Nothing of this kind becomes a modest woman, who should be adorned with shamefastness and sobriety.... And if St. Paul" (he continues) "would remove those things which are merely the marks of wealth, as gold, pearls, and costly array; how much more those things which imply studied adornment, as painting, colouring the eyes, a mincing walk, an affected voice, a languishing look? For he glances at all these things in speaking of modest apparel and shamefastness." But there is no need to go to Corinth in the first century, or Alexandria and Carthage in the second and third, or Antioch in the fourth, in order to show that the Apostle was giving no unnecessary warning in admonishing Timothy respecting the dress and behaviour of Christian women, especially in the public services of the congregation. In our own age and our own Church we can find abundant illustration. Might not any preacher in any fashionable congregation echo with a good deal of point the questions of Chrysostom? "Have you come to dance or a levée? Have you mistaken this building for a theatre?" And what would be the language of a Chrysostom or a Paul if he were to enter a theatre nowadays and see the attire, I will not say of the actresses, but of the audience? There are some rough epithets, not often heard in polite society, which express in plain language the condition of those women who by their manner of life and conversation have forfeited their characters. Preachers in earlier ages were accustomed to speak very plainly about such things: and what the Apostle and Chrysostom have written in their epistles and homilies does not leave us in much doubt as to what would have been their manner of speaking of them. But what is urged here is sufficient. "You are Christian women," says St. Paul, "and the profession which you have adopted is reverence towards God (θεοσέβειαν). This profession you have made known to the world. It is necessary, therefore, that those externals of which the world takes cognisance should not give the lie to your profession. And how is unseemly attire, paraded at the very time of public worship, compatible with the reverence which you have professed? Reverence God by reverencing yourselves; by guarding with jealous care the dignity of those bodies with which He has endowed you. Reverence God by coming before Him clothed both in body and soul in fitting attire. Let your bodies be freed from meretricious decoration. Let your souls be adorned with abundance of good works." FOOTNOTES: [37] So Chrysostom _in loco_: but this is an exaggeration respecting Jewish limitations. [38] See Clement of Rome, _Cor._ xli. [39] _Didache_, x. 7; Just. Mart., _Apol._, 1. lxvii. Justin probably uses the term "president" ὁ προεστώς in order to be intelligible to heathen readers. [40] _Strom._, VII. vii. [41] _De Orat._, xiii., xiv., xvii.; _Apol._ xxx.; Comp. _Adv. Jud._, x. [42] _Vit. Const._, IV. xv. 1.