nd its uses. He
says there were two impersonations of beauty worshiped under the name
of Venus in the ancient times,--the one celestial, born of the highest
gods, the other earthly. To the earthly Venus the sacrifices were such
as were more trivial; to the celestial, such as were more holy. 'The
worship of the earthly Venus,' he says, 'sends us oftentimes on
unworthy and trivial errands, but the worship of the celestial to high
and honorable friendships, to noble aspirations and heroic actions.'

"Now it seems to me that, if we bear in mind this truth in regard to
beauty, we shall have a test with which to try ourselves in the matter
of physical adornment. We are always excessive when we sacrifice the
higher beauty to attain the lower one. A woman who will sacrifice
domestic affection, conscience, self-respect, honor, to love of dress,
we all agree, loves dress too much. She loses the true and higher
beauty of womanhood for the lower beauty of gems and flowers and
colors. A girl who sacrifices to dress all her time, all her strength,
all her money, to the neglect of the cultivation of her mind and
heart, and to the neglect of the claims of others on her helpfulness,
is sacrificing the higher to the lower beauty; her fault is not the
love of beauty, but loving the wrong and inferior kind.

"It is remarkable that the directions of Holy Writ, in regard to the
female dress, should distinctly take note of this difference between
the higher and the lower beauty which we find in the works of Plato.
The Apostle gives no rule, no specific costume, which should mark the
Christian woman from the Pagan; but says, '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.' The
gold and gems and apparel are not forbidden; but we are told not to
depend on them for beauty, to the neglect of those imperishable,
immortal graces that belong to the soul. The makers of fashion among
whom Christian women lived when the Apostle wrote were the same class
of brilliant and worthless Aspasias who make the fashions of modern
Paris; and all womankind was sunk into slavish adoration of more
physical adornment when the gospel sent forth among them this call to
the culture of a higher and immortal beauty.

"In fine,