Iconic authors
Themes
Bibliography of the day
The Honest Strap or the Hidden Cell, How Asylums Argued Over Which Coercion to Admit
England abolished the strap, America kept it. Behind the quarrel lay a harder question: which force could an asylum admit to? The locked room and the sedative dose concealed what the restraining appliance at least displayed.
The Con and the Conversion, Grace and the Sincerity of the Preacher
Expose a revival preacher as a paid performer and his converts seem to fall with him. Yet Augustine held that a wicked minister gives the same sacrament as a holy one. The real casualty is the evangelical demand that the preacher's heart vouch for the message.
