round faces want them to look long; and peaked-faced women want theirs to look broad; and many women want to look beautiful; and, like the women of heathen lands, who color their teeth, and paint their eyelids, and tattoo their faces, and imagine they look beautiful, our women think that they are adding to their personal beauty, when, in truth, they are only making themselves ridiculous in the eyes of men and angels. Away with this relic of barbarism.”