Signs of the Times, Book 1 - Ellen G. White

December 9, 1875
Fashionable Life
A life of fashion takes from the simplicity and attractive beauties of
nature. Our artificial habits deprive us from enjoying the natural, and unfit us
for practical life. How can Christian mothers, in the education of their
children, follow in the steps of the multitude, and bow at the shrine of
fashion?
To live fashionably is an expensive, as well as thankless, life. Much time
and means are squandered merely to create sensation in fashionable society,
which the Master has intrusted to his professed people, with which to bless
the needy, and to advance his cause. Garments are prepared with much labor
and great expenditure of means, to beautify the person, and make the
outward appearance beautiful; yet, notwithstanding all this artificial
adornment, they poorly compare with the beauty of the simplest flower of
nature.
The Redeemer of the world, in giving his lessons of trust to his disciples,
points them to the lilies of the field, and says, "Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto
you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
The great amount of needless toil to make the outward appearance attractive
by artificial decorations is frequently at the sacrifice of health. After all the
preparations that variety and pride can suggest, those who thus adorn
themselves cannot bear comparison, in all their costly array, to the simple,
natural lily of the field.
I would impress upon Christian mothers the necessity of being awake to
the fact that every act of their lives is telling upon the future of their children,
32