p. 48 | Blasphemous by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 29, 1859

Blasphemous.

By Editor

CASTING a glance lately upon a medical almanac—almanacs, by the way, which are becoming as numerous, and about as great a nuisance as the locusts of Egypt—our attention was arrested by the vignette on the cover. It was a representation of an angel flying through the midst of heaven with the patent medicine in his hand, and bearing this motto: “For the healing of all nations.” Now where was this idea of the healing of the nations obtained? Evidently from the Bible, which speaks of the tree of life whose leaves were for the healing of the nations. Probably the almanac would have used the very language of scripture, had the author been sufficiently acquainted with it to quote it correctly. Here then we have the healing properties of the tree of life, which God alone can give, applied to the miserable nostrums of patent medicine venders. This, to say the least, is insufferably degrading to the words of Holy Writ.

But worse than this, we have seen advertisements of patent medicine, Ayer's pills, pectoral, or something of the kind, accompanied with the vignette of a serpent raised upon a pole. Again we ask, Whence was this idea derived? And the answer is, From the brazen serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness, to which all who looked would live. And what was that serpent? A type of Christ! Here again the worthless compounds of unscrupulous patent medicine-makers are likened in their effects to the efficacy of the atoning blood of the Saviour of the world, which giveth life to all who come unto him. Perhaps those who originated these illustrations did not see their bearing upon divine things; and perhaps the religious papers which have inserted them, have done so inadvertently; but we cannot, on this account, consider them any the less blasphemous.