In one of the most text-heavy ads I recall, Standard Publishing Company melds a sassy illustration to a folksy narrative to push the work at Phillips Bible Institute at First Christian Church, Canton, O.
It is too much to unpack here when a reading of it does better justice than a description. There are several assumptions under and behind it.
–Notice the confidence placed in the latent power of the printed word. Both periodical and monograph stand ready, in near martial terms, to carry the banner in the heat of battle. For whatever overstatement might be here, there is a ring of truth. The issue of Christian Standard bearing this advertisement is a folio of 12 x 14 inches, set in small type printed on good paper, 32 pages in length. Nearly every page carries some kind of typographical flourish: departmental headings, photographic illustrations, cuts and engravings, custom-set ads. It is an achievement befitting the heyday of print journalism. And this is the September 4 issue, there’ll be another 32 such pages next week. By this point in the volume year, our fictional ‘man-with-a-dollar-to-spend’ has received over 1,500 pages…for a subscription price of $1.50, in advance.
–Notice our reader does not appear to be a preacher, educator, or denominational bureaucrat. He is Average Joe, and our narrator assures us he is well-informed of the goings on among the brotherhood. One, this indirectly boosts the informative function the publishers desire for the Standard. Two, this indirectly suggests that you, dear reader, can be just as informed. Three, it directly boosts Phillips and his philanthropy.
–It seems clear to me that Phillips’ book is in the eyes of its publisher a representative ecclesiology for the time and place among conservative Disciples, the emerging Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. Published earlier under the pseudonym of ‘A Distinguished Layman’ we now know its author’s identity and in the edition advertised here we have additional information not included in previous printings. The book remained in print well into the 1940s, and perhaps longer. (I should do a precis for TWP.)
So, here it is, the full back-page ad from Christian Standard, vol. 50, no. 49 (September 4, 1915):
Christian Standard, vol. 50, no. 49 (September 4, 1915)
eScriptorium 