THE FOLLIES AND THE FASHIONS.

BY THE EDITOR.

THERE is a very evident tendency just now towards the extravagances of fashion. Next to money-making, this is the prevailing mania of our present American society. Nor is it confined to this country. It is a world-wide folly. A friend, writing from Berlin, in Prussia, says: "With much less money, generally than Americans, these people are just as passionately fond of all the tinsel of fashion. On Sunday afternoon the streets are thronged with walking milliner shops. Such displays of velvets, silks, satins and jewelries, would puzzle a Chestnut street lion or lioness. Almost every minister flourishes several rings, or a gold chain, or both."

Far be it from us to open a crusade against genteel dress, or even the moderate use of ornaments; but these things must all be in subjection to the inward adornings and graces of the spirit. The evil, as it now prevails, is the vanity or emptiness of fashion-supreme attention to the outward, with the neglect of the inward. Fashion now is a vain display. The outward ornament, instead of being the symbol of a corresponding beauty within, is but too often the covering of emptiness, if not of corruption and sin. Two pesrons may be dressed alike, and yet with the one it may be ornament, with the other display. The whole movement and outward habit will always point out the difference to the most casual observer.

Though it may be difficult to indicate the boundaries between a proper ornamental propriety in dress, and sinful evtravagance, yet there is such a line of limit. A deep christian spirit and an unfeigned modesty will indicate it more readily than can be done by any rules given from one to another. A true sense of propriety, like true piety, is a law to itself. But this is the very reason why our present lust of fashion has run mad. It has grown up from a social soil where true piety has died out. It is the decoration of a sepulchre. Because Zion is desolate, wild weeds have grown up in her gates. Because the soul is empty, the body loads itself with follies.

The evils of this extravagance are many. Not the least of these is, that it turns the heart away from the greater to the less, from the mind and heart to the body, from heaven to earth. It absorbs the thoughts and wastes the time of thousands, on that which brings no substance to the spirit. A lady acquaintance remarked to us, in all seriousness, and from facts which her own eyes had seen and her own ears had heard, that in the village where she resides, the prevailing conversation in social circles, is on the subject of dress and fashion. In all her calls and visits, wherever the conversation might begin, here it was sure to end. This is the god that is in all their thoughts. This is her testimony. There are exceptions. This she granted, and this we cheerfully grant; but this is the prevailing tendency of the time-a truth, which no doubt

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The Cradle and the Old Arm Chair.

19

the reader will confirm from actual personal knowledge. How must the higher interests of intelligence, piety, and true social communion, suffer from such a state of things!

Another evil resulting from such extravagance is, it induces a wrong and sinful use of money. Have they plenty of it? Well-but when has God given us a right to use our money as we please, and to waste it in vanity. Are the treasuries of the church overloaded? Have the poor all been supplied? Is there no one whom our charities can render wiser, better, happier? Is it a right use of God's gift, to hang them upon our own poor, sinful, perishing bodies, that we may attract the gaze, provoke the envy, or pain the poverty of the world? Alas, are not the very treasures that should be devoutly carried to the sanctuary as offerings for Jesus' sake, borne thither for prides sake! The Lord, and the poor, are robbed that the god of fashion may have his shrines graced with vain adornings.

Nor must it be forgotten, that by this extravagance, such as are comparatively poor, are allured beyond their means. The contrast is painful to the weak, and provokes imitation. Money, otherwise greatly needed, is drawn into the prevailing current, till insolvency and want are invited into homes, where competency and comfort might have reigned. Let any one but a moment reflect upon the prices of such articles of dress as every hour pass before his eyes, and then say whether the single folly of fashion is not alone sufficient to paralyze the business and overturn the steady prosperity of thousands.

Certainly this fearful contagion is manifest enough to arrest the attention of thoughtful minds. Is it too much to say, that one-fourth of the community are employed in preparing vanities for the rest? Is it an over estimate to say, that one-fourth of all the money spent, goes for luxuries or vanities? It is not. Is it then seriously the business of immortal beings, whose life is a vapor, to spend their lives and their means in such a chase? Are there no higher interests to engage us? Is there nothing more earnest in this brief and solemn life? Young man-young woman-the mind first, the heart first. gence first. Piety first. The ornament of the inward first. the true beauty. Seek that in this New Year. If your robes are less costly, and your jewels less bright than those which others wear, let your mind be clearer, your heart holier, your Heaven surer.

Intelli

That is

THE CRADLE AND THE OLD ARM CHAIR.-No house is complete without two pieces of furniture-the cradle and the old arm chair. No house is full that hath not in it a baby and a grandfather or grandmother. Life becomes more radiant and perfect when its two extremes keep along with it. The two loves which watch the cradle and serve the arm-chair are one. But how different in all their openings and actions. To the child the heart turns with more tenderness of love. To the aged parent, love is borne upon a service of reverence. Through the child you look forward-through the parent you look backward. In the child you see hope, joys to come, brave ambition, and life yet to be drawn forth in all its many-sided experiences. Through the silver-haired parent, you behold the past, in its scenes enacted, its histories registered.

CHRISTIAN BURIAL.

THIRD ARTICLE.

BY THE EDITOR.

WE must yet say a few words in reference to monuments, epitaphs and emblems. These ought all to manifest the reigning christian spirit. The spirit of the world ought not here be permitted to display its proud extravagance, its vapid sentimentalism, or its vain flatteries. In monuments there ought to be a free, christian liberality manifested; but not the rivalry of pride. In epitaphs, christian faith, and hope, and love, and humility, ought to appear. Nothing is more inappropriate in an inscription, than morbid melancholy, or sickly sentimentalism. “Our Mother," is much more touching than, "Our dear Mother.”—“ Our Father," than "our excellent father," "my husband," than "my precious husband"—and so of the rest.

All flattery is disgusting. How common is this offence against all taste, and against a modest christian spirit. No wonder that the little girl, reading epitaphs by her mother's side, in a cemetery, innocently enquired: "Mother, where are all the sinners buried?" There is only too much occasion in truth to apply the sarcastic couplet:

"Here lie the dead,

And here the living lie."

The subject of emblems in a christian cemetery requires careful attention it receives but little at the present day. The emblems ought to be distinctly, and clearly christian. Those which are at once understood to be such, and which come to us in the use of the church, from the earliest ages, are such as these: A hieroglyph formed by the two first letters of the Greek word Christos, intersecting the chi longitudinally by the Rho.-A palm leaf, or a wreath of palm leaves, indicating victory-a crown, which speaks of the reward of the saints-a vessel supporting a column of flame, indicating continued life-an anchor, which indicates hope-a ship under sail, which says, "Heavenward bound" the letters Alpha and Omega, the Apocalyptic title of Christthe dove, as the emblem of innocence and holiness-the winged insect, escaping from the chrysalid, prophesying of the resurrection-the cross, the christian's true and only glory, in life and death, by which he is crucified to the world, and the world to him.

How is the christian spirit often shocked in our modern cemetaries, not only by the absence of all christian ideas in symbols and emblems, but by the bold intrusion of such as are purely sentimental, and often heathenish. The rose and the willow, may have a place, but only subordinately; they embody nothing but natural sentiment. The rose fades too soon, and the willow,

"That gloomy tree, which looks

As if it mourned o'er what it shadows,"

when chiseled on the stone is too cold, and has too much of earthly

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Christian Burial.

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sadness in it-it sighs too much to wave over the grave of hope. Time, with his hour-glass and scythe, is too cheerless. The skull and crossbones are horrid, yielding the victory to the last enemy which is conquered. The broken rose-bud, and the broken column, convey unchristian ideas; for death is not a breaking off, either of the life of the departed, or of our communication with them. Life is not broken off, half finished, but is truly finished by the change of death. Death does not leave life, like an unopened bud, it truly opens it: in death it only truly bursts into bloom, and is now open and fragrant in heaven.

But what shall we say of the urn, so common in our cemetaries—this is purely heathenish. The pagans burnt the bodies of their dead, as if in defiance of the doctrine of a resurrection, and put the ashes in an urn. And this relic of the most terrible pagan barbarity and profanity, is placed over a christian's tomb! O, tell it not in Gath! It would be truly edifying for a pagan subject of Nero, to enter one of our cemetaries, and see how a christian community immortalizes the burning of bodies, and ridicules the resurrection, by placing his favorite urn over their graves.

Though this is bad, it is not the worst. We have seen cemetaries in which were enclosures with iron fence, for family burial, in which every upright baluster in the railing, was an inverted torch!—and as if that were not enough, the inverted torch was yet carved in the stone posts of the gate! Now it is known-and if not-be it known, that the inverted torch is the heathen symbol, of their belief in the extinction of the spirit! As a torch when inverted is extinguished, so man's existence ends in death. So they believed-and so they taught by this emblem. What an emblem for a christian's tomb! What a conception to proclaim inthe face of our Saviour's words: "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth, and believeth in me shall never die."

Let not the matter of trees and shrubbery be overlooked in a christian cemetery. Plato assigned the most barren ground for sepulchres. This is pagan. Dry, desolate, treeless regions have, by the consent of all nations, been designated as the melancholly abodes of spirits unblest. The christian feeling asks that the homes of the sainted dead, be rural and vernal. Abraham covenanted not only for "the field and the cave," but also particularly, for "all the trees that were in the field, and that were in the borders round about." These "were made sure" to him. Our Saviour was buried in a garden; and the Jews, especially in early times, delighted to bury beneath some large and venerable tree. The renewal of nature over and around the dead, is an abiding festival of the resurrection. Blooming flowers are prophets of hope, and their fragrance is as the memory of God and the good, which lives around their graves. Ever-greens, which piety in all ages delighted to plant over the dead, proclaim that they abide in life.

Of many a grave-yard, it may be said in sad complaint, with the Poet:

"Above doth lie the turf too bleak and bare"

The very sod grows barren and dies under the fiercely burning sun. Nothing flourishes save "briars and thorns," the symbols of the curse, the fruits of sin-under which are the lairs of slimy serpents and fearful

things. So do we not neglect the spot where we lay a bean, or a grain of corn! O, send us not to seek the living in such a spot of desolation and death.

Let the graves of our dead be more attractive than all other spots. Wave there ye greenest trees, bloom there ye loveliest flowers. Thither let us repair when our hearts are most empty of earth and most full of heaven, and whenever we bear the body of a beloved one to those hospitable receptacles, let us say: "May the angels, which minister to the heirs of salvation attend around thee; the glorious company of apostles and the goodly fellowship of prophets receive thee; may the noble army of martyrs, the triumphant band of confessors, the multitude of saints which have gone before, welcome thee to thy rest."

WHIPPING THE UGLY CHAIR.

BY THE EDITOR.

WE cannot be too careful in making impressions upon the minds and hearts of children. As we handle their bodies carefully lest we injure their tender frame, so ought we to deal gently with their spirits lest we morally cripple and lame them forever. As upon a tender plant, so upon the tender spirit of a child an impression is easily made to bless or to curse it in all future time.

We have been led to these reflections by seeing a child fall against a chair, and the nurse running to it and whipping "the ugly chair," telling the child that it is "a wicked chair," and inducing it to join in whipping it. The reader may have seen the like. No doubt many a child has been quieted by this method; and parents and nurses have been greatly pleased to have soothed a child's pains and tears in so easy a way. But have they seriously reflected upon the wrong which is thus inflicted upon the child, and the evil consequences which must result from such a system of training?

The child is deceived believe that it was the Which is not the truth.

1. It is a deception practiced upon the child. in two ways. In the first place, it is made to fault of the chair that it fell against it.

the second place, it is made to believe that the

In

chair can be hurt and

punished by whipping it. Which also is untrue. Deception is always wrong, and to deceive a child is to injure it.

2. It is training the child to act childishly. We do not mean that it is instructing it to be child-like. There is a difference between childlike and childish. The first is becoming a child. The last is silly and foolish. Whipping a chair is a childish act. A child would never do it of itself-an insane person would.

3. It is giving the child a lesson in revenge and retaliation; and cultivates in its young heart the spirit of cruelty. Thus it draws out a feeling that ought to be suppressed. The same feeling which leads it to "whip the chair," will lead it to take revenge on its brothers and sisters when an occasion shall provoke it.