Copies of hundreds of E. J. Pace's cartoons, which applied a Protestant Fundamentalist theology to living the Christian life, the nature of God, and moral issues in the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. The collection consists mainly of lantern slides meant to be used in conjunction with prepared sermons, but there are also tracts and cartoons.

Arrangement: The paper records are arranged alphabetically by folder title; the lantern slides are arranged into sets corresponding to the scripts with which they were sold. They are in the order in which they were received.

Date Range: ca. 1920-1961

Volume: 2.75 cubic feet

Boxes: 1-9

Geographic coverage: United States

Type of documents: Lantern slides, scripts for slide sermons, tracts, calendars

Notes: This collection consists entirely of cartoons created by E.J. Pace, most of them apparently for The Sunday School Times. The cartoons are in different formats, the vast majority of them being lantern slides, with the others being either wall calendars, tracts, or clippings from The Sunday School Times . The Archives received these materials when the collections of the former BGC Museum were divided between the BGC Archives and Wheaton College’s Special Collections department. The BGC Museum staff had bought or been given the slides, scripts, and other materials from various manuscripts and antique dealers over the years. There are 568 individual cartoons in the collection. This represents only a small fraction of the total number of cartoons Pace drew during his lifetime. Pace’s cartoons were very popular with Protestant Fundamentalists in the United States in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. They graphically illustrate the Christian gospel of the forgiveness of sin and eternal salvation through faith In Jesus Christ, as well as the corrupting results of sin. His cartoons also deal with other themes, such as the evils of alcohol, the inspiration of the Bible, and the foundations of a moral life.

Folder 1-1 contains paper copies of some 41 Pace cartoons (not counting duplicates). Some of these were simply cut out of The Sunday School Times, while others were printed separately (usually after first appearing in the Times) by the Gospel Truth Poster Company or others. Some of these tracts consist solely of the cartoon, others have a brief printed message on back, usually with no indication of whether it was written by Pace or someone else. These were printed in lots of tens of thousands and handed out by individuals in the same way written tracts were. The cartoons clipped from the Times were collected by Vernon Patterson (see Collection 5) and transferred to the BGC Museum and then back to the BGC Archives.

Starting in 1920, Pace apparently arranged with the Bond Slide Company of Chicago to sell sets of slides of his cartoons together with a sermon that could be used together as a presentation. The script usually says at the end, “Sermon prepared by Russell Bradley Jones.” This probably means that Jones wrote the sermons although he may just have selected the cartoons to go with each portion of the sermon. The slide list in folder 1-30 indicates that in the case of at least two of the slide sets, the sermon as well as the cartoons were written by E.J. Page. This collection contains an extensive, although incomplete, series of these slide sets, in many cases with the accompanying sermon. The images are also tinted, although Pace’s original cartoon were almost all black and white. The Slide Set List in this guide has the images arranged according to sermon sets in which they were used. The images that are not part of a slide set (and in some cases may not even be slides) are listed at the end. The scripts for the slide/script sets that the Archives possess are in folders 1-2 through 1-28. Besides complete slide/script sets, the collection contains scripts for which there are no slides and slides for which there are no scripts. Also, some of the slide sets are incomplete. The sets themselves are in no particular order. The Slide Master Number list has the slides listed in numerical order according to the master number assigned each image. It is unknown whether these numbers were assigned by Pace or the Bond Slide Company or someone else. However, they seem to have been the reference number for the slides, since the same slide in different scripts is assigned the same number. Slides for which no number was given were assigned numbers (all starting with A) by the Archives staff, starting with number A001. Some scripts give a title or description for the slides in its program, but no numbers.

The oversize folder in this collection contains three wall calendars illustrated by Pace cartoons, one cartoon for each month. Like most of the cartoons in folder 1-1, they were also printed and distributed by the Gospel Truth Poster Company.

Folder 1-29 contains advertisements and notices gathered by the Archives staff related to the commercial use of Pace’s cartoons, the Bond Slide Company, or lantern slide projectors. It also contains a copy of Pace’s obituary from The Sunday School Times.

Other Pace cartoons in the BGC Archives can be found in collections 624 and 625. The papers of Vernon Patterson (Collection 5) has correspondence with Pace, as well as some oral history memories about him. Collection 659 includes his autograph.