s human imitation of the
Divinity. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."

Now what I mean by Dress coming under the direction of religion is, that
our manners and style of Dress shall not interfere with the principles
of true religion, shall not injure the body, corrupt the heart, debase
the mind of the individual; shall not degrade society, nor work any evil
influence in it, but, on the contrary, shall do good both to the
individual and society. Now let us ask whether our present modes of
Dress are thus brought under the direction of religious principles?

First: Do our modes of Dress injure our bodies? In this, young women,
you may be judges. Are your forms permitted to expand as God designed
them? Are your organs and limbs and muscles permitted their full and
proper play? Is your blood in no way impeded in its life-mission through
your bodies? Are you protected from the winter's cold, from wind and wet
at all points, as you should be? Can you breathe freely and easily the
proper amount of air to oxygenate your blood and give you health and
strength? If so, what mean the languid faces, the sallow countenances,
the pale cheeks, the wasp-like forms, the rounded shoulders, the bent
spines, the feeble lungs, the short breathings, the cold feet, the
hampered step, the neuralgic pains, the hysteric nervousness, the weak
sides, the frailty, weakness, and painfulness so prevalent among women?
What mean the head-aches, and liver-complaints, and consumptions, and
neuralgias, and the troublesome ailments of your sex from which scarcely
a woman of you is free? Those strings which bind so closely your chests,
do they not impede your breathing, and thus weaken your lungs and
corrupt your systems? Those dresses hooked so closely that every seam in
them gapes as in agony, giving you so much the appearance of convicts in
strait jackets, are they not in the way when you want to breathe a full
breath, and do they permit the exercise of all the muscles that strive
for life within them? That enormous weight of skirts that you hang over
portions of your bodies that should be choicely protected instead of
burdened, how they hang down like so many dead weights on your vitality,
weakening and diseasing the most delicate economy of your fearfully and
wonderfully made systems! and how your whole frames are taxed every day
of your lives with this wrongly placed and worse than useless burden.
This alone is enough to bring prematur