The Plain Bonnet

Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning … 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. 1 PETER 3:3–4

For most of her public life Amanda Smith was recognised at a distance by her clothes: a plain dress in the style of the Quakers, a drab shawl, and a big poke bonnet with not a flower or a feather on it. At the General Conference in Nashville the preachers eyed it with disdain. At Fisk University it was the plain bonnet in the crowd that the choir leader spotted. In England the Friends asked her, very kindly, why she wore their garb when she was not one of them. Her dress was a small thing, but the way she thought about it tells us a good deal about the holiness she taught.

The spring suit

The story begins before her conversion, with the spring outfit she had been saving for: the white straw bonnet with broad pink ties, the tucked muslin dress, the black silk mantilla, the light gaiter boots. It kept rising before her as she prayed, until she told the Lord that if He would take the burden off her heart she would never buy any of it. She did not buy it, and the desire left her. Years later she wrote that all such things were surrendered when she was converted, “though the love of them was deep in my heart,” so that when she came to seek holiness she had no difficulty on the dress question.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 JOHN 2:15

She chose plain dress for two reasons. She admired it; many of the most devout women in the Black churches of Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore dressed like the Friends and were known as band sisters, noted for their deep piety, and she loved them for it. And it was cheap. She was a poor woman, and plainness was, she said, a matter of economy. The height of her ambition, she wrote, was “to be a consistent, downright, outright Christian.”

Societies and show

The same instinct led her out of the secret societies she had joined in New York to get to know the right people. She had paid dues to several, including a very high-toned order for the wives of Master Masons, with regalia and parades and money spent on show. After her sanctification, as she prayed about it, God made it clear to her, she said, “that all these secret societies are the mothers of selfishness, pride and worldliness.” She withdrew from every one, though friends told her she was just coming into office and would lose everything she had paid, and some of them treated her coldly afterwards.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 1 JOHN 2:16

Bondage to clothes

What makes her teaching on this so valuable is that she saw how simplicity itself can become a snare. For a time after her sanctification, she confessed, “I was in bondage to my clothes; in bondage to other people’s clothes.” If other people’s clothes were not made as she thought they should be, it troubled her; she did not care to hear them pray, and would rather not kneel at communion with the dressed-up people. She thought it wrong to fan herself in church. She would walk two miles to meeting rather than ride the streetcar on Sunday.

Then she went to a Free Methodist class, and saw her own spirit from the outside. A class leader with a stylish shawl and a bright steel pin and chain gave a gentle sister a public raking over a small bow on her fifty-cent bonnet, and Amanda thought there was more of self in his manner and his swell shawl than in the sister he rebuked. She began to see how legalism about dress can sit comfortably alongside pride. By the time she wrote her book she could say that on the matter of Sunday travel she was “not in bondage even in this as I once was.”

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. GALATIANS 5:1

The English bonnet

The last episode is gently comic. In England she found that no one wore Friends’ dress unless they were Friends, and that her bonnet was taken as a claim to be what she was not. That troubled her deeply, for she hated sham of every kind. But if she took it off, her American friends would say that Amanda Smith had dropped her plain bonnet as soon as she got to England. She was, as she put it, between two fires. In the end, back in Liverpool from Africa, cold, in her thin African clothes, she let two kind ladies buy her warm things and the plainest small bonnet they could find. Then in America everyone asked what she had done with her plain bonnet, until she felt like starting a new style and wearing no bonnet at all.

Her conclusion is the wisest thing she says on the whole subject: “Scores of people have asked me about my bonnet that have never thought of asking me how my soul prospered, and this, after all, is more important in God’s sight than though I wore a hundred plain bonnets.”

For the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. 1 SAMUEL 16:7

What to keep

The holiness movement often made dress into a test of consecration, and some of its churches made rules about bows and feathers that became, in time, a burden and a badge. Amanda Smith lived inside that world, and for a while shared its scruples. But she came to see further than many of its leaders. She kept her simplicity, out of love and economy, and let go of the bondage. She never stopped believing that a Christian should be free of the love of display, the pull of fashion and the money spent on keeping up. But she refused to measure anyone’s soul by their bonnet, including her own.

That is a balance worth recovering. Simplicity of life is a real Christian grace, and an age of endless spending needs it badly. But simplicity that looks down on others, or that makes its own rules into God’s, has become another kind of vanity. The question she would ask is not what you are wearing. It is how your soul prospers.

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. 3 JOHN 1:2

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is there a possession or a style you love more than you should, as she loved her spring suit? Offer it to God, and see whether He asks you to let it go.

2. Where are you spending money chiefly to impress people or keep up with them? Choose one such expense to give up, and give the money away.

3. Ask whether you are in bondage to other people’s clothes, or habits, or ways of worship. Confess any judging you find.

4. Examine the groups and memberships in your life. Do any of them feed selfishness, pride or worldliness in you?

5. This week, when you meet a fellow Christian, ask not about their appearance or achievements but, gently, how their soul prospers.

A PRAYER

Lord, You look on the heart and not on the outward appearance. Search mine.

Free me from the love of display and the need to impress, and give me the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.

Where my simplicity has become pride, and my rules have become Your rules, forgive me and set me free.

Let my soul prosper in You, and let me care more for the souls of others than for how they look. Amen.