Endnotes
for section 1
[1]
Iain
Murray vividly describes this tragedy:
“For
many years before the First World War the traditional Christian view of
history had in large sectors of Protestantism merged with a worldly
philosophy of the certainty of progress. It was a disastrous change for
it obscured the fact that the Church cannot advance without the favour
of her God. The authentic Puritan hope had regarded confidence in the
progress of the gospel as mere presumption where there is not an earnest
regard to the rule of God’s Word. The Puritans knew that lack of
faithfulness to Scripture would grieve the Spirit and bring barrenness
upon the Church or even that same judicial blindness in which
Israel
had been cut off. Nor did they forget that Israel’s desolation is held
up in Romans 11 as a warning to Gentile churches lest they fall into the
same unbelief; their convictions about the bright future of Christ’s
kingdom thus provided no cushion upon which complacent Gentile churches
can rest.
“In
contrast to this attitude the Christian Church, by and large, entered
the twentieth century with a large measure of false hope and little
sense of her danger. Even by the mid-nineteenth century commitment to
the doctrinal Confessions of the Reformation was on the wane, though it
was represented as the growth of a healthier outlook. Disbelief in
‘Calvinism’, however, was soon followed by the rise of unbelief in
the inerrancy of Scripture, and then the gospel itself – the
incarnation of the Son of God to bear vicariously in his death the wrath
sin deserves – was made a subject for legitimate doubt within the
Church. Intellect replaced faith and ‘scholarship’ gave her support
to the spreading delusion. Thus Dr. John Duncan, speaking on the
Christian future of the Jews in the Free Church [of Scotland] General
Assembly in 1867, warned his hearers: ‘Do not both indications of
Scripture and the signs of the times lead us to think that a new epoch
is approaching, when a great Gentile apostasy shall be accompanied or
followed by the recall of Israel to Jehovah their God, and David their
king? Wondrous, without doubt, will be the results of that event . . .
Dark days, I fear, are to intervene’” (Iain Murray,
The Puritan Hope, Banner
of Truth,
1984, pp226, 227).
[2] “Rebellion
against the established or dominant fashion has been a constant theme in
the history of costume. The reasons prompting such rebellion are
various: to shock, to attract attention, to protest against the
traditional social order, to avoid current trends and thereby avoid
dating oneself. One of the earliest forms such rebellion has taken –
and continues to take – has been that of women adopting male dress. By
donning men's clothing, women have been able to challenge the status quo
and participate in activities or roles traditionally perceived as
masculine.”
“From
1910 important changes began to take place in feminine attire . . .
Women were beginning to question their status in a man's world. Some
became suffragettes, some went to work outside the home. A more
practical form of dress became popular, with the blouse and skirt
replacing the ruffled tea gown. During the war years of 1914-18 these
changes accelerated. A minority of women were in uniform, but far more
worked in factories, in offices, as postal carriers and in other jobs
previously performed by men . . . the skirt hemline rose to eight inches
above the ground, revealing the ankles for the first time . . . For women
in the 1920s, freedom in dress reflected the new freedoms opening
up for them to take up careers, to study at college, to enter
professions. Only a small percentage of women
took up such opportunities, far fewer than today, but the
revolutionary changes nonetheless
affected the type of clothes worn by most women
in the Western world. The skirt
hemline rose steadily to become, at its shortest in the years
1925-27, knee-length”
(Britannica).
“The
successful revolt by women against social and political restrictions was
accompanied by the disappearance of the corset and the physical
restrictions it inevitably caused. After World War I, almost for the
first time in five centuries, the natural shape of women reappeared in
clothing, as did the practice of revealing the legs. The inconvenience
of working in long dresses dictated the change, starting during the war.
As with all sudden changes, the adjustment was extreme; by the mid-1920s
skirts had risen to the knee. By the 1930s women were wearing trousers.
Since that time, almost any experiment in style has been labelled
fashion” (Encarta
Encyclopaedia, 1999).
“A
fashion revolution in the second half of the 20th century made trousers
acceptable women's
wear for almost all activities” (Britannica).
