Page 118 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Image 101

century that the process of illustrating publications was soon image-driven.
Writers were sent engravings to use as prompts to generate corresponding
stories (Morgan 2007: 21).
In the visually driven publications of children’s religious literature, modern
editors updated Pope Gregory’s widely invoked maxim that images were the
books of the illiterate. Young children were said to read the language of
pictures before they were able to read words. Asa Bullard, a leader in Sunday
school initiatives, published his Children’s Album of Pictures and Stories on
the premise that

Even the ‘little ones’, before they know a letter, can read the pictures; and
they will be entertained, or will entertain themselves, for hours at a time,
with such a book. Neither the pictures nor the stories ever weary. Such a
book becomes the children’s daily companion, till it is literally worn out
with use.
(Bullard 1866: 196)

In 1861, The Well-Spring, a weekly newspaper for children issued by the
Massachusetts Sabbath School Society and edited by Bullard, published a
small engraving of a boy discovering a dead horse (Figure 1). The image
was accompanied by two short paragraphs of description and moralizing
comment, which drove home an emotionally charged message about death
and the afterlife that pitted soul against body, using the image’s somatic
appeal to instill a spiritual disposition:

It is a sad sight to see the poor, faithful horse, that had so long served the
[boy’s] family, with her tongue out of her mouth, lying dead.
But how different our feelings at the death of a horse and that of
a person! This is the last of the poor horse. There is no soul to live
hereafter…But when a person dies, it is only the body that, like the body
of the beast, turns to the dust again.
(Anon. 1861: 27)

The expired horse evokes a certain revulsion, while the large-eyed colt in
the background presses viewers toward pity and sadness. The pathetic death
of a familiar animal was used to strike a chord of solemn reflection in young
viewers: “Beyond the grave there is a life that never dies,” the short piece
ended. “Oh, may that eternity be one of bliss to all our dear readers!”
Though Protestant and Catholic literature aimed at both children and
adults in the nineteenth century could often dwell on the morbid or grim
to direct readers and viewers to the grave topic of their eternal welfare,
some readers of The Well-Spring took offense at the engraving of the dead