Religious robe

“ He will put the best robe upon us, and He will prepare a feast for us; and there shall be joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner repenting!
Do you want to know what the "best robe" means?
It is the Robe of Christ's righteousness. For Christ's sake, who has shed His precious blood to make us clean and white, we can be dressed in that perfect robe; and then we shall be fit to join in the feast and the rejoicings, which are coming by and by in heaven.
XXIX. The Pharisee and the Publican
Two men were wending their way towards God's Temple at Jerusalem, a Pharisee and a Publican. ”

“ The celestial bride, Aurora, weaves the nuptial garment—the robe of the celestial bridegroom, the Sun.——The gods attire themselves in luminous robes—white or red, silver or gold. Earthly priests have adopted the white robe in India, Egypt, Asia Minor, Rome, and in all Christian countries. ”

“ The morning robe should cover the arms and the bosom, nay even the neck. And if it be made tight to the shape, every symmetrical line is discovered with a grace so decent, that vestals, without a blush, might adopt the chaste apparel. This simple garb leaves to beauty all her empire; no furbelows, no heavy ornaments, load the figure, warp the outlines, and distract the attention. All is light, easy, and elegant; and the lovely wearer, “with her glossy ringlets loosely bound,” moves with the Zephyrs on the airy wing of youth and innocence. ”

“ If one should adduce the garment of the Lord reaching down to the foot, that many-flowered coat shows the flowers of wisdom, the varied and unfading Scriptures, the oracles of the Lord, resplendent with the rays of truth. In such another robe the Spirit arrayed the Lord through David, when he sang thus: “Thou wert clothed with confession and comeliness, putting on light as a garment.” ”

“ The vestimenta sacra are not spoken of as “robes”; a priest is not “robed” but “vested” for Mass; yet the rochet and chimere of an English bishop, even in church, are more properly referred to as robes than as vestments, and while the cope he wears in church is a vestment rather than a robe, the scarlet cope which is part of his parliamentary full dress is a robe, not a vestment. For the sake of convenience the official, non-liturgical costume of the clergy is dealt with under the general heading Vestments and the subsidiary articles (e.g. Cope) . ”

“ The precious things which were preserved with such jealous care were a hat and robe such as an abbot might wear on some great occasion when the Buddhist Church was using its most elaborate ceremonial to perform some function of unusual dignity and importance. There was also a crosier, beautifully wrought with precious stones, which was well worthy of being held in the hand of the highest functionary of the Church in any of its most sacred and solemn services. The remarkable thing about the hat and robe was their exquisite beauty. ”

“ The high priest wore at the ordinary times of his ministration in the temple, eight garments;--linen drawers--a coat of fine linen close to his skin--an embroidered girdle of fine linen, blue and scarlet, to surround the coat--a robe all of blue with seventy-two bells, and as many embroidered pomegranates upon the skirts of it; this was put over the coat and girdle--an ephod of gold, and of blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen, curiously wrought, on the shoulders of which were two stones engraved with the names of the twelve tribes ”

“ Miss Church-Member, having closed her Bible, was engaged in a close scrutiny of her attire. By the aid of her glasses she realized very keenly that her garments were out of harmony with her environments.
“Will you answer a frank question?” she modestly asked Mr. World. “Do you think my pilgrim’s robe becomes me as it should?”
“A very delicate question. I should never have ventured a criticism without your invitation to do so. Sincerely, your whole attire is somewhat antiquated. It is just as faulty as the Bible. So I would advise you to wear apparel more suited to your natural charms.” ”

“ Can any one, who has the least remembrance of the nature of religious rites, be surprised that one who has been initiated into so many holy mysteries should preserve at home certain talismans associated with these ceremonies, and should wrap them in a linen cloth, the purest of coverings for holy things? For wool, produced by the most stolid of creatures and stripped from the sheep's back, the followers of Orpheus and Pythagoras are for that very reason forbidden to wear as being unholy and unclean. ”

“ If I were to select an ideal costume for men I am inclined to think that I would go back to the Roman toga, to the flowing drapery of the Greeks, or to the Scottish kilt. The kilt is undoubtedly better suited than the robe to the colder weather of Northern Europe and America. ”

“ The said wardrobe consisted of several long sacerdotal robes, of the finest cambric; a dozen or more very unsacerdotal looking nether garments of linen and cambric, ruffled and trimmed with thread lace; a number of gowns of rich material; also a couple of flannel skirts, heavily embroidered, and seemingly intended only to tangle the feet; and quite a pile of unmentionables, with necessary fastenings.
There was also an elegant India muslin robe, trimmed with embroidery and fretted with lace, and a handsome lace cap, laid apart to themselves. ”

“ Woven into a robe of genuine cheerfulness the soul possesses rich adornment. These are the individuals whom children love, men seek to honor, and all the world respects. A king’s robe is commonplace compared with the attractive vesture of a healthy, cheerful disposition which anyone may weave out of sunbeams, with which God crowds even the most secluded, humble lives. ”

“ Would it, however, be too much to hope that the ladies of England may see fit to adopt the beautiful custom of wearing a special garment for church services? It would be in itself so seemly; it would add so much to the grace and dignity of our worship ”

“ One class of priest often carries a kneeling-mat and a whip for driving away demons and wears a high crowned hat made of human hair and a yellow robe, which, when spread out, does for a sleeping coverlet. ”

“ All you will want will be a long white robe coming over the head and down to the eyebrows, and falling to the feet; and a white cloth coming across the face below the eyes, and falling down over the throat. There is no occasion to buy other garments. ”

“ The part that colour plays in the hoods and gowns of academical dress has on more than one occasion occupied our attention. Various coloured veils serve to differentiate the sisters of a religious order, while the ribbons and mantles of the knightly orders serve a similar purpose. ”

“ AM so apt to think that the rending of an outer garment is a token of true penitence and amendment of life. But it is the inner garments I must deal with, the raiments and habits of the soul. Some of these robes—such as vanity and pride—are as gay and showy as a peacock; others are dirty and leprous, and we should not dare to bring them to the door, and display them in the light. ”

“ Now, I will bestow on thee, from my own body, a garment that shall be invisible to men, but perceptible to thee, because it will preserve from cold both thy soul and thy body, until the day in which I will clothe thee with honor and glory before the saints and angels. "And immediately he drew from the wound of his adorable Heart a vestment tinged with the purple hue of his precious blood and beaming with light. ”

“ Religion and Dress—Variety in Nature—Dress should not be Injurious—Present Customs Unhealthy, Slovenly, and Immodest—A Subject of Religious Consideration—Suicide vs. Providence—Foolish Vanity—Taste an Element of Mind—Dress should be Symbolical—Woman should Elevate her Aims—Appropriate Dress Admirable.
Comfort, taste, and religion agree that Dress is one of the proprieties of civilized and Christian life. If religion reaches a part, it does the whole of life. ”

“ It would, however, 'be perhaps going too far to assume that, e.g., peers' robes were originally the king's livery, for there seems to be no proof that this was the case; but it is curious that in most early cases where robes are mentioned, if not of cloth of gold, &c., they are of scarlet, furred. A robe is properly a long garment, 'and the term “robes” is now applied only in those cases where a long garment forms- part of the official costume, though inf ordinary usage it is taken to include all the other articles of dress proper to the costume in question. ”

“ The Virgin and child are life size and wrought out of black ebony. Her robe is of gold and on her head is a crown in which are embedded priceless jewels. She is very sacred to the villagers and to all of Catholic faith. One finds there many photographs and relics left by pilgrims who have come for healing. ”

“ As at the left hand, so here, quite outside the sacred history on the cope, we have the figure of an individual probably living at the time the vestment was wrought. The dress of the other shows him to be a layman; by the shaven crown upon his head, this person must have been a cleric of some sort: but whether monk, friar, or secular we cannot tell, as his gown has become quite bare, so that we see nothing now but the lower canvas with the lines drawn in black for the shading of the folds. ”

“ The accounts of the rich embroidered ecclesiastical vestments—robes, sandals, girdles, tunics, vests, palls, cloaks, altar-cloths, and veils or hangings of various descriptions, common in churches in the dark ages—would almost surpass belief, if the minuteness with which they are enumerated in some few ancient authors did not attest the fact. ”

“ In lieu of the long robe reaching to the feet, which seems to have been the ordinary costume of the higher classes, we observe sometimes a shorter, but still a similar garment—a sort of coat without sleeves, fringed down both sides, and reaching only a little below the knee. ”

“ The garments of the angels, like their habitations and their whole environment, are indissolubly bound to themselves as effects to their producing cause. The quality and appearance of their dress are in perfect correspondence with their states of life, and change with those states. Their understandings are stored with the beautiful and precious truths of heavenly wisdom. These clothe and adorn their minds, and create for themselves, by the unerring law of correspondence, garments of corresponding worth and beauty visible to the outward eye. ”

“ Fashion in dress or ornament is subject to constant changes which, though perhaps individually trifling, in time amount to complete revolutions; but the devotees of any religion, true or false, are by nature conservative of its doctrines or observances. Combined with the conclusions at which we have just arrived, these two universally recognised statements yield us presumptive evidence of the truth of the theory which views the Roman civil dress as the true progenitor of mediaeval ecclesiastical costume. ”

“ Not long after I was sanctified, I received my first light on the subject of dress. One Sunday morning while at the Methodist meeting listening to a sermon, a voice began to talk to my soul: "You profess to be sanctified, living a holy life, and yet your head-dress shows conformity to the world." These words did not come from the pulpit either: nothing was being preached against dress or worldly conformity. Sunday after Sunday the same still, small voice talked to me in this way, until I hardly knew what to do. ”

“ The dress of monks usually consists of a tunic or closed gown and scapular, while there may be one or more open gowns with a hood at the back.
Nuns or Sisters of Mercy are so commonly seen in our streets, and they do so much for the benefit of the poor, and take such a part in educational matters, that their dress is very familiar to us. ”

“ But how disedifying is the conduct of the religious who attends too much to the neatness of her person and to the fineness or richness of her apparel, who wears superfluous ornaments, whose dress is made in a manner apt to attract notice, and whose whole appearance exhibits worldly vanity! ”

“ In the spare form, clad in thread-bare garments, there must have been crushed down a gorgeously artistic nature which found visible expression in the beautifully adorned chasubles of the priests and altar cloths, which are solid masses of delicate silken work on a ground of fine silver threads, the colours and lustre of which seem unimpaired by time. ”

“ The faithful, however, went even further, and wore garments figured all over with sacred subjects in embroidery. We learn this from a stirring sermon preached by St. Asterius, bishop of Amasia in Pontus, in the fourth century. Taking for his text “a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen” he upbraids the world for its follies in dress, and complains that some people went about arrayed like painted walls, with beasts and flowers all over them; while others, pretending a more serious tone of thought, dressed in clothes depicting the doings and wonders of our Lord. ”

“ It is an easy and well-worn metaphor to talk about people's character as their dress. We speak about the 'habits' of a man, and we use that word to express both his customary manners and his costume. Custom and costume, again, are the same word. So here, without any departure from the well-trodden path of Scriptural emblem, we cannot but see in the glorious apparel the figure of the pure character with which the bride is clothed. The Book of the Revelation dresses her in the fine linen clean and white, which symbolises the lustrous radiance and snowy purity of righteousness. ”

“ The regular clergy, especially those whose dress is becoming, have great advantage in society; their costume is a mark of humility and renunciation of self, while, at the same time it lends to its wearers a decidedly dignified appearance. ”