In the spirit of Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine, I offer the following excerpt from the nonexistent book, Lars Walker’s Fulsome Compendium of Rightfully Forgotten Church History:

The Vigilant Baptist Movement (June 1852): On June 3, 1852, independent Baptist preacher Titus A. Drumhead founded the Vigilant Baptist Fellowship. The Vigilant Baptists took their marching orders from Luke 21:36: “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Operating on the hermeneutical principle that nothing whatever in Scripture is ever to be taken symbolically, Rev. Drumhead declared that he had given up sleeping forever, trusting that God was able to sustain him in wakefulness so long as he lived. He exhorted his congregation (which consisted of six people) to follow his godly example. On June 5 of that same year, the Vigilant Baptists nearly entered into a merger with the Independent Church of Spiritual Water, a group which took its inspiration from John 4:14: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst….” and so abstained from all liquids entirely. The merger was never consummated due to Rev. Drumhead’s unexpected unconsciousness. Awakening twelve hours later and concluding that he was not among the Elect, Rev. Drumhead became a Methodist. The fate of his movement, however, was happier than that of the I.C.S.W.

Our friend Loren Eaton gave me a plug over at his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall, yesterday. Thanks, Loren.

Finally, another great article about an American cartoonist from Stefan Kanfer at City Journal. This time he writes of Winsor McCay, the first great (and insufficiently remembered) newspaper cartoonist and pioneer animator. When I was a kid, my grandparents had a book of Little Nemo in Slumberland in their house. I glanced at it, but didn’t care for the look of it. Little Nemo, in particular, looked like a sissy to me.

And indeed, McCay’s work isn’t really for children. As an adult I’ve had the chance to look at a little of the man’s work, and it’s… gobsmacking. Great vistas of incredible, hallucinatory images splashed all across the newspaper page in full color. The man’s draftsmanship, modeling, and use of perspective have never been surpassed. In fact, I don’t think anyone else ever tried to do what he did.