The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Literature

  • Behold Your King: Reflections on a Palm Sunday

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    Melissa Schubert
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    Christians remember on Palm Sunday the triumphal entry of Christ to Jerusalem–the King of Glory riding to the ostensible seat of his political and religious power, received as victor and Lord with shouts of Hosannas. But there is a great deal about the scene that–at least as it hits my imagination–speaks of Christ’s humility: riding…

  • Today H. P. Lovecraft Died (1937)

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    Fred Sanders
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    I know this day is most famous for the death of Julius Caesar, but I did not come to bury Caesar or to praise him. Instead, I want to point out a writer for whom every day was the Ides of March. Howard Phillips Lovecraft (born 1890, died this day, March 15, 1937) was one…

  • Today George Herbert Died (1633)

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    Fred Sanders
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    March 1, 1633, George Herbert died of tuberculosis. He left as his major literary accomplishment a set of poems called The Temple, a nearly inexhaustible source of spiritual insight and guidance. Here is my favorite, The Bunch of Grapes. Joy, I did lock thee up: but some bad man Hath let thee out again: And…

  • Top Five Christian Comic Books

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    Fred Sanders
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    I sometimes promote myself as the “world’s greatest systematic theologian cartoonist,” because it’s a pretty safe boast. If I ever meet another professional theologian who’s also a published cartoonist, I’ll have to adjust my bragging to something like “one of the two greatest.” But while I might be the only theology prof to publish cartoons,…

  • Today the Pilgrim’s Progress was Published (1678)

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today in 1678 John Bunyan brought out the first version of the Pilgrim’s Progress. He did make some revisions after that first edition, but the book was recognizably itself as soon as it was published. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, famously sophisticated, called this simple book “incomparably the best Summa Theologicae Evangelicae ever produced by a writer…

  • The Space of a Sonnet

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    Matt Jenson
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    Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room; And Hermits are contented with their Cells; And Students with their pensive Citadels: Maids at the Wheel, the Weaver at his Loom, Sit blithe and happy; Bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness Fells, Will murmur by the hour in Foxglove bells:…

  • Faith and Works Got Married (Hannah More)

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    Fred Sanders
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    Hannah More was a wildly popular author in her day because she had the common touch and a style that perfectly suited the tastes of her time. Here is one of her doctrinal poems (from volume 5 of her collected works), in which she carries out a homey reconciliation of faith and works in less…

  • The Shack: Four Walls, Five Reviews

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    Fred Sanders
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    The Kids-Book Author: Have you read the Shack of Mack? Have you read this paperback? Would you give it to your friends? Will you spoil how it ends? I have read the Shack of Mack. I have read this paperback. I would not give it to my friends. I might just spoil how it ends.…

  • Today is John Donne’s Birthday

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today in 1572, John Donne was born. Donne was equally powerful as a poet and as a preacher, because in both roles he exercised an apparently absolute mastery over the English language. In his 1999 book The Theology of John Donne, Jeffrey Johnson argues that “the doctrine of the Trinity is for Donne the seminal…

  • Are We Seven?

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    Fred Sanders
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    First: A classic early poem by William Wordsworth. Then: Four visual analyses of the evidence. We Are Seven A little child, dear brother Jem, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? I met a little cottage girl: She was eight years old, she said;…

  • Leave it to a poet…

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    Matt Jenson
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    A selection from W. H. Auden, ‘The Poet & The City’, in The Dyer’s Hand and other essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 86-87 …to speak sense into politics. ‘There are two kinds of political issues, Party issues and Revolutionary issues. In a party issue, all parties are agreed as to the nature and justice…

  • Vocabulary Quiz on The Horse and His Boy

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    Fred Sanders
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    A few years ago, I taught the Chronicles of Narnia as part of a college course. I always feel odd teaching a class on books that people read for fun, books with a very high entertainment value. Isn’t that what people outside the academy assume we’re doing on campus: giving college credit for watching cartoons…