Final Remnant Trust Lecture about Thomas Paine

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The University Libraries, the Division of Student Affairs and the School of Social Work are hosting an exhibit of rare books and materials from the Remnant Trust in Mullins Library through Monday, May 12. The Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum exhibit represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for visitors to view extremely rare materials.

April 9 – Professor Scott Burcham of the School of Social Work will lecture on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense at 1:30 p.m. in the northwest hallway of the lobby level of Mullins Library. Common Sense was first published on January 10, 1776. Paine advocated for the American colonies’ immediate separation from England. Within a few months, more than a hundred thousand copies were published in America. The work was influential in bringing about the Declaration of Independence, as Thomas Jefferson was an avid supporter of many of Paine’s ideas and cautions.

The Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum provides the public with the opportunity to view seminal works that changed the world by Aristotle, Augustine, Cicero, Copernicus, Galileo, Hippocrates, Newton, Ovid, Plato, and Virgil. The exhibit also contains a page from the first European printed book, the Gutenberg Bible (1455), Queen Marie de Medici’s personal copy of Archimedes’ Opera (1675), the Articles of Confederation (1789), the Magna Carta (ca. 1350), an Egyptian scroll fragment of the Torah (ca. 1600), a Koran manuscript from the late 18^th century, Marco Polo’s Travels (1627), Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1793), and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848).  For more detail, see the full list of works in the exhibit.

The Remnant Trust in Winona Lake, Ind., is a place where everyone – from scholars to school-age children – can handle, read, and learn from the wisdom contained in their extensive collection of rare materials representing ideas that span over 2,500 years. Segments of the collection are loaned to universities, colleges, secondary schools, and other venues to host multidisciplinary exhibits.