Patriotism & The Crusades

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the Saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Michael Durham, Chris Giesler, and Andrew Hudson. We have two questions that we might tackle with this one, but first we're gonna start off with the first question and if we have time I'll try and get us to the second question.

Whether Patriotism Is Sinful for Christians

The first question reads, is patriotism sinful, especially if the nation is sinful? How are Christians supposed to understand and relate to different groups they belong to? Covenantally? Does being a Christian and giving up the love of the world require us to give up love of our country slash nation?

Does the New Testament concept of holy nation tie our loyalties to the church rather than nation? Michael? So it's some interesting questions here. Obviously this is something that Christians have been thinking a lot about in every generation to be sure.

Something that in recent discussion has become all the more pertinent as people begin talking about Christian nationalism a great deal. And so a basic question is, is patriotism sinful? Okay, especially if this nation is sinful.

I don't know of a nation that's not sinful. In regards to thinking about various governments in the world today, I don't know of a single one that you could say well this one is worth being a patriot over because it's not a sinful government.

Are you telling me there's not like a most moral army in the world? No. Oh. Now it's so patriotism. Patriotism is going to be an idea of a kind of a love for your nation and your countrymen. Okay. This is a word that has been under a lot of stress regarding thinking of patriotism historically.

We're coming up on the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, right? So thinking about patriotism is, you know, this is a timely time, timely moment to think about patriotism. But what did patriotism mean in the late 1700s and early 1800s?

And what does it mean today? Okay. When we thought, when back in the early days of our nation and we were saying something about being being patriotic and love of countrymen, we're talking about people that were, you know, primarily of our own stock.

Our actual nation, Genesis 10 definition of a nation. For us to be austerity. Right. Not that we were somehow an amalgamation of many nations into one empire, which is what we are today. So patriotism, you need to be bringing some clarity to your definition.

I don't see Paul, for example, in Romans chapters 9 through 13. You don't see him being a patriot of the empire of Rome. He doesn't mind at all being a citizen and uses it to his advantage and tells other Christians to respect the laws and to be law abiding, to pay taxes, give honor to whom honor is due.

There's a proper role for the governing authorities, even a wicked evil empire like Rome that builds good roads, has a standing army, and does a lot of evil things. Ruled by tyrannical despots. Yes. Yeah.

Insane people, you know. So we have Paul not being so much, you know, on fire wearing the colors of Rome, saying Rome rah-rah. Okay. But we do see him have a deep and fervent love for his nation, which is what?

His kinsmen according to the flesh. His kinsmen according to the flesh. He loves them and a lot of them loathe him. But what a patriot. Right. What a patriot. He was willing to go to the synagogue first in every place that he went, where he found his countrymen as they are part of the diaspora.

And he loved to go back to Jerusalem. He wanted to be there for various feasts and he really enjoyed being around his kinsmen. He was a patriot. He loved his nation. That's a different thing than saying, what about his empire?

I hope we can understand the difference there. I am patriotic when I think about my kinsmen according to the flesh. I mean... Yeah. Well, I was thinking, even that.

Phrase, according to the flesh, the word patriot, you hear the Greek... Pater. Pater, father. Yeah. Like fatherland, according to the flesh. So, there's something there about the lineage, the heritage.

It seems like many of the people who are anti-patriot or like you can't have a love for your country also have problems with their fathers. Or they're like, I don't want anything to do with what my dad was about.

I want something different. I don't love this country like he loves this country. Or loving their people.

According to the flesh. Right. Yeah. I thought you were going to go like, they have problems with the nation state. And that's true too, usually. These are the guys who are like, you know, uncle so-and-so out in the woods, has the bunker, has the gold buried in the backyard type guy.

That's what I thought you were going. But yes, I agree. I think you do see a lot of that, even in those situations, issue with fatherhood in general. Yeah. But I think the.

Example you brought up with Paul is he had a concern for his people, according to the flesh, to the point where with salvation, would that I be cursed for the sake of my kinsmen,.

According to the flesh? Yeah. So in this sense, you see that Paul is a patriot. He loves his father's people. And that's not bad. In fact, it fueled his evangelism. Now, of course, he did not restrict his evangelism to just his fellow Jews.

He preached to the Jew first, but also to the Gentile. And very often when his own countrymen loathed him and lied about him and opposed him, he would say, well, okay, I'm done coming to your synagogue.

I'm going to go in the marketplace here and I'm going to preach to the Gentiles here. And it's okay that he had a preference for his own people. But in that preference, he wasn't thereby sinfully feeling or sinfully acting.

He understood the gospel was for all nations, and he was happy to do that. He said he was a debtor to Jew and Gentile. You know, I got to preach the gospel to everybody. And it's okay that at the same time, I have a preference for my own people.

Paul, as much as he had a preference for his own people and loved his people dearly, rebuked Peter for acting in a way inconsistent with the gospel. And we read about that in Galatians chapter two. So we see that just because somebody is patriotic concerning their own people group, doesn't mean that necessarily that means that they're sinful.

So I think that kind of answers the question, just out of some observation there. We are told in the scripture to not love the world nor the things in the world, for the world is passing away and the lust of it.

Okay. So that sounds like immediately, well, whatever I would have this bucket called the world and whatever's in that bucket, I must forsake. Yeah. Forsake, shoo, and say all that's bad. And then depending on what Christian you talk about, everyone has something else different in that bucket.

So what are some of the things that people put in the bucket that they call the world and say, I must hate this and not have anything to do with it? Money. Very often. Because we're also warned that the love of money is the root, a root even, not even the, it's anatherous.

No, I'm saying the way it's quoted. Yeah. They would say money is the root of all evil, but it's actually therefore love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Correct. But they put money in the bucket and probably entertainment.

I know a lot of guys that would say from the past in the church would say that fiction is like the work of the devil. You know, a lot of Puritans who were against the, the play house and the plays for various reasons that they may be, or may not be had reason for, but they just, they just, like you said, eschewed plays altogether at that point though.

And it runs a gamut too, because you, if you, we have talked about the Greek Orthodox church in previous episodes. I mean, you talk about some of their clergy, it manifests as a rejection of all things.

Yeah. You know, the world is everything outside of hermeticism. Exactly. And, and so this is, you have the, you have the monks and the hermits and everything else. And, and the more that you reject every single conceivable comfort of life, the more holy you are.

And, but what is that, you know, again, the definition of what the world means in those contexts is of absolute importance. And so we need to be more clear on that to be sure, but we do not have to give up on our love of country and nation.

The men that Paul tasked Titus to train on the Island of Crete, they, he had to seek for men who could be trained to be elders in the churches that were planted on the Island of Crete. These men would be good elders if they loved Cretans.

Correct. They would be great elders of other Cretans if they would love them and love them in the proper way. Not a matter of, you know, we have a reputation to keep, you know, we have a bad reputation and we're proud of it and let's do it even more.

Not that kind of love, but a righteous and holy Christ transformed love for my people. That's the best kind possible. Enough to rebuke them. Yes, exactly. Quit drinking, quit being lazy. Yeah. And so the question is, does the New Testament concept of holy nation tie our loyalties to the church rather than nation?

And again, this is a false dichotomy. We are to have rightly ordered loves. And so having a love for Christ and our family and our church and our nation, there is a proper order to our affections. But our love for Christ leads us to properly love everybody else that we have a responsibility to.

And to put those things in proper order. How are Christians supposed to understand and relate to different groups that they belong to? The question is covenantally. Christologically would be the answer, correct?

He's king and he tells us how to relate. So, you know, how does he tell me to relate to my nation, to the empire in which I live, which is not the same thing. How do I relate to the church? How to relate to my own family members?

Yes, there are many, many times that push comes to shove. I will have to choose Christ over my family. You've heard the expression, blood is thicker than water. The full statement is the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

Meaning that sometimes I'm going to have to choose Christ and his people over my own family when I'm pushed to it. Privacy in all things. Yes. And sometimes, Paul had to do this. I will have to choose Christ over my own kin because they are telling me, stop being so pro-Christ.

Stop preaching in his name. Yeah, exactly. But I will be for Christ over my own kinsmen. Same with the empire. When Caesar comes and says, thou shalt not have communion and you cannot gather and put a diaper on your face when you sing hymns, we're going to tell Caesar, you don't belong here.

Right? So those are things that we can recognize. Otherwise, it's like, yeah, but at the same time, Caesar is in charge of certain things and I'm going to obey in those areas where I'm supposed to obey.

But Christ is the one who defines all of that. So I relate to all these different people in regards to Christ who orders it all. He's the ruler of the kings of the earth. So he's in charge of all that.

Well, I think that's a good summary of all the answers that we need to give for those questions. And thank you for sending it in, even though there's three or four questions all wrapped into one. I think it was done pretty well.

The Crusades, Catholic Doctrine, and Christian Nations

We're going to move on to the second question that we think has some benefit answering directly after this. The question reads, as I learned more about the Crusades and the amazing things these men did to defend against Islam, and what he's saying is defend probably Christendom against Islam.

I can't help but think, how could the faith of these men not be genuine? So he's saying he thinks they're Christians. However, my assumption is that they largely held to Catholic false doctrines. What is your read of the situation?

How can we be so inspired by men who seem to be full of faith, yet believe their doctrine was largely false? And considering the discussion we all just had about affections rightly ordered, Christ being Lord over those affections and ordering them for us, how does this shake out for us in that context, and then what he's saying, applying it today for ourselves?

So it's important to remember the historical context in which the Crusades occurred. Most definitely. I mean, and we have to remember that... Democratic republics? Well... It is a natural thing for us to look at difficult and confusing times today, and then try to find some sort of frame to put it in so that we can try to make some sense of it and find a solution.

So very often we go back to history to find a frame that we can take some present-day dilemma and put it in that historical frame to make more sense to us. And the Crusades are one of those frames that people go grab and say, I want to see the common problems, like what I see as Islam today, and I want to put that inside the frame of the Crusades to try to make sense of how we ought to be thinking in our own time.

But that even though we can... We actually need to go back and look at the Crusades, what was happening then in its own time, and then we can maybe draw some observations and some lessons out of it. But the Crusades are commonly talked about today because people are looking for solutions to the problems that we're looking at right now.

I think this question presupposes that people do think that all those who participated in the Crusades were faithfully participating in the Crusades. Maybe that was true for some of the lords who were raising these armies, but the fiefdoms that they held sway over, the men, the serfs, the common people, they didn't have the ability to say, well, no, Lord, I'm not going to battle for you.

We're in a totally different era as far as whether I could or could not go based on my own conscientious objection. So in their defense against Islam, to be clear, the caliphates who were aggressively expanding by the sword definitely did so in the name of Islam and had good reason to because as far as the Quran is concerned, there is only the land of Islam or peace, and then there's the land of war.

That's it. And so going out and conquering and killing non-Muslims, the infidel, that's basic 101 Islam. Now, as that begins to expand out and areas around the world are being conquered and overrun by the hordes, the response comes in our modern day estimation very slowly.

Yes, very. Like for us, if some American asset was attacked, we expect reprisal in 10 days or less. In that day, how long does it take to recognize a threat, assess it, respond to it effectively? Well, even to agree to respond to it.

Yes. Yeah. Because we're talking about all of Christendom, like trying to come together at that point in Europe and say, yes, this is a good idea. And if you have read any church history, that rarely happens.

Yeah, rarely. And there is at this time a legitimate governance magisterial role in Christendom in Europe for the Pope and for these various magistrates. And they have to come together like a council of powerful persons to decide what they're going to do about this threat.

And the threat is clear. And in this case, we can safely categorize the Crusades as magistrates taking up the sword to go punish evildoers. I mean, this is the proper thing to do. And that those who participated in this did so in the name of Christ only makes sense given the realities on the ground.

All of these are Christian nations in terms of how they officially technically organize themselves, understand themselves, everything else. And they're being organized by a Christian figure, the Pope.

And so everything is done in the name of Christ versus Islam. And this is not the only framing. It's part of the framing of what goes on in the Crusades. Now, how can the faith of these men not be genuine?

I'm sure that there were some men involved whose faith was genuine. Now, were they doctrinally clear? Were they theologically precise men? Did they have the benefit of the Reformation? Rarely are warriors theologically.

I'm just saying that's not usually what you have in one package. David and Christ are like the two outliers in that scenario. Yes. So in this, I'm not saying that there was... For example, there are people today that say, if anyone ever owned a slave, they never were a Christian.

And they'll say the same thing about Crusaders. If anyone was ever involved in a Crusade, they were never a Christian, they're in hell. These are ridiculous statements. This is just absolute nonsense.

Okay? So I'm not saying that they all died and went to hell. And yes, we do believe that the Roman Catholics taught false doctrine, but the official false doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, which anathematized the gospel of grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone, that was the Council of Trent.

Yeah, post-Trent. Yeah. They didn't even have the clarification of the sacramental system. What are the sacraments? And what are the arrangement of the sacraments and so on until Trent? This is all post-formation.

So we're talking about an era in which certain things are loosely defined, not as clear, not saying that they had everything right, but I'm also saying that the official stance wasn't there. Yeah. The dogmas of today that are required to be believed by the Roman Catholic adherent are not the same as what were happening back then.

Yeah. They have proceeded or waxed worse, if you will. And so I would say that there is a large problem with a reflection on the Crusades, given the Roman Catholic assumptions. There are many things about the Roman Catholic Church in which the church is in the place of Christ.

Remember that if we're thinking about Roman Catholicism in its form that we have today, there were these themes latent even back during the Crusades. And if the church is seen as the savior, if the church is in the place of Christ as the dispenser of grace from the Pope to the priest, the vicar of Christ, right?

They're in the place of Christ, okay? Then the church is going to do the job of Christ. And what's the job of Christ according to Psalm 2 and Revelation 1 and so forth? Well, he's the ruler of the kings of the earth.

He's got the iron scepter and he's there to wage war. And so it makes sense that the Roman Catholic Church would see itself in that position and not have any theological qualms about bearing the sword.

This is our job, right? We're bearing all of this forward. So it only makes sense that they would have less issue with that. When we, as Protestants, meaning we don't rely upon the magisterium and the handed down traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, but we're going to take all of the creeds and confessions and catechisms and submit them to the authority of the scripture.

When we go to the scripture, we find at the crux, the most evil moment in history, as the Temple-like Jews are in the process of getting the Messiah murdered by the hands of Roman agency. The most evil thing that's ever happened on the face of the planet, the murder of the son of God.

Pilate is asking Jesus, are you a king? He says, I'm a king. You said it, I'm a king. My kingdom is not of this world. He didn't say it wasn't in the world. He said it wasn't of the world. Just like in Daniel chapter two, the kingdom does not come of the world.

It's not like a statue of man with his feet planted on the ground. It comes from heaven. It lands and then it expands, but it's not from the world. It's not of the world. It's in the world. Just like he said when he prayed in John 17, do not take my followers out of the world.

They're in the world, but they're not of the world. Same with his kingdom. He says to Pilate, I am a king. My kingdom is not of this world. If it were of this world, my followers would fight that I would not be turned over to you.

Because if there was any moment for Christians to take up arms and fight, it was at the trial of Jesus. We know how Jesus teaches from the greater to the lesser. This being the case here, if we ever should have fought, it should have been right there.

Jesus told Peter, put your sword away. The point is that we cannot, in the name of Christ, take up arms and say, this is part of our duty as Christians is to go kill Muslims. If we belong to a Christian nation that honors Christ as the ruler of the kings of the earth, and we explicitly want our nation to be submitted to him, guess what that nation might become the target of?

Islamic states. Why? Because they hate Christ, and they hate Christians, and they're satanic, and they're a cult, and they're wicked. And so they would likely try to target and attack a nation that was vocally supportive of Jesus Christ and honoring him.

That would only make sense. If my magistrate says, the Muslims are attacking, we need to defend our borders, and all y 'all not belong to the militia. Okay, well, we take up our guns and we fight, we defend our land, and so on and so forth.

And we do so with it, and we begin and end our battles with prayer. Yeah, that's all perfectly fine. There's nothing incoherent about that whatsoever. But in terms of thinking about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Great Commission to evangelize all of the nations, and the fact that he has died for people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, and we get this global sense of the gospel and so on, this isn't licensed for us to strap on crusader armor and go hunting, or go be a mercenary.

Right. So the inspiration that we need to get, at the end of the question, the inspiration that we need to get from these men is having rightly ordered loves and trying to pray for and encourage magistrates to carry that type of wisdom out.

So we see them, they see these evildoers encroaching on their borders as threats, and they go out and deal with those threats. That's a wise, kingly move. And so being inspired by those men, that's the type of things that we should be inspired by, is the wisdom to carry out one's office with duty and precision like they attempted to do.

Yeah. I would say that there is very inspiring things when you read about the sacrifices that were made, and we get that same thing when we read about our countrymen 250 years ago and the sacrifices they made.

And we get inspired by that as well, because we can see and we should appreciate courage, and we can see when my magistrate lawfully says and wisely says, we must defend our nation. Like, yeah, I agree.

Let's go defend our nation. That makes sense. And so that's how... The question is, what is your read of the situation? That's my read of the situation, that there is good and orderliness in this, but yes, there was also some application of a false, unclear doctrine in the process, but that's not something that we need to cultivate today.

Yeah. Or even really worry about, as far as like, I don't think that we're in... Like we talked about before, I don't think we're in a situation where this is gonna kick off in any way, shape, or form.

And if it would kick off, it wouldn't be this type of religious justification. It would be under whatever the current religious fervor is among the magistrates. And I don't think it's necessarily Protestant theology or even Catholic theology at this point.

So again, what we're told in the Scripture is about our fealty and our fidelity to Christ is first and foremost. And then he rightly orders our laws all the way down the line, including our nation, including our empire.

And we are to give our obedience to the magistrates in accordance to where that is their particular domain. And we can at the same time say to our magistrates and work with them, and then even ourselves serve as magistrates and say, Islam is a wicked cult and should not be allowed here and should not have a voice here.

We ought to oppose, you know, the taking away of our lands by foreign nations. We should oppose that. And we should say all sorts of righteous things and advocate for those things. Yes, absolutely. That's completely consistent.

We would want to conduct ourselves as Christian magistrates and as Christians supporting magistrates and advising them and encouraging them and devoting in a certain way to act wisely and righteously.

It seems like there's different tools available to us because we're in a different time, a different system. We're not in that system anymore. Like you said, the frame is different now. And we have mechanisms in place, localism, we've talked about that.

There are things that can be done that are not that. And so for someone to say, not here, what are the avenues that people can take to do that? It's going to be different than it was back then.

Yeah. So this is where I think we got a question one time, a few podcasts back about, well, what about not just self-defense in your home? It seems to be pretty clear. But what if I see a neighbor, somebody who is a neighbor, or I know of situation down the block, or somebody is, my neighbor's wife is getting raped or something.

What then? I have a gun in the will to do something about this problem. What do I do then? My answer is, talk to your sheriff. What do you say? I'm serious. I think the example was about somebody you know in the state that is taking abortion pills.

That's what it was. Because it was in the context of people who take matters into their own hands about abortion mills, like going and bombing or shooting or whatever. And then somebody who is taking abortion pills, you gave the example of, if I know somebody who's taking abortion pills, she knows she's pregnant and she's about to go take an abortion pill, do I go in there and handle the problem on my own?

No. No. Right. That's not within your purview of powers. So the question is, why do you feel responsible for it? And this is where it's the same thing. Why do I feel responsible about the evils of Islam in anywhere from Africa to Dearborn, Michigan?

What's my responsibility? Well, if I feel burdened about something, my responsibility is to pray. If I have the opportunity to do good, and it's real, actually genuine good, according to what my Lord has said, I would like to do some good, you know, if I can.

But what is my responsibility?

Right. I think. Would it be the responsibility to your kinsmen? Yeah.

If they're suffering? The order of my loves, right? So in fealty to Christ, I'm to love my family and my church and my countrymen and what's right around me and so on and so forth. And if I see that just Islam has an unbroken record of wicked violence against Christians and nothing good ever comes from Islam and I'm concerned about it because I hear about it in Africa or Dearborn, because we live in a global information age, and I'm concerned about that, then what am I doing right now with my family and with people around me?

Am I doing what I believe to be a responsible approach to that saying, we ought not support this, celebrate this? You know, like the people over in northeast Oklahoma, who's telling the city council a broken arrow.

No, we do not want an Islamic mosque here. Stop it. We're voting against that. We're against it entirely. And then they put it in anyway. Well, it's time to vote all of them out. And if they won't do it, then everyone should leave.

You know, impoverish the city, break it down, abandon it. Like you are welcome to your hell hole. There you go. Just you can have it. Then they'll be haunted by the jackals of Islam. Yeah, exactly. You wanted it, here it is.

You get to have it. And, you know, people are doing that today. You know, people are voting entire city councils out because they put in data centers when they told them not to, you know, things like that.

So if you don't like what's happening, then you're gonna have to go someplace else. And, you know, we give an example in the state of Oklahoma in the county, if the sheriff and the district attorney agree on something as law, well, you know, it's like go to a place where you can agree with it or you can advocate for someone's gonna listen and you can work towards getting things put into place that are wise and righteous, you know, localism.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think the emphasis there is very important because you talked about the global information world. It's wanting you to focus on the globe. It's wanting you to focus on the federal powers of the federal happenings of the circus in Washington.

But your greatest use is going to be the dirt you stand on and the people around you that stand on the same dirt, being able to organize in a fashion that gets things done, it accomplishes goals that you all want to see done within your locale.

And like we were discussing before, the people who do that successfully or do it first or are the best at it, then that like building up that capital is how you actually get to some sort of federal power or some sort of broader movement to back because there's a certain spirit behind that, right?

There's a certain spirit behind it. And if you can animate your locale to do that thing, the same thing can be replicated across the country. It's the same thing that the leftists have done for 100 years.

They start with a spirit of something and then they just sit there and replicate it over and over and over again. Yeah. So I think there's action to take and you could be inspired by a different time, a different set of circumstances, but courage can inspire us to act in the ways that we can right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Be inspired by the faith of the men. Yeah. And not necessarily like try to copy the actions is what you're saying. Yeah. All right. What do we recommend, Michael? I recommend a biography by Michael Reeves, Spurgeon on the Christian life.

So it's not a classic biography. It's various themes about Spurgeon talking about something else that you can't replicate somebody else's ministry that you ought not try to replicate and copy. And you know, everyone loves Spurgeon and claims him.

But I think that when I read about Spurgeon and the themes that he preached on and so on, I think what is the best is the childlike faith that he advocated for in the approach to the gospel and the approach to the Christian life that he really did keep to his word to preach to the milkmaid and dealing with how do you take a hymn to heart and how do you pray and what should you think of before you go to sleep and bringing the application of the Christian life into the basic every day.

And I think this is important for us in regards to some of these things we've been talking about, patriotism, nationalism, global crises. Honestly, truly, I think it's important for us to remember our king and our shepherd, he's doing fine.

He's doing just fine. And I don't actually add to the hairs of my head or to the success of the kingdom through my worry. And I cannot increase my statue or even the stature of Christ by my worry and concern about these things that I have no responsibility for.

And that I am free in Christ to live in the day that he has made and put right in front of me, seek him first and his kingdom, and all these other things will be added. And I can pray like a toddler and ask for what I need and trust in him and live free and liberated in this sense, in Christ.

Yeah, there's evil out there, there's terrible things out there, so on and so forth. But again, I'm not to be walking around weighed down by that. I get to give that to my king and know that he's doing a great job in ruling and reigning in his own way, in his own time.

So, and I find Spurgeon's preaching to encourage and exhort us along those lines. Amen.

I would recommend, been working on a chart, kind of making it digital, but the sources, Adam's synchro, man, I'm butchering that, synchronological chart. Try that again. But basically it's a timeline.

It's got the Bible timeline on the top and the world timeline on the bottom, and it lines up the events of those happenings. And it's just really neat to look at, there's a lot of stuff on it. It's very busy and it's got illustrations and things like that.

So, I would recommend that chart.

I think the Lord that he has given us good works to walk in, there's often an emphasis on placing your affections or your actions, your desires to do something away, like what we've been discussing here, away from your sphere of influence.

It promotes a sense of helplessness and loss of traction. I thank God he gives us things to do every day for us to walk in them, here where we can. Amen. I have with me an older book that I believe I probably recommended in the past.

I don't know, you guys might recognize it if I brought it in before, but it's the best love poems of the American people. I don't know if you can find this readily. It is, I think, a 1930s print. You may be able to get it somewhere, but the recommendation isn't necessarily the book itself.

It's a monster and it has loads of Poe, Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, stuff like that. But I would say if you have relatives or friends that are giving away old books that they have or that they've inherited or anything like that, just rifle through them.

You don't have to take everything, but try and go find nuggets. I know I have a great uncle's text of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner that was either published just into the 20th century or in the 19th century.

I can't remember which one. So there are still a lot of old books floating around out there. You can find them at older bookstores or Books a Million or some places that do out-of-print stuff. And there are people who are bringing back out-of-print things, which is quite nice, especially for somebody who's going down the history realm or the history road of things, because histories of the early 20th century or late 19th century do not read nearly the same as what we have post 1915, 1945.