“But he looked so strange and odd in such clothes, and he a minister of Jesus Christ? I never heard of a minister being dressed in such a singular manner.”
“Ministers of the Gospel certainly ought not to be singular in their dress, lest the people think they desire to be noticed for their garments. I told you before, his dress ‘was in the ordinary garb of the country.’ Mr. Clark wore such garments as the men did to whom he preached, and therefore he appeared plain and equal with them. And his loose garments, especially in a warm climate, were far more comfortable than to be yoked up in a modern fashionable dress-coat, like the ministers in these days.”
“But I should laugh so to see a minister in such a dress as Father Clark wore; it would look so funny.”
“That would only prove you to be very foolish; or, to know very little. Suppose preachers of the Gospel should appear in our costly and fashionable church-houses, dressed just as Jesus Christ and the Apostles did in Judea? Would you be silly enough to laugh at them?”
“How did they dress?”
“Have you forgotten your lesson in the Biblical Antiquities, from the Sunday-School library, you read a few weeks since? There you learn about the dress worn in Judea.”[27]
“Why don’t our ministers dress as Jesus Christ did?”
“Because you would laugh at them. Nor would Father Clark have worn the same dress he did in Georgia and Illinois, had he been a pastor in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. In such matters as were not religious and did not pertain to the service of God, but were earthly comforts, about which God has given no revelation, but left every one to his own reason and common sense, Father Clark, as did Paul, would have become ‘all things to all men.’[28] According to his notions of propriety, the dress he wore in Georgia was convenient and comfortable. The women who loved and respected him as a minister of Christ, made the cloth and cut out the garments, and gave them to him in the same form as they made for their husbands and sons; and he felt thankful and comfortable. Besides, he preferred to live plain, and economical, and by that means had money to give away to purchase the house and burying-ground for the poor Africans.
“But had he received a large salary as your ministers do, or possessed millions of property as the rich merchants, speculators, bankers, and railroad brokers now do, he would still have dressed very plain, and lived in such a manner as to have had the means of doing good amongst men. I very much doubt if even the force of custom would have induced him to appear before the people in a lugubrious garb of black, as clergymen do.”
“What causes ministers to dress in black clothes?”