he world's betterment.

DISTRACTS ATTENTION.

Again, extravagant costume is distraction to a public worship. You
know very well there are a good many people who go to church just as
they go to the races, to see who will come out first. Men and women
with souls to be saved passing the hour in wondering where that man
got his cravat, or what store that woman patronizes. In many of our
churches the preliminary exercises are taken up with the discussion
of wardrobes. It is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does
not strike the meeting-houses with lightning? What distraction of
public worship! Dying men and women, whose bodies are soon to be
turned into dust, yet before three worlds strutting like peacocks.
People sitting down in a pew or taking up a hymn book, all absorbed at
the same time in personal array, to sing:

"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace;
Rise from transitory things
Toward heaven, thy native place!"

I adopt the Episcopalian prayer, and say: "Good Lord, deliver us!"

MENTAL IMPOVERISHMENT.

Extravagant costume belittles the intellect. Our minds are enlarged or
they dwindle just in proportion to the importance of the subject on
which we constantly dwell. Can you imagine anything more dwarfing to
the human intellect than the study of dress? I see men on the street
who, judging from their elaboration, I think must have taken two hours
to arrange their apparel. After a few years of that kind of
absorption, which one of McAllister's magnifying glasses will be
powerful enough to make the man's character visible? What will be left
of a woman's intellect after giving years and years to the discussion
of such questions? They all land in idiocy. I have seen men at the
summer watering-places through fashion the mere wreck of what they
once were. Sallow of cheek. Meagre of limb. Hollow at the chest.
Showing no animation save in rushing across a room to pick up a lady's
fan. Simpering along the corridors the same compliments they simpered
twenty years ago.

BARS HEAVEN.

Yet, my friends, I have given you only the milder phase of this evil.
It shuts a great multitude out of heaven. The first peal of thunder
that shook Sinai declared: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me,"
and you will have to choose between the goddess of fashion and the
Christian God. There are a great many seats in heaven, and they are
all easy seats, but not one seat for the