Some Standard Wisdom on Brain Pickling

One of the recurrent themes in the articles that caught my eye while reading through the 1880 editions of the Christian Standard was the confidence with which they trumpeted the scientific knowledge of their day. Looking at the science of a bygone era, in edition to being tremendously amusing, ought to give us pause today about our own scientific hubris and force us to wonder how future generations will perceive our cutting-edge thought, particularly as it filters down to the popular level. This piece was copied by the Standard from Scientific American, which is still in publication.

[…], by far the greatest anatomist of the age, used to say that he could distinguish in the darkest room by one stroke of the scalpel the brain of the inebriate from that of a person who lived soberly. Now and then he could congratulate his class upon the possession of a drunkard’s brain, admirably fitted from its hardness and more completed preservation for the purpose of demonstration. When the anatomist wishes to preserve a human brain for any length of time, he effects that object by keeping that organ in a vessel of alcohol. From a soft pulpy substance , it then becomes comparatively hard, but the inebriate, anticipating the anatomist, begins the indurating process before death, begins it while the brain remains the consecrated temple of the soul while, while its delicate and gossamer-like tissues still throb with the pulse of heaven-born life. Strange infatuation this, to desecrate the God-like. Terrible enchantment that dries up all the fountains of generous feelings, petrifies all the tender humanities and sweet charities of life, leaving only a brain of lead and a heart of stone.

Some Standard Wisdom on Ministers' Wives

After a couple of weeks of more serious excerpts, it is time to return to more lighthearted fare. This offering, entitled "The Minister's Wife" was intended, almost certainly, as a sarcastic critique of the unrealistic expectation that congregations had for the spouses of their leaders. Still, I can't help but read it and think that, hovering just beneath the surface, is an genuine wish.

The minister’s wife ought to be selected by a committee of the church. She should be warranted never to have a headache, or neuralgia; she should have nerves of iron; she should never be tired or sleepy, and should be everybody’s cheerful drudge; she should be cheerful, intellectual, pious, domesticated; she should keep her husband’s house, darn his stockings, make his shirts, cook his dinner, light his fire, and copy his sermons; she should keep up the style of a lady on the wages of a day-laborer, and be always at leisure for “good works,” and ready to receive morning calls; she should be secretary to the Band of Hope, Dorcas Society, and the Home Mission; she should conduct Bible classes and mothers’ meetings; should make clothes for the poor and gruel for the sick; and finally she should be pleased with everybody and everything, and desire no reward beyond the satisfaction of having done her own duty and other people’s too.

Thinking Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln has always loomed large in the American consciousness, as martyr president's have a tendency to do. Interest has peaked in recent years, however, with a number of major insertions of Lincoln into the popular culture. Bill O'Reilly's best selling book stands out, as does the Oscar-winning Spielberg film Lincoln. Better than both of those, as far as I'm concerned, is the highly plausible revisionist history film, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. In each case, and throughout history, there has been a tendency to glorify the dead president, a pull that even historians have trouble resisting. While there is no need to disparage Lincoln, contrary voices needed to be heard and praise needs to be qualified by critical analysis. Consider, for example, the following quote from the New York Evangelist written in the midst of Lincoln's first term:

A year and a half of very difficult administration has shown our President to be a plain, good man, honest in heart, pure in intention, but certainly not those rare geniuses, who are born to “ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm.” We have taken a plain country lawyer out of his village and placed him at the head of the Government, and imagined him to be a great man, and because he does not quite measure to the character, we're ready to censure and complain. Might we not rather reprove ourselves for our unreasonable expectations?

Here we have a laudatory account of the "good," "honest," and "pure" president from a friendly source, but consider how great a leap it is for the mind in 2013 to transport into a context in which Lincoln would need to be defended against detractors not by stressing his monumental works but by emphasizing his mediocrity. We should not be so enamored for Lincoln that we forget that even his friends did not perceive him to be one of "those rare geniuses," a status he would assume indelibly after his death.

Some Standard Wisdom on Invisible Gas

This weeks thought from the Christian Standard was borrowed from the New York Evangelist and, like last week, illustrates just how little things have changed, if not in the way Christianity is actually treated by society than at least how Christian perceive their relationship to the broader culture.

Invisible Christianity seems to be a favorite doctrine with many people. The doctrine, it would appear, is this: that you may be saved and nobody know of it. You may get to heaven nicely without any “ado”—so quietly, in short, that nobody will suspect where you are going. Such is a fair statement of the doctrine so many people like. By all means get to heaven, they say, but don’t alarm anybody about it. Keep it all to yourself—the quieter you go to heaven the better. This is the doctrine of invisible Christianity.

I wonder what the world would think if some man told them he had invented invisible gas? Why, they would say the man’s mad—the very thing gas is for is to give light; it must be visible. And, strange to tell, this is just what God says of the Christians—that is, of the soul that’s saved. “Ye are the light of the world,” He says. What could be plainer? But is the light to be seen? Hear what God says, “A City that is set on a hill can not be hid” (Matt. V. 14). “Can not be hid.” That’s what God says about the man or woman that’s saved. Invisible Christianity is not in the Bible. Quite the opposite. If you are saved, your light will be easily seen by the world as a city built on a hill.