What Harm?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1873

It is often asked, What harm is it for a lady to wear a modest flower? The manner in which the question is put implies that it is unanswerable. To oppose the practice now become general among professing Christians, is denounced as narrow-mindedness and bigotry. A secular paper furnishes us with one answer. It states that fifteen millions of dollars are expended in this country annually, for artificial flowers. Is there no harm in spending this enormous sum every year for that which can possibly answer no other purpose except to minister to vanity and pride?

What should a denomination professing the self-denying religion of Jesus think of their piety when the men spend more money for tobacco, and the women for artificial flowers, than they can raise by every possible effort for the conversion of the heathen? Is this a mark of spiritual life? “Where shall the line be drawn?” Where the Bible draws it. There can be no mistake. Pass over this line, and who shall say where to stop? “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; even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” 1 Pet. 3: 3, 4.