WEARING GOLD | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 15.

WEARING GOLD.

THE Bible as positively says for Christian women not to wear gold as it says for them to pray. Both commands are given in the same paragraph. Sisters who wear gold say, "That means we must not worship it." But, my dear sisters, it does not say that we must not worship it, it says we must not wear it. You then say, "God made gold and put it here for our use." Certainly he did, but there are other and important uses for gold, and much more gold is needed for other uses, and you might as well argue that God made corn and put it here for our use and we will manufacture it into whisky and use it in that way. Besides this, it is hardly true to say you do not worship it. For your heart is set on it, at least; for you spend your money for it rather than to put it in the Lord's treasury, and where your heart is there is your treasure, and that shows that there is an idol in your heart before God. If it is not gold it is vanity or fashion, or something you prize before God.

If it was a present and cost you nothing, it is all the same if you wear it. If your mother gave it to you when she was dying and requested you to wear it, you should not; for Jesus said, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." If your mother had given you an iron ring, would you wear it for her sake? No; you would lay it away in a keepsake box. An engagement ring is a shameful excuse for wearing gold. It is as shameful to attach importance to an engagement ring as it is to a horse-shoe tacked about the doorstep. It is all the same—a superstition and forbidden in Scripture.

Ear-drops are no less barbarous than the nose ring of the savage. The gold necklace is "so much worn" now that you cannot feel "comfortable at all," you say, without it. God says do not wear it, but fashion says wear it. Whom will you serve? God who made you and wants to save you, or fashion who is destroying you daily?

Well, what about the pin, buttons, watch, and chain? If gold was the only material of which these things could possibly be made, there might possibly be some shadow of an excuse for their use. If a gold watch is any better than any other and a lady really needed its use, it certainly is allowable, as it is carried for use and not worn for ornament. But for a lady to wind and set and "put on" her watch, only when she is dressed up, as a finishing touch to her toilet, it is as wicked in the sight of God as any other gold ornament. A gold chain to a watch is vanity also, and abhorred by God.

No matter how a thing looks so it is modest. Modest apparel is all we are allowed to wear. And every article worn for show or to attract attention to the wearer or things worn is beyond modesty or "modest apparel." If a girl was trained from childhood that it is positively sinful to wear gold, pearls, precious stones, and costly array, and never saw a woman thus attired, it would almost make her shudder to see a fashionably dressed lady. It is fashion that makes it seem all right. My dear sister, if you could go to your closet and on bended knees and with a believing heart ask God to give you a set of diamonds worth a hundred thousand dollars, to decorate your dying body with, knowing your prayer would be answered, would you do it? No. Well, would not the price of that collar pin buy a poor little ragged outcast a garb in which she could attend the Sabbath-school and learn the story of the cross and carry it home to her poor little brothers and sisters? Perhaps the price of all your jewels would furnish means for spreading the gospel for miles.

Oh, you say that would be too great a sacrifice. Well you will one day be invited to a great feast where you cannot enter because you have not the wedding garment on. When Christ will say, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me;" depart from me, I never knew you. Then perhaps you will feel as odd as you would now without wearing gold.—Selected.